“What an entrance you made, Pop. Dignity down the drain.”
“Overnight the world was different. It wasn’t one color anymore. The protection I’d gotten from my father and Uncle Will was a farce. I appreciated their loving hope to shield me from prejudice, hate, bigotry—but they were wrong. It was as if I’d walked through a swinging door for seventeen years, a door which they had always secretly held open,” Pop explained.
“I realized then that you can pass legislation for desegregation, but you can’t legislate people’s minds. It’s like hacking off the top of a weed: After we do it, we’ve got to get down and pull out the roots, get to the heart of the ignorance and intolerance, so it won’t keep growing,” Pop said.
“When I arrived at Unit Barracks Two Hundred Two, a corporal checked my name off his clipboard and told me to wait on the sidelines until they ‘figure out what to do with me.’ White kids showed up, simply walked inside and took the first bunk they saw. Another colored kid, tall, with his gear, was sent to sit on the side by me. We shook hands. His name was Edward. We both knew trouble was stirring.”
“So what happened, Pop?” I asked.
“Felt like a lifetime that me and this colored kid waited outside the barracks watching the last white kid march in. We sat outside a screen door, as we were ordered.”
“We could hear the corporal address the unit. He said, ‘Folks, we got a problem, we got niggers outside assigned to this company. I’ll stick ‘em down there, but move your gear so I can give ‘em the last two bunks.’”
“Then one of the guys piped up, ‘Hey, that’s right next to me! I ain’t sleepin’ next to no dinge!’ The corporal made it clear who was in charge of the unit, but the same guy kept mouthing off, ‘I’m only sayin’ I didn’t join no nigger army,’” Pop recalled.
“All the guys started shouting about how they ain’t sharing no toilet can with no nigger, and what the hell’s the army need ‘em niggers for, just to steal us blind while we sleep? The corporal quieted them down with a simple, ‘Knock it off. I don’t want ‘em anymore than you do, but we’re stuck with ‘em. That’s orders,’” Pop said.
“The corporal motioned us in with our gear ‘on the double.’ My legs were shaking, trembling. As he marched us down the aisle—eyes glaring on either side of us—soldiers guarded their cots spaced about three feet apart. The corporal pointed to the last two beds on one side, separated from the rest by about six feet with one empty cot between us and the white soldiers. It was as if we had the plague and were being quarantined.”
To the delight of thousands, Dad performed at Lankenheath Air Base in 1960. This was a far cry from the performances he did while in the army himself during World War II.
Years after the humiliation and discrimination of his experiences at Fort Francis, my father was warmly received on military bases as a superstar.
“A sergeant marched in. He announced his name, Sergeant Williams. He glanced at the space between the beds. He gave a cold stare to the corporal and said, ‘What the hell is that?’ The corporal whispered quietly to the sergeant about how he was trying to deal with the nigger problem.”
“Sergeant Williams was fuming, ‘There is only one way we do things here and that is the army way! You have sixty seconds to replace the beds with exactly three feet of space, to the inch, between every cot in this barracks. Move!’ For a brief moment, I felt safe.”
“Sergeant Williams asked us questions: When did we arrive? How long did it take for us to get our bunks? Did you choose your bunks? Then the sergeant told us to move our gear one bunk closer to the white soldiers. He addressed the whole unit, ‘No man here is better than the next man unless he’s got the rank to prove it!’”
“I remember years later, George Rhodes, my conductor and arranger, told me he was surprised that with all the racial tension I endured, I never turned around and hated right back. I think that was because when I reached out for help, there was always some white guy like Sergeant Williams or Frank Sinatra, who helped me back up. The black press would scrutinize me for it, but believe me, those cats saved the day for me.”
“Sergeant Williams sounds like a good man, Dad,” I said.
“From then on, I knew as long as Sergeant Williams was around we ‘colored’ folks would be safe,” Pop added.
“But the minute the sergeant left, the soldiers tried to turn us into their slaves—making us polish their boots and such. I refused to do it and was teased as the ‘uppity nigger boy.’ Edward on the other hand, was not going to put up a fight for his own dignity, and I had no right to judge his desire to hide his pain. ‘Yes, suh!’ said Edward, ‘Glad t’do ‘em, suh.’ I felt like I was on an island all alone,” explained my father.