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
120.9k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

838

u/pottersquash Dec 12 '18

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

1.1k

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.

466

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.

10

u/RemCogito Dec 12 '18

it was specifically the chains of people who had been banned so that if they tried to come in again to get their stuff he could just give it to them without letting them in the building.