The Foundling

Every Holiday Season an incident that occurred well over a decade ago thrusts its way back into my mind. Right before Christmas in 1993. A story concerning the finding of a newborn — a foundling — in a trash bin was the lead item on the evening news.

A youngster, who was playing in the vicinity of the trash bin (which was located in the inner-city housing project where he lives) heard the infant's crying and ran home to summon his mother. It wasn't long before the neighborhood was swarming with police, news cameras, and would-be anchorpersons. The television reporters were so anxious for an interview with someone — anyone — I could swear I saw one of them attempting to question a nearby lamppost.

The next morning the story was making worldwide headlines, and hot-off-of-the-computer editorials decrying the incident abounded. The writers wondered aloud who could have done such a heartless thing. Indeed, who could have been responsible for such a mind-boggling act?

Maybe it was a teenager who had a parent or grandparent from the old school, one who had told the expectant young mother in no uncertain terms, "don't be bringing no baby home." But if the parent was so concerned about the welfare of the teenager, how could he or she not have noticed the latter stages of the pregnancy? Or maybe it was a welfare mother stretched to her mental edge, saddled with too large a brood already. Whatever the case, the act in itself was so horrendous the consensus was quickly reached that the mother, whoever she was, had to be under such tremendous pressure that she was rendered temporarily insane.

Then the calls and emails began rolling in. Judging from the distant points on the globe where they originated, the story was resonating around the world. Nothing engenders such an outpouring of genuine human compassion as a foundling — especially at Christmas time. It mattered little that the child was Black —it was an innocent newborn for God's sake! Some of the offers of adoption no doubt came from individuals who've never seen, or rarely see, a Black person in their daily lives — except maybe on television. But incidents such as these somehow transcend human prejudices and bring out the humane compassion that resides in us all. As the outpouring of concern mounted, the kind of concern which gives hope we can perhaps one day all live together in harmony, even the welfare mother whose son found the child staked a touching sort of "finders-keepers" claim to the baby.

By the end of the second day social service professionals had stepped in and announced that the considerable volume of offers would be sifted through and the offer that best suited the interests of the child would be selected. No doubt the couple chosen to receive the baby would be stable, middleclass, and able to offer the newborn every conceivable benefit: Decent suburban surroundings, a safe, secure and nurturing environment, and excellent educational opportunities. Indeed, all of the ingredients a newborn needs to start off on the right foot in life. This is the way this particular story no doubt ended.

But what if the mother had put the child up for adoption through the regular process where it would have been in competition with thousands of other less-favored Black children? Of course the newborn’s future wouldn't have been so bright then, for it either could have been placed in foster home after foster home, shuttled about for most of its young life like a piece of lost mail. Or what if the mother had kept the child? The baby would then be subjected to the vicissitudes of life as an unwanted additional mouth to feed ... like so many other children born into ghetto housing projects. We know that the chances of male children born and raised in these circumstances ever reaching maturity are becoming slimmer all the time, and those that do survive the mean streets usually don’t even finish high school and stand a better than 50 percent chance of going to juvenile or adult prison before they gain their majority. The female child might as well be assigned her welfare number at birth ... so strong are the chances she will one day need it.

So it seems the mother — unknowingly — did the right thing after all. Her offspring, due to the widespread publicity generated by the incident, ended up with a caring and loving family that provided all of the advantages every child needs to flourish and each newborn deserves.

So, what was the takeaway lesson in this now long ago incident?: That the best thing for Black newborns, entering life in our nation's ghettos with no futures, few hopes, and fewer prospects of ever having reasonably good lives, is for their mothers to throw them into the nearest trash bin and pray that someone will find, adopt and raise them.

Happy Holidays.

From Cool Cleveland contributor Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com

This column first appeared (in a shorter version) in the author’s book, From Behind the Wall.

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