I was born in Washington, DC in 1956. I came into this world under the harsh lights of Freedmen’s Hospital. For non-native Washingtonians, it is now known as Howard University Hospital. At the time, it was the only place of comfort and care for African American patients. Any of you who have a black friend born before 1967 in Washington DC, chances are they were born either at home or Freedmen’s. My mother was a teenager in 1956 and unwed motherhood was a huge humiliation for an aspiring Black family.
The matriarch and head of my family was my great-grandmother who was the mother of three. Her daughter [my grandmother] was killed in a bus accident on her commute to work.
I was reared in a home with great-granny and the oldest of her two sons as my surrogate father. He was a strong man, a Navy Seabee who served in World War II. He stepped in and had helped raise my mother, after the death of his sister. I was a shy child searching for love and failing at life. Of course, every teen, at some point, feels like a failure. I had the good fortune of having some great role models. My two great-uncles, William and Roscoe and my mother’s brother, my Uncle Jimmy. My uncle William was a strict disciplinarian who struggled emotionally under the strain of so much responsibility, he left school in sixth grade to work and help support the family. Uncle Roscoe was never without a smile or a spirited glass of wisdom in his hand. He had what I thought, was the world’s greatest job, he got to ride in a moving truck all day. I am sure he would have disagreed, lifting and moving office furniture all day was literally back breaking. He worked tirelessly, had a beautiful wife and was my quarter uncle. Whenever he came to visit he would always give me and my sister a quarter and at 9 years old, a quarter was a fortune; That was five penny cookies, five Fireballs, five Mary Janes, five Squirrel Nuts and five pieces of Bazooka Bubble gum.
That left my cool uncle Jimmy, an Air Force vet who went to work for a major airline carrier once he left the service of his country. Three men, William in the Navy, Roscoe in the Army and Jimmy in the Air Force. Family men, with character, honesty and most importantly security, safety and examples.
In 1926 historian Carter G. Woodson declared the second week in February Negro History Week. Woodson had little initial support in public schools. For a young black kid, the introduction of the names Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Du Bois, George Washington Carver and Harriet Tubman were printed on reading material in public schools. I was amazed that Black men and women were smart, I had never been told that before www.history.com/....
I was fortunate, I had African American heroes at home. So, in the month Carter G. Woodson found it necessary to remind black kids and white America that we are citizens too; thank you William, Roscoe and James.
’18 and Change’