New Bengals cornerback Carlton Gray brings more than just eight years of NFL experience back home to Cincinnati. He brings a background of understanding to a city struggling with racial problems.

        He is, after all, the grandson of Benjamin Hooks, NAACP executive director from 1977 to 1993.

        Gray said he has learned a lot — not just about race relations — from his grandfather, who still is pastor of Greater Middle Baptist Church in Memphis, Tenn., and was unavailable for comment.

        “Nothing that we don't innately know,” Gray said. “A lot of it is common sense of knowing what is right and wrong. It's just a lot of life experiences.”

        Gray established the Cincinnati-based Carlton P. Gray Foundation, and his parents help him run it. The foundation annually gives two one-year University of Cincinnati scholarships to Winton Woods High School graduates and provides tutoring for Winton Woods. Gray is an alumnus of Forest Park High School, which now is Winton Woods.

        Even if a student can't be an all-star athlete, Gray said, “Everybody still deserves a chance to get an education.”

        He plans to continue working with the foundation but doesn't envision taking a leadership role as Cincinnati's factions try to come together following the city's April riots.

        “I don't really know if there's anything that I could do,” Gray said. “Outspoken leaders — they're in place. If something comes up, yeah. It's not like I'm planning on coming back and being that type of fixture in the city.”

        April wasn't the first time Gray had seen a city where he resided torn by racial unrest. He was at UCLA in 1992 during the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.

        “Real riots,” Gray called them.

        Still, he couldn't believe it when he saw, on television, similar rioting and looting in his own hometown.

        “It was kind of weird,” Gray said, “because you never really expect something like that to occur. I kind of understood what was going on, but I never really thought something like that would happen here.”

        Gray owns a house in Springdale. He doesn't have any relatives who live near downtown, where most of the damage was done, so he wasn't worried for his family's safety.

        “I was concerned about how big it could get and how long it would last,” he said. “I was hoping it would end soon. I didn't want to see anybody else get hurt.”

        There were similarities in the two cultural explosions. Each was sparked by an altercation between police and blacks, and each ended up with a city being ravaged and a curfew being instituted.

        “I can understand the frustration, which is what most of the people in Cincinnati were feeling,” Gray said. “The people who were upset were destroying their own property and their own areas. I just can't understand why in L.A. they destroyed their own community.”

Bengal comes home to find city divided

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