Happy Veteran's Day - My Family Gallery

This is my paternal grandfather William Shone Williams, Private US Army in World War One. He arrived here in the US from Wales in 1906 when he was about 3 years old. Here he is during basic training at Spartanburg in 1918. He was just in time for the last push and was wounded sometime after the action  at the tunnels of St. Quentin just parallel to the Hindenburg Line. He was a "stringer" which is the guy who runs the lines fro the communications they were using back then. He was wounded shortly after that, suffering a head wound requiring a metal plate which plagued him until his premature death at age 43. He was a New York City Police Officer at the time of his passing.

This is my maternal grandfather Pincus Max Marcus who arrived in America in 1911 and left to fight in the Allenby Brigade in Palestine on the Ottoman front in 1916, even before the Americans  officially joined the war in 1917. He served with Distinction in the Kings Fusiliers, 38th through 42nd Regiments and, along with his brother Jack, was awarded the French Medal of Legion with Palms. When the war was over he had to re-enter the United States through Canada via Scotland. He went on to make and lose several fortunes before his death in the 1970's. 

World War Two came and my father's brother,Uncle Roy, served in the Navy as a Machinist Mate. He was awarded a Navy Cross for action in the  North Atlantic. After the war he went on to become a Captain and commanded his own ship.

On my mother's side her brother Walter Marcus was training for the infantry in Alabama when the war came to an end. He was always very candid about being glad he didn't have to go. But he was ready. He went on to a career as a professional gambler and lived in Las Vegas, Nevada. 

Here's my Dad who had already done time in the Naval Reserve, diving on the submarine USS Torsk out of Connecticut in the late 1940's. He felt very put upon when the Korean War broke out and he was called back up for active service in the Army! This explains the unhappy expression he wears in the photograph.

And here I am in the late 1970's, doing my bit taking bearings on the USS Milwaukee in Panama. You can tell that I was facing danger at every turn just by the expression on my face. 

The point is that, in war or peace, the veteran has always been there. Even when they may not have agreed with the policies with which they were tasked; they were there. And that willingness to serve, in itself, is a testament to our system.

"Taking on Teddy Roosevelt" by Harry Lembeck (2015)

There is a widespread belief which holds that the 1948 defection of the so called “Dixiecrats” who left the Democratic Party over Harry Truman’s desegregation of the Armed Forces sparked the defection of African-Americans from the Republican Party of Lincoln to the Democratic Party of today.  And there is some truth to that. But the real migration began about 50 years before that and involves Theodore Roosevelt, Booker T. Washington, and a riot in Texas which may not have been what it appeared to be.

In August 1906 the 25^th Colored Infantry Division was stationed at Fort Browning in Brownsville, Texas. They had replace the all-white 24^th which had served it’s time and was rotating back east. The townsfolk were more than a bit leery of having armed colored troops stationed just outside of town.

After several racially motivated incidents, several men; supposedly from the fort; went on a shooting spree, wounding some of the townsfolk and damaging most of the buildings which had refused to serve them. The events that followed underscored the deep racial divisions which split America in the days after the Civil War and still divide us in many ways.

   

President Theodore Roosevelt, who had served as William McKinley’s Vice President, was seen as a “gradualist” in the matter of race relations. He talked a great game about equality as he set the Great White Fleet off to show the flag, but here at home the President allied himself with Booker T. Washington; the African-American educator who founded the Tuskegee Institute to train Negroes in the Industrial Arts. 

In some ways Tuskegee was a trade school; rather than a true college of higher learning. He believed; and the President agreed with him; that Negroes were better suited for factory work and menial labor rather than any of the professions. They believed that it would take time to achieve the educational levels for Negroes to rise in society. One has to wonder whether or not anyone ever bothered to ask Booker T. how he had made the transition so quickly, and why he felt that his contemporaries could not.

The author explores the attitudes of the times in relation to the expectations of the African-American concerning armed blacks in the military. Although the “colored” troops had performed well in the Civil War; and the legendary Buffalo Soldiers; to whom the soldiers of the beleaguered 25th Colored Regiment were related by history; the people in Brownsville Texas were clearly not comfortable in having these troops present. It was only a matter of time until something happened.

The author explores the writings of some of the most illustrious African-American writers of the day; pitting the writings of W.E. DuBois against the politics; and policies; of Booker T. Washington and President Roosevelt. While DuBois was initially in agreement with the “gradualism” approach to equality, he ultimately saw the flaws in this arrangement. Who would decide when African-Americans were ready for advancement? Shouldn’t that question be decided by the African-Americans themselves; rather than be left with the very government which had allowed them to be enslaved for over 80 years after Independence had been declared?

This is a sweeping book encompassing both the incident at Fort Browning itself; as well as the political implications for the entire nation at the time. It would be well to remember that the history in these pages informs the debate on race relations in America today every bit as much as the news in today’s paper.