WHAT THE FOURTH OF JULY MAY MEAN TO MANY AMERICAN BLACKS

…A picture that may demonstrate what American Independence may mean to an elderly American Black man

This nation still has a lot of work ahead before Independence Day can be embraced by all Americans

The following is a story that came about due to all of the current “BLACK LIVES MATTER” noise that is appropriately being made around the country.  It also brought back a memory of the first black individual that ever made an impression on my life.

I had attended my High School years right here in the middle of Silicon Valley.  I later went to San Jose State University, then much later to Stanford. 

Up until that time, my exposure had been with a real mix individuals of diverse nationalities.  Having lived all over the United States, starting from being born in Virginia, to Missouri, to Kentucky to Oregon and Washington state, to Minnesota, to Ohio, and on to Arizona, and finally to California, by then, I had dealt with about every type of young American…or so I thought.

Going back to my High School years here in California, there were plenty of Hispanic, Japanese and Asian student friends in my school.  However, even though I had been born in Virginia, where there were many African Americans, there weren’t many located here in the Valley of Heart’s Delight.  That was the moniker that was given to this area that eventually became the Silicon Valley.  

Back in High School, there was only one black family, in the local high school district.  And, as it turned out, there was only one black student in my Senior class.  And, that young black male student became one of my school football teammates, and he also became a good friend.

This friend was from a large family, with an older brother that had just been recruited by the San Francisco Forty Niner football team, and my friend’s father was a successful engineer at Lockheed Aerospace, which is still a large local employer. 

It was during that Senior year that my black friend and a couple of other seniors, during a holiday weekend, we just happened to somehow come into possession of a case of beer and a ½ gallon bottle of vodka.  

In addition, we had recently come across an old abandoned house in the middle of an abandoned apricot orchard.  Wanting to take advantage of the situation, we thought it would be fun to take our sleeping bags, and our liquor stash, to the old orchard house and have an overnight sleep-over.

Having all agreed that this was a great idea, we met that evening at the old house. We found an old metal 1/2 barrel on the property. We moved it into the house. The old living room already had a big hole in the roof.  So we set the half-barrel up on some bricks.  We then got a good fire going, and we settled in, eating the snacks and consuming the drinks we had brought for the night.

It was during that event, and after we had consumed a good portion of the alcohol, my black friend decided to tell me the story of how it felt to be a black person living in a white world.

I can still remember the statements that my friend made regarding his being a friend to so many in our class, but how he never really felt that he was regarded as a real member of our group.  He also mentioned that his sister, who was only one year behind our class, he said she also had many student friends, just as he did,. But he said she also did not feel like she was really very close to the other white girls in her class.

I also recalled when I had first brought my friend over to my house, and how my mother became so quite when my friend was in the house.  I was later reminded that my mother, who was raised all he life in Virginia where the only blacks around were those men that worked in the coal mines, or the women that were working as Mammie’s to the wealthy whites in the area.  And I remembered being told that the white locals never mixed with the local blacks. 

I later realized how bothered my mother must have been when I had brought my black friend into our home.  That night in the orchard house, I learned that my black friend had immediately understood how my mother had felt and he said he felt her eyes on him all the time he was in my house. 

Of course, I did not feel any of what was going on silently between my mother and my friend.  Because at the time, I had never thought of him as being any different from me.  I had never really thought of him as being anything more than being my friend.

It was really that night that for the first time, I realized my friend was in fact, very different.

Seriously, I had obviously seen him as being a different color from me, but I never thought it made him different from any of my other friends.  Whether they were white, or Japanese or even my few Hispanic friends.

As with many other Americans, I have come to fully understand the issues of the South, of this nation’s past, and of course the past history of American slavery.

And, with what’s happening today, it is all being brought back again.  Based on the president we have today, we are definitely headed in the wrong direction.  But with the new direction that we appear to be turning to today, we will hopefully, eventually be headed in the right direction as a nation.

So, why did I bring all this up??

I recently came across an article in The Washington Post that talked about what today’s Fourth of July might mean to a black man that was a descendant of an American slave.

I think the following article says a lot that helps me understand what my black friend was probably feeling, and from where he was coming from, so many years ago.

So, this is an article from: The  Washington Post:  July 4^th, 2020:

A mister Anthony Owens, age 54, of Upper Marlboro, Md, wrote: “As our nation begins to fire up the grills and sit around park benches to celebrate the annual Fourth of July holiday, I am reminded of a speech Frederick Douglass gave July 5, 1852, titled, ‘What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?’ ”

“Today, 168 years later, I ask a similar question: What to the African American is the Fourth of July?  In my family, any celebration of Independence Day is marred by a painful and tragic story that has been passed down to my generation:

On July 4, 1930, my grandfather-in-law, John A. Robunson age 17, along with his brother Phil, had to run away from their home because of a relative’s dispute over a car battery with a white store owner. That dispute led to the Race Riot of 1930 in Emelle, Ala. In the violence that ensued, John A. Robinson’s father, John Newton Robinson, who was a preacher, landowner and businessman, was shot and killed on his front porch, and his house was burned to the ground. John A. Robinson’s cousin, Esau Robinson, was tied to a tree and lynched.

A large mob of local white men — led by the sheriff — were looking to run every black person with the last name Robinson out of town. The riot and lynching were documented across the country. Even Time magazine, in its July 14, 1930, edition, wrote about the murder as Lynching No. 9.

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Every year on your “Independence Day,” my grandfather-in-law was reminded of the abrupt and tragic end of his father and cousin. When others saw fireworks, he saw gunfire and the burning of his family home.

So what to the African American is the Fourth of July? A day that reminds us more than all other days in the year of the injustices that still prevail in America. You celebrate monuments involuntarily built by people of color.

To me, it’s an annual reminder that while we have accomplished many things since landing in Jamestown, Va., in 1619, we still have a lot of work ahead before Independence Day can be embraced by all and not just a chosen few.”

Sharon Brooks, 54, Tallahassee, Fla.: Black people have fought and died in every war since the Revolutionary War, when some slaves were even promised their freedom for fighting in place of their masters.  Black soldiers have had to face the evils of segregation and discrimination while serving.  I hope the entire military will take a long hard look at its history and end the systemic racism that still affects it.  For example, there are disparities between how black and white veterans receive health care and even are awarded disability retings.  The disparity is even greater for black female veterans. I myself am an Air Force veteran who has had to deal with racism in the military. But like so many black soldiers before me, I have put on the uniform and proudly served a country that I still am fighting to be equal in.

Danielle Romero, 34, Nashville, Tenn.: My 5th-great-grandfather, Nöel, was purchased for $1,700. In 1822, he sued for his freedom, and won.  Nöel was a slave in Louisiana and his master, Antoine Coindet, had just passed away. The conditions of Nöel’s 1817 bill of sale stated that upon the death of his owner, he would be emancipated.

Three months after Coindet’s death, he remained enslaved.  Nöel took the estate executor to court and won his freedom. But he didn’t stop there. He emancipated his 6-year-old daughter, Marie, as well. She cost $350. He paid it off in two installments.

I have checked off “white” on forms my entire life. Maybe not everyone saw me that way, but you are whatever you have been told that you are. I recently discovered that I, and my entire family branch, became “white” when my great-grandmother, Lola, who was likely considered a “Creole of color,” married an Irish New Yorker.

After unearthing her story, I began a frantic search for my identity. Who could tell me what I was?  I spent hours poring over documents and census records.  Around that time I had my first child. I obsessed about articulating my identity because now my daughter’s identity was in question as well. The stakes felt so high to me.

Race is everything in America. Where would I land? I found that I, like my country, had a servile relationship to racial identity. I, and we, need desperately to be freed from it.

Mira Ruth Rubens, 61, Brooklyn: I’m a 61-year-old public elementary school teacher, and I went to public school, college and graduate school in New York City, and I read books and newspapers, and I never knew what Juneteenth was, or about the Tulsa Race Massacre, or the Wilmington Massacre, until weeks ago.  I also heard someone say recently that black history is American history, and I now understand that they are right. I’m taking to heart the urgency of educating ourselves about racism. I want our elementary, middle and secondary school social studies curriculum overhauled to center the black experience in the United States.

We can only unlearn our racist system by learning about it.

David L. Allen, 47, Alexandria, Va.: I got an “I Can’t Breathe” tattoo on my chest back in 2015, probably a year after these words were choked out of Eric Garner. My three biracial boys have seen it plenty of times, but we’ve never discussed what it means or why I have it.

We were talking about George Floyd recently when my 10-year-old asked me about the tat. “Those were George Floyd’s last words,” he said. “But you’ve had that tattoo for a while. How did you know he was going to say that?”

I could see his mind working as I was formulating an age-appropriate answer.  And before I could respond, he said, “Oh, I know. This has happened before.”

I want to be excited about the peaceful protests and nonviolent demands for change. I hope change is coming. Really, I do. But what I am is tired. I’m tired of still hearing, “It’s heritage, not hate.” I’m tired of still reading, “Well, how many of them shot one another in Chicago last weekend?” And I’m tired of expecting that I’ll be long gone before my kids, their kids or anyone down the line are seen as equal to some of my friends’ kids.

After High School, I never saw my black friend again.  I heard that he had moved out of the state and was attending another college or university.  But to this day I still think of that awakening I had in that old orchard house which today has since been replaced by a very large, seven story, high tech, corporate headquarters here in Silicon Valley.

Copyright G. Ater 2020