KNOWING THE NUMBERS

KNOWING THE NUMBERS Media mogul, Byron Allen, in a series of interviews released near the date of his famous United States Supreme Court hearing against the cable giants, Comcast and Charter, on November 13, 2019, shared some important insights. One of them was the absolute necessity of “knowing the numbers.” That stuck home, finally resonated with me. “Know the numbers” ! That motto evoked Paul Cuffee, James Forten, Booker T. Washington, Madame C. J. Walker, Berry Gordy, Oprah Winfrey, Robert F. Smith. I had heard Ervin “Magic” Johnson say the same thing, “Know the numbers”, about twenty years ago as he spoke in a $100 per plate youth motivation luncheon which I had attended with youngest son, Kemet, in Overland Park, Kansas. Until that time, I had not known of the extent of Magic’s financial reach nor of his financial acumen. Don King, the controversial boxing promoter, former Cleveland, Ohio, hustler, killer and inmate, knew the numbers , when he lifted athletic and entertainment promotions from white men, using Muhammad Ali and the Jackson Five. My wife and I had attended a live cablecasting of “The Rumble in the Jungle “ In 1974, in Landover, Maryland, when Ali knocked out Foreman in Kinshasa , Zaire. I had read of Don King in a backhanded biography by a guy named Jack Neuberg. I also had met Don King in Pierce City, Florida at a party hosted by the law office of the great Willie E. Gary, Esq., who surely “knows numbers.” Come to think of it “knowing numbers” may just be more basic than knowing rivers, “ancient dusky rivers,” apostrophied by Langston Hughes’ immortal poetic encomium to African and African Americans’ historic antiquity and ubiquity. Certainly Africans knew numbers! Numbers began with Africans, as did geometry, science, philosophy. We raise great entertainers and athletes by the grace of God! How wonderful if more were mathletes! —versed in mathematics—the “knowledge of numbers” and their indispensable utilization as the instruments of salvation and glory!