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From Zero to Eighty

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

Preface.........................................................................................xiiiIntroduction Ankh Life..........................................................................xixWhy Men? Which men?.............................................................................xxiiiSuffering.......................................................................................xxxPlan of the book................................................................................xxxiChapter One Charles and John Osram Ne Faithfulness..............................................1Chapter Two Suffering Nkyinkymiie Adaptability..................................................30Chapter Three Where the Struggle Began Akoben Call to Action....................................57Chapter Four What Sustains During Suffering Nsoromma Faith......................................97Chapter Five Return to the past Sankofa Learn from the past to Move Forward.....................135Chapter Six Men and Boys Dwennimmen Strength and Humility.......................................166Chapter Seven Old Age Nsaa Exellence and Authenticity...........................................189Chapter Eight Where do we go from here? Fi-Hankare Safety and Security..........................204Chapter Nine Conclusion.........................................................................264Bibliography....................................................................................269

Chapter One

"Black autobiographies provided a vehicle through which their authors could gain literary authority ... Further the genre provided an opportunity to elaborate freely on "the white text in a Black voice, and through a Black perspective." (Andrews, 1986)

Charles and John wanted to author a history of what had not been written about African American older men. They wanted to give voice to the silence that becomes suffering when it has no outlet. They wanted their children and grandchildren to know about the era in which they lived and worked, and the range, both positive and negative, of their experiences and reactions to that era. They also wanted their children to realize that the world can and did change because of the persistent struggle of their ancestors. John tried to describe his own role in "the cause."

....I look at my own life and while I try to give myself credit for staying true to the struggle, there's no sacrifice that I made that you could put up beside some people's sacrifice. Nothing ... I done some things, took some chances.

What is significant in this comment is the fact that Charles and John felt responsible to make sacrifices for the struggle no matter how small. In a later chapter, we look at the action they took to improve their community and the consequences of those actions. Charles explained why the chronicle of the lives of two African-American men was important.

My life can't impact on them (future generations) unless it's explained to them. Because the major lesson is that African American communities have a long way to go. There's a lot of pitfalls that we've encountered and that we're still encountering. And for some reason or other, they've not been corrected.

When I asked Charles about those pitfalls in one of our group meetings, he replied "the myths about us." John laughed and said quickly, "You mean lies." Charles agreed, "Yes, the lies, the fear, the misrepresentations." Charles related the experiences of his Uncle Vernon, who had served in the Second World War.

When he was in England someone brought him out a pillow to sit on. See, there was this idea that black men had tails. They were bringing him a pillow so he wouldn't hurt himself by sitting on his tail.

Charles later showed me the email that his Uncle Vernon wrote, with tongue firmly in cheek, regarding this incident: "That pillow on my seat was the life saving event that allowed me to continue to walk." Uncle Vernon's stunning account caused Charles, John, and I to discuss the amazing legends, myths, and lies that followed black men throughout time. From ancient beliefs that saw "blackness" as evil, referring to black persons as devils was inevitable. In art, the stereotype of Satan was pictured with negroid features, satyr-like legs, a large penis, and a long rat-like tail (Hood, 1994). Which came first—demonizing blackness, particularly black men as animalistic and lustful? Or, depicting the devil as an overly and overtly-sexualized black man with more characteristics of various animals than a human being?

Interestingly, this demonization was also used as propaganda by both Japan and Germany during the Second World War. Charles had interviewed black servicemen returning from combat when he was a radio newscaster.

Black GIs sent overseas in the Second World War had to suffer indignities because of the myths—the lies that were put out about them having tails. The black GIs were guarding German prisoners who could eat in the mess halls but they (black GIs) had to eat elsewhere. And the Germans looked at them and laughed and said, "Why are you fighting?" So they were disgruntled about the US after the war. They come back and are not able to travel on the same train or trolley, or eat at the same counter as the white GIs. In Spike Lee's film, this German lady, like a Tokyo Rose, went on a loudspeaker and said, "What are you fighting for? When you go back home, you go back to your segregated world." So when the soldiers came home, they returned as activists. And we had a (radio) program about this on WHAT. And some guys called and said, "If things were so bad, why did you fight for a country that offered you nothing?" Well, this was our country, too. Some of us were drafted; some volunteered, and some went to jail. But those calls show you the division in our community.

It was through Charles that I had the honor of meeting one of the heroes of the Second World War. Charles arranged a conference call for the three of us, and on the phone, he introduced me to Mr. William Thompson, an African-American combat veteran who lives in Philadelphia. As soon as Mr. Thompson said hello I felt at ease. He spoke softly and distinctly. This is the first thing he told me:

I've been married for 68 years and I have two "men," 60 and 55. I'm 88 years old and I'll be 89 in September. My health is pretty good."

I asked Mr. Thompson to tell me about the time he spent serving his country.

I was 21 when I was drafted. It was November 28, 1942. I was put into the 598th Field Artillery Battalion, which was part of the 92nd Infantry Division. We left from Hampton Roads, Virginia on a converted luxury liner named the USS Mariposa. We were sent to Italy. There was no convoy and it was only when we neared Gibralta that we were escorted by a B25 bomber plane.

The officers in charge of this mission offered no stated purpose for the division to be sent overseas, and Mr. Thompson thinks those who commissioned the division believed it was "doomed to fail."

When the 92nd Infantry landed in Italy, we were later joined by the 442nd Infantry Regiment, which were all Japanese-American soldiers, and the 473rd Infantry Regiment, which were all white soldiers. The officers were mostly white; one or two were black. All together there were about 15,000 men.

Overseas, Mr. Thompson was subject to the segregation that African-American soldiers endured during World War II. I asked him how segregation affected him and his fellow infantrymen. He thought a moment then replied:

We were concerned about being segregated but we had allegiance to this country and we wanted to excel.

Mr. Thompson's answer reflected the kind of soldier, indeed, the kind of man he was and is. He wanted to show the United States Army and the world that the 92nd Infantry was as prepared for battle and as dedicated to winning the war as any white contingent. His division prided themselves on their skill as soldiers and as citizens of the United States. Still, Mr. Thompson said that "it just seemed like they (Army officials) wanted you to fail." He described the soldiers that were sent to his Battalion to replace the dead and wounded during combat:

The replacements we got were ill-trained. They were convicts who were just released from prison for serious crimes like murder, or men who could not read or write, or those who never shot a gun in their lives. It was like they (Army officials) wanted to stop you from succeeding. Later, they (US officials) brought up how many of the black soldiers were deserters. But most of those didn't have an idea what to do. They were never trained.

Although the 92nd Infantry was forced to fight next to soldiers who had no combat experience, were illiterate, and had committed serious crimes, Mr. Thompson said that his infantry division brought the rag tag team up to speed in learning necessary skills.

And eventually, we all just came to be one. We taught them to read and write; we showed them how to shoot a gun. We just helped them through. And they learned. Even though we were not given the opportunity to excel, we changed that around. We built up a camaraderie with those men. The 24th Infantry Regiment (African-American combat soldiers) faced the same thing. But you know, I thought the 598th Field Artillery Battalion was the best unit in the Army.

Similar to every situation black soldiers faced during the war, the trains that brought wounded men home were strictly segregated. Because the train was run by coal, the residue of dirt and soot drifted into the first three cars—where the black soldiers were confined. Although his memory of the following incident is almost 70 years old, Mr. Thompson recalled it clearly.

One of the men from my division was badly wounded and sent home. This man didn't go in the Pullman car with a berth, where men could lay down, but in the segregated train car where he had to sit up the whole way, breathing in all that soot and dirt that came in the first three cars, where they put the Blacks.

Mr. Thompson brought up a subject that particularly offended black soldiers who fought in World War II—the Congressional Medal of Honor.

What hurts me is that they falsified information about things we did or did not do. There was no recognition of what we accomplished with what we had to work with. You could read in the newspapers that no black soldier in World War II ever won The Congressional Medal of Honor. And when you heard reports of this it was said in almost a glad way. And the government was complicit in this. Until Clinton changed that.

Certain criteria must be met in order to receive this prestigious medal. Yet, black soldiers consistently missed one or two of the criteria, and no black soldier received this honor until 1996. Mr. Thompson mentioned a hero of World War II whom the government threatened to court-martial because of his bravery.

There was a Navy mess man (worked in the mess hall or kitchen located in the lower quarters of the ship) named Dorie Miller. He should have been one of the first to receive this honor. He ran up from below when all hands were needed on deck. The gunners on deck had been killed. He was never trained on that artillery, but he just got right to work on that big gun and did whatever he could to save the rest of the men. Wouldn't you know they were going to court martial him for using that gun because he hadn't been trained on it. We just couldn't believe that.

The NAACP, along with prominent individuals such as Eleanor Roosevelt and Truman Gibson, urged the government to give this highest military honor to black veterans. Yet it was not until 1996—50 years after the end of the Second World War—that President Clinton awarded the coveted and well-deserved Congressional Medal of Honor to seven black veterans. Unfortunately, by that time many of the veterans were deceased. And now, as Mr. Thompson pointed out, "there's just a few of us left."

Like Charles, Mr. Thompson said that many black soldiers returned from the war as activists. After the war, segregation in the armed forces was overturned, and all veterans could take advantage of the GI bill to attend college. In the 1950s, Mr. Thompson took college courses in lab technology and thought about entering the medical profession. When we spoke, he proudly mentioned that some of his fellow soldiers had become doctors, college professors, lawyers, and educators.

When I asked Mr. Thompson how he views his war experiences now, with the vantage of over 60 years, he replied, "I still feel hurt." Charles interjected "He has so much information about what went on with black soldiers in World War II, newspaper clippings, articles, letters, but nobody wants to know about this stuff."

As we were ready to sign off, I asked Mr. Thompson one last question. What did he think now about the 598th Field Artillery Battalion, the one that officials dubbed "doomed to fail," and was sent replacements of "criminals, illiterates, or men who never shot a gun in their lives," and who were taught by their fellow black soldiers how to read, write, and shoot a gun? Without hesitating, he said definitively, "Oh, the 598th? We were tops. We were tops."

Charles and John bore witness to the memories of their predecessors such as Uncle Vernon and Mr. Thompson, and were attempting to do the same for their own generation. They wondered whether future generations would bear witness to them. Charles explained.

We haven't learned from our past as far as I'm concerned because it's been denied. They're still battling to get books into school telling the true history of where we came from. It's not being done. A professor in Chicago was saying there were no Negro Aces in the Second World War. Well one of the young women in the class, her father was a Negro Ace and she brought in a newspaper with a headline about the Negro Aces when her father was in the war. The professor just said, "Oh, how about that." But he never told the class he was ignorant about African-American participation in the Second World War. Other people have got to pick this up. And the stories you see on the old movies about Negroes in the service serving with white troops. Well, that didn't happen. After the war was over and they marched down Fifth Avenue in New York, one of the divisions was the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion or The Triple Nickels that had served in the war. They had to march in the back of the parade. I mean these stories just aren't going out. They continue to believe their own lies. We've got to know it and you've got to know it. It's good for your community and mine.

Charles' interesting use of pronouns—we, you, and they—underscores the racial lines that staked out boundaries for his ancestors and his own cohort. As he spoke, I pictured African-American ancestor-soldiers of World War II marching down New York's Fifth Avenue, their courageous service relegated to the back of the parade and to the back of America's collective mind.

John continued.

My great uncles and cousins were contributors to this society and particularly to black people. And we had no written evidence of it. So I've got to leave something in writing for my grandchildren and their children. I've got to do that. I still have that drive within me so that my life will not be a success until I do it.

Charles' and John's determination to break the silence of elderly African-American men reached across a particularly impenetrable divide. Like black scholars who entered the academy a century earlier, Charles, John, and I met on the turf of the "white text" where African Americans were silenced when history books were being written and contributions to society recorded. Charles related the lesson they bring to local schools as part of their men's mentoring program.

We tell them, learn your history because it encompasses all of us. We were just left out of it. We all made this country what it is. All of us.

Charles and John represent a cohort whose individual and community identity were intertwined. Their mission—such as generating a history about African-American men—became urgent as they grew older. Charles and John recognized that an accumulation of life stressors related to being African American affected not only individuals, but also the longevity of the entire African-American community. A host of constraints placed on African Americans, some of which persist, resulted in a shortened lifespan, especially for African-American men. A history of physically taxing working conditions, living in unsafe neighborhoods, and disparate healthcare for African Americans, led to poor mental and physical health. All of this, along with an historical mistrust of research, added to the difficulty of seeking out and hearing the voices of older African-American men.

Charles and John wanted the truth of the smaller world of their families and the larger world of the African-American community to be known. African Americans had lived, thrived, authored, and created long before slavery. Charles and John wanted omissions added and myths deconstructed in the chronicle of American history. Through the honest crediting of African-American labor in building the many dimensions of American society, they believed that reconciliation with this country can occur.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from From Zero to Eightyby Helen K. Black John T. Groce Charles E. Harmon Copyright © 2011 by Helen K. Black, John T. Groce, and Charles E. Harmon. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc.. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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