B.C. man overcomes prejudice to realize 3 childhood dreams

Adam meets someone who faced plenty of adversity chasing his dreams – but made all of them come true.

BURNABY, B.C. — Ever since Deejay Jackson can recall, he’s been singing.

“We’d been on the corner, just movin’ and grooving,’” Deejay says, describing how he and his friends would gather to sing on the street.

For as long as Deejay can remember, he also had three big dreams.

“All I wanted to be was a cowboy, a singer, and a fireman,” Deejay says.

But growing up in the Southern states, Deejay was told he never would be any of them, because of the colour of his skin.

“We weren’t ‘Black’ back then,” Deejay says. “We were ‘negros’.”

Although he was regularly dismissed with another n-word, Deejay was determined.

“This black don’t crack,” Deejay says. “Nothing was going to break me.”

When he was a teenager, he got a job sweeping floors so he could pay for a firefighting course and did so well the fire department had to consider him, and hired him as a trainee.

“But they didn’t want me to work there,” Deejay says. “They treated me bad. They called me all kinds of names.”

But Deejay was determined, and the prejudiced people eventually left.

He earned a full-time position, which led to his picture in the local paper under an historic headline, ‘First Negro Firemen Start Here.’

“And I fell in love with [firefighting],” Deejay smiles. “I thought this is it, this is my life.”

But life had other plans.

During a vacation in Vancouver, Deejay experience so many “colour-blind people” committing so many random acts of kindness, he felt compelled to call his mom.

“I said, ‘Guess what?! Nobody called me a [n-word] today or shot at me!’ And she said, ‘What?!’” Deejay recalls. “And guess what Momma? I’m staying!’”

Eventually Deejay moved to Canada permanently, where he achieved his other dreams of becoming a cowboy for a while, and touring as a singer for even longer.

But then Deejay started pursing a fourth dream —to be an actor

“That’s Christopher Reeve. That’s Ben Affleck,” Deejay points to walls full of photos with him and some of the stars he’s worked with on almost 180 movie and TV shows. “That’s Adam Sandler. There’s John Travolta.”

“This my pride and joy,” Deejay points to a large picture of him with Muhammad Ali. “I spent three days with ‘The Champ’, and he taught me strength.”

But if you ask Deejay who inspired him to never give up on pursuing his dreams and to never stop making new goals, he’ll point to one of the many pictures of his mom.

“She said, ‘You just be you, treat everyone the same, and your day will come,’” Deejay smiles.

Because if you can keep singing through the low notes of life, just imagine how wonderful it will feel when eventually nail every single high one.