Shujin Master Benjamin J. Peacock is a Judan or tenth degree Black Belt in the Universal Shorei –Goju Karate System and a Kudan or ninth degree Black Belt in the Universal Karate System. Ben became interested in the Martial Arts in October, 1966 when three assailants approached him and his friend one Sunday night and took several sentimental items from him. While his friend escaped, he failed to warn or alert anyone of Ben’s obvious problem or situation. After the robbery was completed and Ben was released due to an intervention of a woman looking out her upstairs window and voiced loudly that she had called the police and they were on the way. Ben realized at that very moment he must make a conscious effort to depend only on himself when it comes to personal security, if he were to achieve a career in commercial art in the city of Chicago. Ben was neither confident nor had he used a gun or knife as a defensive mechanism, so he opted to seek another form of self-defense to address his need for personal security. Ben visited all types of human survival gyms such as Boxing, Wrestling, Judo, and decided on Karate as his primary option he would seek out and research. Because of his small statue, Ben eliminated any defensive study that the primary focus was on engaging another body and the techniques were derived mainly out of physical strength such as Wrestling, Judo and etc. Boxing was eliminated as he saw too many hits to the head and it somewhat linked on the length of an individual’s arm. Ben investigated as many as fifteen martial arts academies and was turned down for training because of race issues, his size or his financial limitations. He was told by one of the martial arts centers, after they had turned him down for training, that if he really wanted to train in the martial arts then had have to find a black instructor as no white instructor would teach him. Before leaving this particular center, one of the instructors pulled Ben to the side and advised Ben of a martial arts instructor on the south side of Chicago by the name of Jimmy Jones who would teach him. At first Ben felt the black belt was simply trying to be apologetic for his school and was simply tailing the reply by giving Ben unsound information. However, when Ben visited the school of the South side instructor, he was astonished at the way this man moved and taught his other students. Ben was doubly impressed as he saw the school was of mixed races, both black, white and Hispanic. Master Jones had won that time and had woman many awards across the country in martial arts.

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Master Jones explained to Ben that he would have to work three times as hard, in all aspects of the martial arts, as the other trainees to make up for his small size. Ben was no stranger to hard work and agreed to enroll in the training sessions. Ben did work very hard and became one of the top martial artists across the country competing and winning National Championships in Kata, Sparring and Weapons. One of Ben’s accomplishments is that he entered 21 martial arts championships and won 1st place in all of them. Even today, his record has not been broken. Master Jones saw Ben’s potential and began to work with him even harder and taking him to tournaments across the country to compete. Due to this intervention, Ben met tremendous personalities such as Victor Moore, Robert Trias, Bruce Lee, Sonny Ono, George Hu, Bong Yu, Ron Vanclef, Hidi Ochi, Bob Bowles, Kijuana Vita, Ken Knuson, John Keehan, and many more prominent names in the martial arts.