Sammy Davis Jr(11)

“Pop, I can’t even imagine the horror of it all. How you lifted yourself up out of that muck and survived it is unfathomable!” I said.

“That’s only the prelude to the circus act. Your grandfather had given me an expensive one hundred twenty–buck gold watch to take with me to the army. I treasured it. The white soldiers got a hold of my watch on the first day in the barracks. They tossed it back and forth to each other, over my head, laughing as I chased after it. You know how little I was—still am! These white cats were huge.

“Eventually, Jennings, the biggest bigot of them all, ground my watch into the floor with the heel of his boot. He crushed the glass, twisted the gold, and broke the hands off. It was mangled in pieces. I picked up the remains, went to my bed, and wrapped it in paper. Jennings shouted behind me, ‘You can always steal another, nigger boy!’ The whole incident crushed me, deeply,” Pop said solemnly.

“How does somebody do that to someone?” I was disgusted.

“Because they can, because they could, back in the day. Every night I would lay in bed, wondering what is it about skin that made people hate so much. But it was far deeper than skin; to these white cats, I was a different breed,” my father explained.

“I had to face the fact that the army vultures were going to prey on me daily. Try to eat me alive. I thought of my father, Uncle Will, the agents, the managers, the acts we worked with—nobody treated us this way. Or had my father just shielded me from it all? I knew we stayed in colored boarding houses made of wooden crates, but I didn’t realize we had to stay there. My father said we stayed there because people were . . .”

“. . . jealous of our act?” I replied.

“That’s right. And somehow, in my naïve, sheltered world, I believed it. All I knew was that when the Will Mastin trio got onstage, people laughed, clapped, were entertained. Talent earned us respect,” my father said.

“Talent shielded you,” I told Dad.

“Talent was my only weapon. Eventually in the army, I was transferred to an entertainment regiment in an ‘experimental’ integrated Special Services unit. But until that transfer, Sergeant Williams got me a few gigs at the service club, thinking it might help,” said Pop.

“After one show, Jennings appeared to be offering me his friendship. He handed me a beer. ‘C’mon over here, Davis, let’s get acquainted.’ He pulled out a chair for me. ‘You notice I ain’t calling you ‘boy.’ I thought my talent finally broke the ice. But sure enough as I picked up the bottle of beer, I realized it was warm, not cold. I smelled it. Jennings had replaced my bottle of beer with urine.”

Tears welled up in my eyes, then rolled down my cheek. It was just too overwhelming to hear. My father grabbed my hand. “Don’t cry, Trace Face. I only tell you these stories so you will understand firsthand the adversity our race endured. It only made me stronger.”

“Did Jennings and his guys ever let up, Pop?” I said choked up.



One hundred and twenty pounds was Dad’s “fighting weight.”


“Nah. I had a knock-down, drag out fight every two days. I can’t even count how many times I was in the infirmary for a broken nose. When we finished basic training, my physical turned me down, and I was put through basic again. I didn’t qualify for any of the army’s specialist schools because I had no education at all,” my father said.

“Sergeant Williams was my savior. He would call me into his office to offer his advice. ‘You’ve got to fight with your brains, Sammy, not your fists.’ Sergeant Williams told me I had to stop looking at comic books and learn to read. He taught me to read and write. God bless that man.”

“The first book I ever read was The Three Musketeers. Long, thick, and let me tell you, I am never going to read it again. But Sergeant Williams had me read all the classics. He would select books from Dickens to Twain to Abraham Lincoln, even The Complete Works of Shakespeare. I would circle the words I didn’t know. He would sit in the squad room at the end of the barracks and explain it to me. Sergeant Williams gave me hope that I could overcome this battle, Trace.”

“What you put in your mind, no one can take away from you, right, Pop?” I said.

“Listen to you, the philosopher! The latrine became my temple. I would read religiously after taps in that dimly lit latrine, and report back to Sergeant Williams. We would have our own civilized discourse on each book. I hungered for that time with him. He made me feel like a human being again. His office became my own sacred refuge, a retreat from the racism, hate, ignorance, and intolerance of my unit.”