My People Are Rising (4 page)

Finally, the war was over and my father returned home, bringing with him the spoils of war: two samurai swords, a 7.62 sniper rifle, a much-prized Japanese machine pistol, a Filipino bolo knife, several Japanese kimonos, and a picture of him and Myoka. Those first few weeks at home he said very little or nothing about his experiences until one evening at dinner, his mother asked him, “Well, son, what happened over there?” With that, all the emotions he had been holding back from Mississippi to Okinawa came flooding out, and he began to tell his many stories.

At last he was able to put the nightmare behind him, and he reunited with his Chicago friends, going out to parties, dancing and drinking at the city's great ballrooms, built in the 1920s. He joined Paul Robeson's Progressive Party and began attending their meetings. He also started school at the Art Institute of Chicago.

One evening at a party he was introduced to a young girl named Frances, my mother, and it was not long before they agreed to begin a family journey together.

2

Our Family Journey Begins

The house I live in, The friends that I have found, The folks beyond the railroad and the people all around, The worker and the farmer, the sailor on the sea, The men who built this country, that's America to me.

—Paul Robeson, “The House I Live In,” 1947

I entered into this world
in the dead of winter, not far from the cold, windy shores of Lake Michigan, on January 2, 1949, almost four years after the bloodiest of wars and shortly before the beginning of the Korean conflict. By the time my parents finished their personal baby boom, there were four little Dixons and one who did not make it. Diane, a victim of premature birth, paved the way for my entrance. For many years I felt I was living life for both of us. I always imagined what she would have looked like if she had safely made the trip. Joanne came first, taking the crown as the oldest, then came Diane's short stay, then I arrived, and then sixteen months later, Elmer III emerged into the world. Finally, after two years had passed, Michael, the youngest, made his debut.

We lived with my father's parents for a couple of years on Chicago's Southside, at Langley Avenue and 51st Street, while my father completed his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. When I was about three years old we moved from Chicago to Champaign, Illinois. My father was offered a job as a technical illustrator at Chanute Air Force Base, which put his artistic pursuits on hold. We settled into Birch Village, formerly a military housing facility for air force pilots stationed at the base and their families. It would be our home for the next five years.

Birch Village was made up of dozens of cement brick blocks in clusters, each two stories high, with cold gray cement floors. Though the place looked drab from the outside, this in no way reflected the true character of the village. Many of the families were just like ours, fathered by upstart young Black men who had returned from World War II. These were men who had fought their way out of boot camp in the South just for the right to die in Europe or the Pacific. Their wives were hardworking, strong-willed women. Birch Village was like one big family. You could go anywhere in the village, any time of day, and feel secure.

Here, our family struggled through the same adjustments as most young families. Our parents strove to feed and raise four hungry, needy kids, each with a distinctive personality and specific demands, while my mother and father shifted their focus to parenthood after having spent their earlier lives worrying only about themselves. At twenty-one, my mother had been one year shy of graduating from teachers college before my sister and brothers and I came on the scene. Her time would now be devoted to washing, feeding, loving, disciplining, hugging, and teaching four inquisitive young people.

Joanne coined the names for all the elders in our family. My parents were known as Mommy and Poppy, my father's parents were called DeDe and Grandada, and my mother's parents were called Ma and Bop Bop.

Everything seemed perfect and safe during those early years of my life in Birch Village. Everyone looked out for one another. As kids, we roamed around the entire perimeter of the village without a worry or care, getting into mischief and playing hide-and-seek and “Crash the Circle.” In the winter we built snow forts and snowmen, and sometimes huddled against the front door of the house, trying to stay warm, wishing Mommy would let us in. But with four kids, our staying in the two-bedroom house all day was not an option. When naptime came, all four of us had to go to our room whether we wanted to nap or not. My good friends Lyn and Ricky lived in the end unit; their family had just arrived from Mississippi. We spent the night at each other's houses and walked to school together. It seemed like we would be friends forever.

One of the elders of the village was Mrs. Nailer, toothless and hair in disarray. We kids would sneak into her house, which was full of jars with weird things held in their confines. Everyone looked out for Mrs. Nailer. The only white people we ever saw were the milkman and the bread man, who would sometimes give us hungry kids free jelly rolls.

On a day I remember vividly, my brothers Elmer and Michael followed me down past the fence around the village's perimeter and over a set of railroad tracks to a large rock quarry. We excitedly climbed the rock mountains as our feet sank in the gravel. We got stuck in a tar pit, barely able to haul ourselves out once we heard Mommy calling us: “Aaron! Elmer! Michael!” We clambered back over the fence with tar-covered shoes and pant legs. I think that was the very first time the three of us ventured out together to do something we knew we weren't supposed to be doing.

Mommy got a part-time job playing the piano at the local church, and at night, Poppy worked a second job making pizzas. I still remember those nights when, after work, he would bring home delicious Italian pizzas to us waiting kids. And on weekends, Mommy and Poppy would go out to parties with friends from the village, drinking scotch and bourbon, dancing the Bebop and the Swing.

During the summers, Poppy worked in Champaign while Mommy and us kids went up to Chicago to spend those months with Grandada and DeDe, and Ma and Bop Bop. They happened to live around the corner from each other: Grandada and DeDe lived on 71st and Calumet and Ma and Bop Bop lived on 69th and Prairie. At night, out in the yard, we would chase lightning bugs with our cousins Mark and Keith, known as KeKe. On quiet days I sometimes went upstairs at Ma and Bop Bop's to talk to Gramma, my mother's great-grandmother Emma, and listened to her stories of old while I brushed her long, silky, gray hair, looking into her big, ancient, brown eyes and touching her leathery, wrinkled skin. I loved spending those quiet times with her. They were the only connection I had to our family's long, sometimes difficult and painful history.

When I was five years old, Gramma became very ill and requested that my mother send me from Champaign to her bedside in Chicago. Of course, Mommy thought it was rather ridiculous to summon a five-year-old from almost two hundred miles away, and so I did not go. Gramma passed away not long after at the age of ninety-four, taking with her almost a century of history encompassing the African American experience. I would miss those summer visits when I sneaked upstairs to sit in silence, holding her caramel hands. Perhaps I reminded her of someone or something from her past. She reminded me of something I could not quite comprehend, yet I understood our special connection. Her face, her scratchy voice, her sometimes cranky disposition would always be there with me, following me, whispering to me, protecting me, and guiding me.

When it came time for me to start kindergarten, I was not ready to leave my mother's side. I must have cried the whole day. First grade was easier, since I started the school year with my new friends, taking shortcuts home through the Negro League baseball field, getting chased by the old Black caretaker, barely making it over the fence, and laughing from the fear of almost getting caught. By the third grade I dreamed of someday soon running with the Birch Village Cats, the neighborhood gang. I often saw them chasing their rivals, the Alley Cats, kids who lived outside the village. That was the first time I remember yearning to belong to a group. Up north in Chicago I had seen the hastily written chalk words of the Blackstone Rangers, Chicago's largest gang, scrawled on walls and buildings throughout the Southside. I often wondered if I would join the Rangers when I got older.

One night in 1956, there was a knock on the door, and standing in the doorway were two white men dressed in dark suits. Poppy didn't let the men in. He exchanged words with them and then hastily closed the door. He later told me that these men in the dark suits were from the FBI and they had come to question him about his involvement in the Communist Party.

Poppy had been part of Paul Robeson's youth security contingent when Robeson had appeared at Soldier Field in Chicago in the '40s. Paul Robeson was an almost mythic figure in Black American history. A two-time All-American football player, he graduated from Columbia Law School, played professional football, and then went on to become a world-renowned and highly paid stage actor and singer. He toured the world as a performer and as an ambassador of social justice, and his speeches packed Soldier Field in Chicago during the '40s. Committed to justice for all working people, Robeson joined the Communist Party, which led to his being blacklisted and banned from international travel, and many recordings of his performances and speeches were destroyed. After returning from the war, Poppy, inspired by Robeson, had attended some Communist Party meetings in an effort to try to understand what had happened to him and others in the Deep South.

There was another incident of savage racism that affected Poppy deeply. In August 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old Black teenager from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi. He made the fatal mistake of speaking to a white woman. That night, a truckload of white men abducted him from his uncle's home and took him down by the river, where they tortured and brutally beat him to death. His mother had the courage to leave his casket open during the funeral in Chicago. The pictures of little Emmett Till's tortured body were seen by millions of Black Americans, thanks to the work of
Jet
magazine and other Black publications. Finally, the terror of the Jim Crow South was exposed to the world. The murder of Emmett Till had a profound effect on Poppy. It brought back a flood of memories of his personal experiences in Mississippi and laid bare the hypocrisy of the United States.

In response to this tragic murder, Poppy wrote this poem:

Deep in the heart of Dixie

Where the cotton blooms in June

An old black man tills the field

Humming a sad tune.

His heart was heavy, his eyes were full

His body aching and sore

I wish I was dead, I wish I was dead

My heart can't take no more.

They took a little Negro boy

And chopped and smashed his eye

They tormented, teased, and cut him up

Just to make him die.

They tore off an ear, when he shed a tear

And they beat him in the face

Each mark and scar was symbolic of
suffering

By the Negro race.

They threw him in the river

His hands and legs all bound.

Hoping that his body

Never would be found.

The river current surged and splashed

To free its mangled prey

But it didn't matter anymore

For it was Emmett's Judgment Day.

The two White men who did these things

Are free to lynch and kill

Now my God I pray to you

Avenge poor Emmett Till.

The hate and evil in this world

Is something sad to see

Why Oh Lord do they hate us so

Why can't we all be free?

The children played on the courtroom floor

The grownups drank cold beer

They laughed and joked, and enjoyed themselves,

Like they had no God to fear.

I'll never forget you, Emmett Till

And how you horribly died

I'll never forget the smiling jurors

And how the lawyers lied.

Well Emmett's gone, ain't nothing to do

But push this White man's plow

I guess little Emmett's made his peace

'Cause he's with his father now.

—Elmer J. Dixon Jr., Champaign, Illinois, October 1955

Poppy never spoke of this horrific crime again, but his poem was always there for us kids as a reminder of what horrible injustices Black people faced in America. By the time I was ten years old, I had memorized this poem and often took it to school to share with others.

In 1957, my father received job offers in Spain, Alabama, and a place called Seattle. I was hoping he would choose Spain, but, to my dismay, he chose Seattle, somewhere far away in the northwestern part of the country. At first I felt excitement at the thought of traveling to a distant place and the possibilities of experiencing new things and meeting new people. When it sank in that I would be leaving the only place I had known as home, this safe haven of family and friendly Black faces, I was devastated. I would have to leave all my friends, peculiar old Mrs. Nailer, and the security of Birch Village.