Loving America Means Expecting More From It

Patriotism did not bring my grandfather to the Army recruiter’s office in 1956. Poverty did. A youth spent picking cotton and working odd jobs to help feed his family meant that he was a good way from graduating from high school as his 18th birthday approached. He wanted a better life for himself and saw the Army as a way to make it happen.

He ended up staying three years beyond his initial three-year commitment. A sepia-toned photograph of him in his uniform still hangs proudly in his bedroom in Huntsville, Ala.

For my grandfather, military life was not without challenges. He recalls that he and other Black soldiers were consistently addressed as “boys” until he stood up to his commanding officer and told him that there were nothing but men in their unit. After this tense and even dangerous exchange, the officer addressed them respectfully — a small triumph that my grandfather never forgot.

I asked him why he continued on and he replied, “I guess I loved America more than I thought. I definitely liked it more than Russia.”

The military was the first integrated space he encountered. “We served together, marched together, slept in the same barracks and learned to respect each other,” he said. During his six years of service, he finished high school and took extra classes. He returned to civilian life equipped with certifications to be a fireman, a merchant seaman and a bookkeeper. But in Alabama in the 1960s no one would not hire him to do any of those things. His first job was as a janitor.

My grandfather’s feelings about America are by turns fond and critical. He loved his unit and the moments when the white men he served with treated him as an equal. He also laments those times when he wasn’t, especially in the civilian years that followed. Now, at age 86, he gets animated talking about how he never got to be a fireman.