In late 1943, as soon as he turned 18, my late father was drafted into the US Army and it was his father, who served on the local draft board, who swore him in. Dad, along with his future wife, my Mom, was living in Cleveland OH at the time and they were already several years into their courtship which would result in their getting married in 1948; a marriage that would not end until Dad's death in 2009. Now Dad had never been to the Deep South, the segregated south, and even though he had grown up hearing of the horrors visited upon African Americans living down there, he had never experienced those horrors first hand.
Well it turns out that because of a childhood knee injury suffered years earlier, Dad was deemed physically unfit to serve overseas so his two year stint in the Army was confined to bases stateside in such places as Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. That's when Dad got his education if you will on what it was really like to be a person of color in these United States. The pain, the hurt, and the rage of having not only being unable to dine with his white fellow soldiers in the army mess halls because of his race, but also having to having to first clean up those mess halls after they and POWS from Germany & Italy had been fed before they he and his fellow soldiers of color could sit down & eat, never left him; an indignity further compounded by the fact that they were required to not only clean up those mess halls after the white soldiers and the POWS ate, but after they ate as well.
Think about it; for every meal that was served; breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Dad and his fellow soldiers of color had to clean up those mess halls three times; twice before they could sit down to eat and once afterwards. This was only a small part of it of course. There was another incident where he and some of his buddies were taking a train, a segregated train, from one base in FL to another. Well in the cabin with Dad with his buddies there was a nice young lady & her husband with whom they struck up a pleasant conversation. Since they'd been traveling for hours the plan was for them to get off the train at some station, and spend a few hours stretching their legs & refreshing, at which point they would transfer to another train to complete their journey.
After they disembarked they were directed to the colored waiting room. As they beheld the deplorable & terrible conditions of this place one of Dad's buddies said "We are soldiers in the US Army goddammit wearing the uniform of our country! We shouldn't have to take this!" With that this fellow, Dad, and the rest of them all proceeded to the white waiting room at which point they were immediately ordered out. They refused. The local sheriff was called and placed them all under arrest for violating Florida's segregation laws. By this time the Army had been notified and sent two MPs to the station.
The Army said it would handle it and handle it it did. It immediately placed Dad and his buddies back on that very train they had just exited and in the same cabin with that young lady. Only this time time there were two more people present; two armed MPs with their sidearms clearly visible. Though Dad and his buddies were fortunately not placed under arrest, they were nonetheless forced to complete their journey under armed guard.
I often asked my father how did he and his fellow soldiers of color manage to tolerate all of this crap. I mean how could he believe in this country in the face of this hypocrisy; asking its citizens of color to fight against tyranny abroad while being the victims of tyranny here at home. "It wasn't so much the country itself I believed in son; rather its promise. We took all of this abuse so we could one day help to make America better and be true to itself."
It didn't take me long to figure out that it was Dad and people like him who were the true patriots among us for they loved America not for what it did for them, which was really nothing, but rather for what it could be. In short they loved this country in spite of itself, and those who love anything in this manner posses the purest love of all for they do not have to.
So as someone who was born twenty years after he left the Army in 1945, I early on felt an obligation that I feel to this day, to do whatever I can do to ensure that future generations of people of color will not be forced to love America as Dad was forced to love it; to love it in spite of itself. The only way to guarantee is to ensure that those advances made by my Dad's generation are never taken away; that in all matters of civil & sexual rights our steps forever move forward and never back. That is the debt I owe to my father and all who figuratively marched in his shoes.
No one can tell me what a patriot is because I am the son of one. No one can ever tell me what injustice is because I am the son of a someone who was a victim of a gross injustice, and no can tell me when to stand down and when to let bygones be bygones because I know that to stand down before based on the promise of victory rather than after that victory has been secured, is to guarantee defeat and the loss of all that has been gained.
America is not yet ready to move past the issue of race and America is not yet ready to move past the issue of gender inequality, for while victory to secure full equality in this nation irrespective of race and gender is clearly in sight, it is a victory still far from secure since inequality persists in regards to both; it is merely manifested in different and generally more subtle forms. When will we know that victory has been secure? The answer is when no one else will feel compelled to tell us that we have won.
We will know it ourselves & within ourselves but until that happens, we keep fighting and we keep fighting without letup and without delay; fighting to secure those rights that are the basic rights of all people regardless of race & gender; the right to be treated with the same dignity and be accorded the same opportunity to succeed or fail on our own merits on the same level playing field; the playing field of life.
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