Dateline: Montana and Kalamazoo, Michigan. 1963
Before going on the Living Legacy Pilgrimage, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing six people in my home city of Kalamazoo, Michigan, who experienced racial segregation in their youth.
Here are two of those stories. In the case of Jacob Johnson, a young man who remains active in African American racial equity today, he relates a story about his father and grandfather.
Dr. Von Washington, Sr.
Von Washington was in the Air Force, stationed in Montana, in 1963 when the car he was driving was forced off the road by a carload of white thugs, apparently because some of the soldiers in Washington's car were black and some were white.
A fight ensued, and Washington was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and intent to do bodily harm.
"In a cold, crowded Montana jail cell, I was afraid and confused. I had no idea how to defend myself," he says.
Fortunately, through the intervention of a white major, the charges were dropped and Washington was reinstated into his military job.
Turning his thoughts to his education in Albion, Michigan, he concluded, "I was never encouraged or assigned to read one book or article, at home, in school, or in church, that dealt with the difficulties associated with being a black man in America."
Desiring "to prove I was an American and deserved to be part of this society," Washington enlisted in the US Air Force and volunteered for Vietnam.
As a combat news reporter, he discovered the works of educators and philosophers who believed that "the first rule of a successful life is to 'know thyself.'"
After returning home from the war, he says, "It took me a few years to investigate the ins and outs of my existence as a twentieth century black man."
Today, as a playwright, thespian, and founder of Washington Productions, Inc., Von Washington has dedicated himself to educating others about the contributions of African Americans to the US and world cultures.
He writes and performs dramatic roles of historical and literary African American figures, such as: Shakespeare's Othello, a black Muslim of Northern Africa; Sojourner Truth, founder of the Underground Railroad; Elisin Oba, the king's horseman of "enormous vitality" in Wole Soyinka's play Death and the King's Horseman; Martin Luther King, Jr.; and a slave named Josh.
Jacob Johnson
Jacob Johnson's grandfather, Mabry Johnson, was a member of the NAACP in Kalamazoo in the early 1960s, and his father, David, was part of the NAACP Youth Council.
In 1963, the national NAACP suggested that youths attempt to get jobs in stores that had traditionally not hired blacks.
David Johnson, Walter Jones II, and Lois James went to Van Avery Drugstore, which was located in Kalamazoo's predominantly black neighborhood.
Even though blacks were the store's primary patrons, owner Donald Van Avery, a white man, had never hired a black employee.
The youths were denied an application, so the local NAACP chapter decided to boycott the store.
Picketers included clergy in ministerial attire, women dressed in their Sunday finest, Eastern Star Masons in uniform, and others.
The boycott lasted several months, making it the most significant civil rights protest in Kalamazoo.
Van Avery sold the store in 1964, and it closed a few years later.
David Johnson and Walter Jones also served in Vietnam and represented what Jacob Johnson notes is "the great American contradiction of young black men not being able to get jobs in their own community but being sent into war against other brown people."
Next blog: "The march continues: From chaos to change"
