I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond

I Beat the Odds begins with Oher’s best memories—those of his life (from age 11 to the beginning of high school) at the low-income housing project Hurt Village. He remembers playing sports with his friends in the neighborhood, especially football.

As Oher and his friends became teenagers, the lure of gangs attracted others around them. Though it was rare, sometimes a fight between rival gangs would erupt into gunfire, and Oher and his friends would run inside and away from the windows. This was the only life Oher knew, so he was unaware that others lived differently. He then describes the history of public housing in Memphis, initially segregated by race and finally integrated in the 1970s. When Black people moved to housing projects they were formerly barred from, the white residents moved out. Oher notes that “I guess when you’re that poor, you hold on tightly to your identity because it’s all you’ve got” (8).

The housing projects changed in other ways as well. Initially, services like classes on parenting and job skills were offered to tenants—but as time went on, these services ended. In addition, the motivated and hardworking moved up and out, leaving behind those who lacked similar attributes; crime steadily increased. The city decided to raze many of the projects and move their tenants to various neighborhoods in the hopes of decentralizing the “troublemakers.” Oher notes that “all it managed to do was to spread crime to new areas” (9).

Hurt Village was torn down in the process. Despite Hurt Village’s problems, both it and Oher’s family provided a safe haven. Oher’s mother experienced substance use with crack cocaine, but when recovering, she did well by her family. They were a close-knit group, and even when they temporarily lost housing, they stuck together and found new places to stay. Whenever social workers visited, the children told them whatever was necessary to stay with their mother.

The first of each month was often the best time for the family: Welfare checks would arrive on the heels of paychecks that usually came at the end of the previous month. In other words, they would have enough food and be able to pay bills. It also often meant that the children’s mother would disappear with her friends to get high. The children knew to stay with their friends’ families for these few days. It was a world in which everyone lived for the present—however, Oher worried about the future and envisioned escaping the neighborhood one day.

In Chapter 2, Oher delves into his childhood and family. He barely knew his father, and his mother was often using drugs. The family frequently moved and was occasionally without a home, so Oher and his siblings changed schools often. Oher confesses that “[t]rouble was the biggest source of entertainment for the kids in my neighborhood” (22). For example, he and his brothers broke into cars to take them for joyrides. They never stole the cars—just had their fun before leaving them behind for the police to find and reunite with their owners.

For a time, the family lived with Oher’s maternal grandmother. Oher remembers her as cruel to his mother and siblings (with the exception of his eldest brother Marcus), her place dirty and depressing. He also describes a small duplex the family occupied later when he was six or seven. Even when they had stable housing, family life was often in disarray: When Oher’s mother cooked a meal, everyone grabbed what they could as fast as possible; with so many children, it was first come, first served. The same mentality applied to sleeping arrangements—no one had their own bed, so the first to grab a bunk occupied it for the night.

Chapter 3 explains how Oher and his siblings were eventually taken into custody by the state’s Child Protective Services (CPS). The children didn’t fully understand the frequent visits by social workers, but they knew these people were trying to take them away from their mother. One social worker was particularly persistent: Bobbie Spivey, the caseworker mentioned in the Prologue.

To avoid being separated, the boys came up with a plan: Marcus, the oldest, instructed his brothers to scatter in different directions to make themselves harder to catch when the CPS workers inevitably returned. One day in June 1993, a group of social workers arrived at the duplex. The children’s mother had disappeared a couple days earlier, this being the first time she didn’t take the girls (two-year-old Denise and 14-month-old Tara) with her. The boys only accounted for themselves as the girls had never been left behind before. As a result, the boys escaped while the unaware Denise and Tara remained inside the duplex. Oher ran toward an old building with a car repair and tire shop but crept back upon realizing his sisters were still in the house, peering through a window to see the social workers collect them. The workers also caught John, his younger brother, leaving Oher feeling like he failed the three.

According to Oher’s unclear memory, the rest of his family likely stayed in a Salvation Army shelter before finding another house. A year later at school, Oher was told to report to the front office via the intercom. He did so—only to find Bobbie Spivey and other social workers waiting for him and his brother Carlos.