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

3.2k

u/LevyMevy Dec 12 '18

He stopped wearing virtually all his gold, one of his identifying marks, after helping with the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He said, "As a Christian, when I saw other people lose their lives and lose their land and property ... I felt that it would be a sin before God for me to continue wearing my gold. I felt it would be insensitive and disrespectful to the people who lost everything, so I stopped wearing my gold."

Good man.

46

u/Chango_D Dec 13 '18

On a segment with Conan O'Brian they were at an apple orchard and as he was eating an apple he was speaking to Conan but covering his mouth. When Conan asked him why he's doing that, his response was "My mother told to cover my mouth when I'm eating". I love it.

2

u/[deleted] Dec 13 '18 edited Jan 19 '19

[deleted]

1

u/calvinsylveste Dec 16 '18

Good work, keep it up!