Dad among walking
wounded
who bore racism's
battle scars
From thnt.com Online,
April 6, 2008
Recently, there has been much ado
about the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor.
Too bad his critics didn't have an opportunity to meet my father. He
passed away on Feb. 20. In May, he would have been 89 years old. He spent
33 years in the military and more than five years in the Secret Service.
My father joined the Canadian army in 1939, two years before the United States
entered World War II. When America entered the war, he returned to the
United States. The U.S. Army accepted all American citizens who had fought
for foreign countries. You see, my father couldn't find a job in his
hometown of Pittsburgh other than working in the coal mines. Then, it was
safer fighting in a war than in a coal mine. So he fought in World War II,
the Korean War and the beginning of Vietnam. These wars did not prepare my
father for his fourth war: American racism.
Although I didn't know my father well, I learned a lot from how he dealt with
white people. When traveling with his family down South, we had to endure
the embarrassment of being turned down by every motel and restaurant on Route
66. We had to endure the harassment of a white police officer who stopped
us only because my father was driving a nice car. I learned from having the
police threaten you when you placed your blanket on the "whites only" section of
Belmar beach or having a cross burned on your lawn in Metuchen after purchasing
your first home.
All the medals and honors my father received in the military didn't mean a
thing. My father told me that the Germans, Russians and Koreans never
showed him the racism that he experienced in the United States. The most
embarrassing experience for a black man is to be belittled by an authority in
front of his family. As years went by, my father's bad memories of white
people turned to hate.
Finally, just before his passing, I went to see him at the nursing home.
It was the first time in my life I saw him with a large grin and tears in his
eyes. He was watching CNN news. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. had just
won the Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa. My father thought it was
cool.
Wright's critics should have met someone like my Dad, a man who was by all
accounts a hero and devoted public servant but who had to tolerate a lifetime of
abuse because of the color of his skin.
Reginald Johnson
President, Metuchen-Edison Area Branch
National Association
for the Advancement
of Colored People
METUCHEN
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