Welcome Wagon

From the moment he stepped into that foreboding land between Slauson and Vernon, David Meriwether just knew people would point.

He just knew there would be stomping.

He just knew there would be chants.

Monday afternoon, amid the dusty haze of history that hangs thick in the legendary Crenshaw High gym, David Meriwether was proven right.

And wrong.

When he was introduced as a junior guard for the Crenshaw High basketball team before the first official practice, more than 1,000 students pointed.

While cheering and whooping and high-fiving.

When he ran to the court to join the state’s most celebrated high school basketball program, there was stomping.

As everyone danced on the bleachers.

And yes, by the time he walked into the blue-and-gold embrace of teammates, there were chants:

“Milk! Milk! Milk! Milk!”

Leave it to a bunch of silly teenagers to compose the perfect nickname for this rich, refreshing break from our city’s tired sirens of conflict.

Meet David Meriwether, the first white male basketball player in the 30-year history of Crenshaw High.

The students have, and they overwhelmingly accept him.

His teammates have, and they like him.

The coach has, and he thinks Meriwether has a chance to be good.

“This is cool,” Meriwether said Monday, bouncing off the shoulders of buddies, posing for giggling girls, looking at home in a place as foreign to most whites as Mars.

Yeah. Cool.

*

To understand the importance of the enrollment of a single student in a high school of about 2,760, it should be understood who doesn’t enroll here.

Whites don’t.

You can literally count the number of them at Crenshaw High on one hand.

David Meriwether makes four.

During his first two weeks of school, he was consistently bumped in the halls by gang members and questioned by classmates.

His teammates protected him from the thugs, who would shove him and square to fight before he was ushered away.

He wasn’t sure what to do about everybody else.

“Teachers would be taking roll, and somebody would say, ‘What are you doing here?’ ” recalled Meriwether, 17. “People would ask me if I was getting paid to come here.”

It was a sense of wonder shared even by his new friends.

“When I was first told he was coming, I thought, ‘It’s not true,’ ” said E.J. Harris, Crenshaw’s star guard. “There has got to be some pressure on him here. I figured, he has to be pretty strong.”

Walking through the campus on a recent afternoon, through its clean grassy courtyard, down its wide and stately halls, the amazement seemed particularly odd.

Crenshaw has a notable program for gifted students, for students who want to become teachers, for those who want to sing in an internationally acclaimed choir.

Crenshaw also gives basketball players a chance to learn under a coach, Willie West, who is considered one of the finest in the country.

Although there is a waiting list for open enrollment permits--for students who want to come here from other areas of town with no special interests--there is room here for those who fit into the magnet programs.

And there is always room for those who live in the neighborhood, which includes whites.

But many eligible kids are steered elsewhere.

“Some people are just afraid,” said West, whose teams have won eight state championships and 16 city titles in his 28 years. “It’s too bad. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.”

For some, it’s the poor reputation of the surrounding neighborhood. For others, it’s the foreignness of an enrollment that is about 81% African American and 18% Latino.

For West, the scene is always the same.

“The dad and the son will come here and get all excited about it,” West said. “Then the mom will show up and say, ‘No way.’ ”

It’s happened so often that when Meriwether’s father approached West this summer with the idea of his son transferring from Fairfax, West did all but wave him off.

“I told him where to go, who to talk to, what he had to do to try to enroll,” West said. “But basically, I was believing it only when I saw him walk through the door on the first day of school.”

West obviously didn’t know Meriwether’s father, also named David.

The Venice man, an Alabama transplant, is a single parent who runs the finances for a garment company and swears by his hometown hero, Paul “Bear” Bryant.

“My son told me he wanted to play basketball and eventually coach,” the senior Meriwether said. “When I heard that, I thought, ‘He needs to go to a school that helps you become a teacher, and to learn from the Bear Bryant of high school basketball coaches.’ ”

Meriwether qualified for the teacher training program, so he was able to transfer.

“I didn’t even think about the race thing,” said the senior Meriwether. “I knew Crenshaw was predominantly black, but I had no idea. To me, it didn’t matter.”

Even after he impressed West on a summer-league team, the younger Meriwether had to audition with about 70 other students in West’s annual all-comers tryouts. His defense and raw skills were good enough to warrant a uniform, and perhaps a backup role to Harris.

“Do you know how amazing this is?” asked Kenneth Miller, longtime neighborhood observer and freelance writer. “This is like a black guy starting at quarterback for Brigham Young.”

Yvonne Garrison, assistant principal, said, “It’s good for him, and others like him, to realize what we have here. And it’s good for everyone here to get to know him.”

That process continues daily.

The subtle harassment has stopped, and Monday’s display of affection should be enough to warm Meriwether through a winter of more questions.

“In class, they will ask me what my life is like, what I talk about at home, what I think about blacks,” Meriwether said. “Actually, it’s kind of neat, being on the other side of things. I’m learning a lot.”

And the chant continues. Everyone who sees him in the halls, in the cafeteria, at local hangouts where he is becoming one of a suddenly expanding group.

“Yo, Milk! Milk!”

“That’s how we think of him, he’s just ‘Milk,’ no different from most of us,” sophomore Monique Newton said. “Most of us are just chocolate milk.”