EXCLUSIVE: Craig Hodges's complete 1991 letter to President Bush

For the first time ever, here is the full text of Hodges's famous letter

Craig Hodges with President George Bush at the White House, Oct. 1, 1991, holding the ball that Bush signed for him. (Wikipedia Commons, George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)

“I have taken on the responsibility to speak on behalf of those who are not able to be heard from where they are.”

— Craig Hodges in an eight-page letter to President George Bush, delivered Oct. 1, 1991

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The table tennis ball was steady as a Craig Hodges jumper. There. Back. There. Back. Everything right. Normal again.

Then Hodges stopped the game.

There will never be another opportunity like this.

The night before the Bulls were set to go to the White House to meet President Bush to celebrate the 1991 championship, Hodges was at his house in Northbrook, playing ping pong with a friend. The team had a charter flight for 8 a.m. the next morning for an event at the Rose Garden at 2:15 p.m., followed by other activities. In the middle of a ping-pong rally, a thought took hold of him.

He had worn a Dashiki throughout the playoffs, “a thing where I felt like, we as a group of African-American men that was on that squad, we needed that little bit of spiritual ancestry in the garments that I wore in the playoffs to give us that little nudge to get us over the Pistons and anybody else we needed to get past.” He had planned to wear one on the trip, but suddenly he felt that wasn’t enough. He would write a letter to the president.

“I’ve been blessed to allow the spirit to guide me in a lot of ways,” Hodges told me last week. “I’m so glad I was able to hear the voice inside me.”

Craig grew up writing letters to people in power. It’s what he was taught. “We wrote letters to the mayor, we wrote letters to the governor, we wrote letters to the senator — so it hit me that I have to write a letter to the president,” he said. “This will be the most important letter I ever write.”

I asked him if he caught the ball mid-flight.

“I don’t know if I caught it mid-flight,” he said. “But I know that we didn’t play anymore ping pong.”

Craig began writing, describing for the President of the United States the unique needs of Black Americans, and the historical context of those needs. “The purpose of this note is to speak on behalf of those poor people, Native Americans, homeless, and most specifically the African-Americans who are not able to come to this great edifice and meet the leader of the nation in which they live,” he wrote.

When the Bulls arrived at the White House, two players made news: Michael Jordan for his absence¹, Craig Hodges for his clothing. But soon attention was on Hodges and B.J. Armstrong for their shooting display at the White House basketball court. A smiling Armstrong drilled 21 straight bank shots in front of the left elbow with Will Perdue rebounding and Bush keeping time, a total of 26 made shots in 60 seconds.

Then Hodges hit, as one reporter counted, a half-dozen three-pointers from the top of the key — or, in NBA Long-Distance Shootout terms, one rack plus a ball.

That was a perfect summation of Hodges. He was living exactly as he wanted to live in this world. His own man. Standing for his values. And raining threes. At historic clips. No matter the location.

Among the Americans stirred by Hodges’s White House appearance was Olympian John Carlos, who famously raised his fist on the medal stand along with fellow American Tommie Smith at the 1968 games in Mexico City. Hodges was eight years old at the time. He and Carlos are now friends.

“He told me that in 1968, they knew that what they wanted to have happen wouldn’t happen, but they knew they were planting seeds,” Hodges said about Carlos and Smith. “And then when they saw me go to the White House, they knew that was one of the seeds they had planted.”

Hodges got his letter to the president, and Bulls PR man Tim Hallam gave some of the content of the letter to the press, with Sam Smith and others publishing excerpts. Craig published an excerpt in his 2017 memoir Long Shot, read some of the letter in a documentary and referenced it on a recent All The Smoke podcast episode². But I had never seen the full eight-page letter.

The letter itself resides at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Museum in Texas, and Craig was nice enough to send it along to me. I’ve typed it out, with photos of his original letter below that, along with the White House’s response to Craig a few weeks later.

For the story of Craig’s view on how his activism prematurely ended his NBA career, please see our interview from February 2024³.

Best,

Jack

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In the most holy name of Allah.

President Bush,

The purpose of this note is to speak on behalf of those poor people, Native Americans, homeless, and most specifically the African-Americans who are not able to come to this great edifice and meet the leader of the nation in which they live. I have taken on the responsibility to speak on behalf of those who are not able to be heard from where they are. This being the fall of 1991, this country is being judged by the almighty God himself. It is very important that it is understood for the citizens of this great nation to make a determination of what side of history we will be on in this critical hour.

Being a descendant of African slaves it is very important that our plight be put on the list of priorities. It must be clear to the citizenry of our nation that the African-American community is unlike any other community. We have a sector of our population that is being described as an endangered species i.e. the young black man.

Furthermore, the inner cities are in a state of emergency because the wanton violence that we inflict upon one another. When studying this condition we must look at root causes — low self-esteem which is often due to lack of jobs and no understanding of who we are.

To understand the total picture we must go back hundreds of years to enslavement of African slaves and move forward slowly and study the development of the now African-American. Those laws that were framed in the original Constitution considered the African slaves and their descendants 3/5th of human beings. Thus, the spirit of the Constitution did not include us.

When I hear Clarence Thomas speak on natural law⁴, it is very sad to me because the violation of our human rights have never been discussed at the United Nations on a comprehensive level. Reparations and restitutions for the descendants of African slaves is scoffed at. However, the Japanese-Americans have gotten reparations. We bomb Grenada, invade it, and rebuild the same airstrip that was the reason for the invasion.

The question is when will the African-American get the chance to air our grievances before the United Nations. We have more black men in prison than in South Africa⁵. It must be clearly understood that there will never be any more peace on the planet Earth until we have our chance to rebuild our community.

I want to stop here and make it clear that this letter is not begging the government for anything. However, if we are going to measure a people’s worthiness for help or aid, shouldn’t African-Americans be at the top of the list. When we speak of African-Americans we speak of the very backbone and foundation of America. 300 years of free labor has left the African-American community destroyed. No knowledge of history, no jobs and no organization, we find a people that truly die for our lack of knowledge.

It is time for comprehensive plans that will affect change in the way the African-American is viewed in this country. we are here at the White House which is the seat of power for the Western world. We, the Chicago Bulls, have been crowned World Champs. However the question must be asked why is the condition in the Chicago Housing projects and other projects allowed to breed the violence when the people in these projects don’t import weapons or drugs? In Chicago alone over 600 murders this year alone⁶.

In closing, I would just say that the condition of the African-American in America is the reason the nation is being tried and judged at this critical hour. Study our weather, study our economic condition as a nation, study the total picture and you too will find many signs that point to the last days. The war in the Gulf that was declared on Dr. King’s birthday is an awesome sign.

Mr. President, the athletes from the Chicago Bulls number 12⁷, 10 of which are descendants of African slaves. The possibility of meeting the president is one that most African-Americans won’t get that chance. That is the reason for this letter and hopefully it will become a boost in the unification of the inner-city youth. It is of utmost importance that issues concerning the African-American community be brought to the forefront of the domestic agenda.

Thanks for your time.

Craig Hodges

PEACE

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Craig’s letter is difficult to find on the Bush Library website. You can see it here, along with the below response to Craig from the White House. Thank you to Jay Patton and Buffie Hollis at the Bush Library for your assistance!

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Thank you Craig for sharing your letter! Click here to support Craig.

Craig won the NBA’s Long-Distance Shootout (AKA the Three-Point Contest) at All-Star Weekend 1990, 1991 and 1992, joining Larry Bird as still the only three-peat winners. In 1993, when he was no longer on the Bulls or in the NBA, he petitioned the league to let him participate. Here is the story of that contest.

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Ten days after Jordan skipped the White House trip, he was back on the court for the preseason schedule. A look back at MJ’s preseason obsession:

1. Only two Bulls players were absent. John Paxson had a prior engagement — an anti-drug speaking engagement for Chicago youth. Michael Jordan did not attend, originally saying that his absence was none of anyone’s business. He later said he was with family (I will have to find the quote), but eventually news broke that he was at his home in Hilton Head, South Carolina, for a weekend of high-stakes golf and cards with friends. The Sun-Times and later Armen Keteyian in his 1997 book Money Players identified October 1, 1991, as the date when Jordan lost $57,000 to Slim Bouler, a loss that would become a major part of MJ’s troubles in the run-up to his 1993 retirement. More on Jordan’s gambling in my summer of 1993 timeline and my coverage of his relationship with Richard Esquinas. (Interview here.)

2. I always think of Craig’s story as having been told, but there are a ton of people in the comments on the pod and on the pod excerpts noting that they never knew why Craig didn’t play in the NBA after 1992, or his White House story. That’s why we have to keep telling stories. Thank you to Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson!

3. I asked Craig when he realized his NBA career was over. His response: “September of 1992 when Tex Winter told me nobody called him back. He had been doing it for 30 years and every time he had called someone they called him back, and no one called him back. He told me, ‘Craig, start to look to coach.’”

4. Clarence Thomas was in the middle of his Supreme Court nomination process to succeed Justice Thurgood Marshall, whose final day on the court was October 1. Thomas was already under scrutiny for his relatively light experience (he was nominated in June, just 13 months into his time as a federal judge) and his conservative leanings, including his embrace of “natural law” which Hodges referenced. Notably, Anita Hill’s accusation of sexual harassment had not yet gone public. That would happen three days after the Bulls visited the White House. Here is Thomas’s Senate testimony, including his discussion on “natural law” with the Judiciary Committee Chairman, Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware.

5. In January 1991, an organization called The Sentencing Project released data that was widely reported, including by the Associated Press and published in the Tribune, that the U.S. had surpassed South Africa and the Soviet Union for the highest incarceration rate. For every 100,000 residents, the U.S. had 426 in prison, followed by 333 for South Africa and 268 for the Soviet Union. If that wasn’t bad enough, Black men in South Africa were imprisoned at a rate of 729 per 100,000, compared to the U.S. figure of 3,109 per 100,000.

6. Chicago would close 1991 with 930 homicides, the most in the city since 1974, and the highest murder rate on record. The city topped 900 homicides in both 1992 and 1994; murders started declining and fell below 500 in 2004. The COVID spike in 2021 was 805.

7. The 1991 Bulls were unusual in that they played just 12 players all season: Armstrong, Cartwright, Grant, Hodges, Hopson, King, Levingston, Jordan, Paxson, Perdue, Pippen, Williams. They were the only NBA team in 1991 with only 12 players.