FOX4 TV features LINC chess teacher, hall of famer; sign up now for March tournament
LINC master chess teacher Zeb Fortman II plays with students in LINC’s Caring Communities chess program. Image from FOX4 Kansas City
The only African American in the Missouri Chess Hall of Fame lives here in the Kansas City area.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Zeb Fortman II rose quickly as a champion in the chess world at a time when very few Black men played competitively.
He was a few points away from becoming a master when he retired from competitive play in 1989. But he believes the obstacles he faced along the way made him a true master at what he does now: teaching chess to future generations of champions.
LINC spring chess tournaments
March 11: Citywide tournament at Center High School. Sign up now at kclinc.org/chess.
April 1: Girls tournament at Blue Hills Elementary, Independence.
May 13: Citywide tournament at Smith-Hale Middle School, Hickman Mills.
Follow LINC chess on Facebook.
Five days a week, Fortman teaches chess in six different schools. He’s a master teacher in the after-school chess program that local nonprofit KC LINC offers.
Fortman said he learned to play as a kid, but it wasn’t easy at first.
“I decided I wasn’t going to play football,” he said. “I still had this competitive edge, and somebody invited me to join the chess team senior year. And I was the worst player on the team when I first started. By the end of the year, I was the best player in the city.”
He found school to be mostly memorizing and regurgitating facts, but chess let him express his own ideas and test them. And his ideas, at least, weren’t black or white.
“For the first time, I could meet someone on a level field where things were fair, where wrong was punished,” Fortman said.
But it wasn’t. He was often the only African American at tournaments and faced discrimination and racism as his success grew.