Morris McCorvey has an office, but he rarely uses it, because he feels isolated from the outside world. He is a man who likes to be in the midst of things: where the action is. He loves working at a place that is overrun with kids every day. He enjoys theater because of the interaction with the other players and the challenge to himself artistically. He writes poetry because he believes it is “the breathless feeling that keeps us going every day.” And he ended up in Bartlesville because, as Robert Frost said, he took “the road not taken . . . and that has made all the difference.”
Since 2004, McCorvey has been the executive director of the Westside Community Center on Bucy Street in Bartlesville. The building, a well-maintained brown stone square, stands out in contrast to its surroundings. It almost looks too nice to be in that part of town.
“Sometimes when I come to work, I just go, man, everything just went sepia,” McCorvey said. “It has to do with resources. There is a lack of hope over here.”
McCorvey is working to change that. A polite, soft-spoken 63-year-old man who wears black-rimmed reading glasses, he enjoys giving tours of the community center and talking about his work. Westside Community Center started as a separate but equal facility from the days of segregation, when a man of McCorvey’s color would not have been welcomed to the symphony or the ice cream shop downtown. After integration, the community center could have run its course, McCorvey says, but instead, the staff at the time re-invented it as a center for neighborhood life. McCorvey can be found at the community center most days.
“I work out here an average of about six days a week,” McCorvey said. “I like it, though; it’s like playing in a championship game every day. I’m an old has-been linebacker so everything is in the context of tackling for me. I get up every morning and look in the mirror and am like, I’ve gotta go out and tackle this.”
The community center provides after-school care, activities for senior citizens and access to fine arts programs for the children, among other things. First-time visitors may be startled to see haircuts being given in the on-site barber shop. After school, the hallways ring with voices and laughter, as children file into the library, which McCorvey calls his private joy, or the state-of-the-art computer room to work on their homework. The walls are lined with pennants from different colleges, to give the children something to aspire to, McCorvey says.
But his pride and joy is his Work Ethics Prosper program, which provides young teens with the skills they need to land a job. They learn about proper office etiquette, how to write a resume and practice interviewing for a job. Many of the teens would not be able to learn these skills from their parents, McCorvey says.
He even takes it a step further, teaching a financial literacy class so the teens have an idea of what to do with the money they may earn in the future. Concepts such as how interest works and how to apply for a mortgage are foreign to many of them, McCorvey says.
“My normal constituency once again is African American,” McCorvey said. “For a long, long time, we were working in this country and weren’t compensated. So we quite ingeniously developed a way to get around that which was just not to work. If they’re going to work you for free and beat you, then we won’t work. You do that for a couple hundred years, just about anybody can lose sight of their work ethic. So now, we have to consciously and in a logical way restore that.”
McCorvey does not think of himself as just the director of the community center, though.
“No matter who I talk to, I have to insist, I do theater, I am the executive director of this place, I direct plays, but what I am is a poet,” McCorvey said.
Poetry appealed to McCorvey early on. One day when he was 12 years old, McCorvey was reading in a segregated library in Oklahoma City. He took refuge in there to avoid being beat up while he was waiting for his mother to get off work. He was reading the works of John Donne, and he made the decision to become a poet.
“I had a really good, crystal clear understanding of him that it was like a revelation or epiphany for me,” McCorvey said. “It made me really believe that somebody must do this. Not for money, not to be a bestseller, none of that. Not even maybe to be published, but somebody really has to do this, or the whole of civilization will come apart. I really felt that, at 12 years of age, and I still feel that today.”
"Somebody really has to (create poetry), or the whole of civilization will come apart."
There were other influences in his life encouraging him to make something of himself. McCorvey’s babysitter when he was little, Prentice Gautt, was the first African American to play for the Oklahoma Sooners. Gautt’s football scholarship made McCorvey realize that football might be a way out of the impoverished lifestyle his parents and neighbors lead. He says he didn’t necessarily enjoy football, but he was good. Good enough to get a scholarship and a ticket out of inner city Oklahoma City.
McCorvey attended Friends University on a football scholarship, but majored in English literature, giving him ample opportunity to spend time with the works of the poets he loved.
But a chance encounter changed his life course yet again. McCorvey was hurrying to class when he saw a pretty girl walking into a building. McCorvey stumbled and fumbled around, “as only a jock could,” he says with a laugh, looking for her. Unbeknownst to him, he was in the theater arts building during a rehearsal. He found himself up in the rafters, with a couple of theater technicians, watching a performance of “The Fantastics.” McCorvey was fascinated, forgetting all about the girl in his delight at being able to see how the magic of theater worked.
“I could see behind the curtain and in front of the curtain at the same time,” McCorvey says. “It just blew me away. The teamwork and the intricacy of the theater, and the whole magic coming from chaos, from chaos to order. And the rest is history, you know.”
McCorvey began taking theater classes and performing on campus. Then, during his junior year of college, McCorvey received a theater scholarship and quit football.
“But I am still a linebacker in my attitude,” McCorvey said. “If you come straight at me, I will come straight at you.”
McCorvey intended to go into education after graduation, and went to graduate school at OU for about a year and a half. But he found himself unable to imagine himself in the middle of the crisis of forced integration of the schools. So much hatred was being spewed on both sides, and McCorvey decided he would pursue his love of the arts instead of the classroom.
“I took the road not taken, and it has made all the difference,” McCorvey says.
McCorvey moved to Bartlesville in 1980 as an artist in residence for the Oklahoma Arts Council to teach poetry at a summer program at Jane Phillips Elementary School. Every child at Jane Phillips Elementary School qualifies for a free or reduced lunch due to their parents’ lack of income. McCorvey saw a chance to give the children a glimpse of the world beyond their neighborhood through art.
“So I thought, this is a good job for a poet to participate in,” McCorvey said. “So that’s what really hooked me.”
He found opportunities to pursue his love of theater as well. In 1985, he was the founder of the Dustbowl players in Bartlesville, a theater troupe for students. He is still involved in drama through the community center. He directs plays for youth, and also performs plays commissioned by various organizations. One of his most enjoyable and challenging experiences was performing one-man portrayals of both Ralph Ellison and Paul Robeson, both influential African Americans.
As an actor, playwright and poet, McCorvey knows he did not choose a normal career path. However, he does not regret taking the road not taken, even though it has been hard at times, especially since he has six children. He says if he had known what a large family he would end up with, he would have done something other than be a poet. But he sees God’s provision in his life. McCorvey was struck by this when he was having a conversation with his wife.
“I kept saying to her, ‘Have you noticed how we always have just enough for what we need?’” McCorvey said. “It’s like the fishes and loaves, over and over again, you know. It keeps you in awe and keeps you humble. And that’s okay for a poet.”