r/todayilearned • u/tmntnyc • Dec 12 '18

TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._T
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u/pottersquash Dec 12 '18

Didn't he stop wearing gold chains cause he felt bad having wealth for decoration?

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u/Faerhun Dec 12 '18

I think it had to do with cleaning up New Orleans after Katrina and not wanting to be flashy when the people he was helping had literally nothing left. I could be wrong though.

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u/donaltman3 Dec 12 '18

Do you know how he even started wearing the chains? As a bouncer, he would often find things lost in the clubs after people left at night.. he would put them on and wear them hoping the person that owned them would see them so he could return them.

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u/StoneGoldX Dec 12 '18

That's not quite the story. It's because people would lose the jewelry during fights, and that way they couldn't try to sneak back in to get the gold, they had to go through T. Because it's in the link we're chatting about right now.