Bonehead — Black is the Union of All Hues
Black is the union of all hues. Black history is the union of all struggle for basic constitutional rights, freedom from lynching — freedom to vote, live and work without hatred, bias, intimidation — freedom to breathe clean air, to drink local water without fear of cancer, to raise babies and families reaching for the American dream — freedom to be seen as Americans first, colors aside, color embraced. America’s history of struggle for human rights belongs to women, workers, veterans, elders, newborns, the disabled, teachers and entrepreneurs of all hues, faiths, and gender orientations. We are all “Black Like Me”. In celebrating all Americans who share the legacy of human rights enshrined in Black History Month, we celebrate unity across historical divides.
Being a Black pioneer in corporate and federal America has required an unmitigated warrior stance against racism, pervasive, acute and subtle. Survival and success has required absolute discipline and excellence, capacity to inspire others with integrity, and well earned mutual loyalty from those who chose to believe in our mission as American patriots. As an intercultural diplomat, my network of friends worldwide has long comprised Black, White, Asian, Jewish, Latino, West and East European, Middle Eastern, African, Carib, Pacific Islander leaders and workers alike. In this context, I wish to share one among many encounters with hate I experienced throughout my life.
As a young man, I observed antics of the KKK directed at schoolkids up front and personal back in the mid seventies. This memory, among others equally vivid, reflects how we now witness our society’s struggle to resist insidious efforts to repeat the worst of our history. Black History is not some trite rite of passage, but a passage of rights and hopes shared among us all for victory, small and large, over real injustice. So in that spirit, let me take you with me back to South Boston in the fall of 1974…
…As Mo Ford, pre-eminent Harvard Law School civil rights advocate, Charles, a fellow black Harvard student and I arrived by subway onto the turf of Andrews Square station in the heart of fortress South Boston, I felt the foreboding of defying false Druid taboos. We had crossed the boundary into the heart of rampant white supremacism.
“Bonehead!” I’d never heard that before. Bonehead? What does she mean? But. Oh. Ok. Like those early black-face cartoons of the hugely white-lipped wide-eyed savage with a bone tying otherwise unruly hair… Yet, etched into my mind’s eye was the anomaly of an otherwise well-dressed, elderly lady yielding her cane like a sword, jabbing towards me sharply, as she spit out her venomous sputum yet again, lips tightly curled. “Bonehead!”
Somehow time was slowing down and speeding up at the same time. Up the stairs quickly, her voice echoing within a frame of silent stares, we three climbed… I felt courage going into South Boston in the height of racial tension broiling between South Boston and Columbia Point, catalyzed by the move to integrate local public schools. Mo had invited me to witness the busing of young school kids. He relayed his expectation of police protection, security cordons to protect the children. So, let’s go! As we emerged outside, three middle-aged comfortably attired motherly ladies sitting on a bench began to focus on us, fidgeting. “Nigger! Go Home!” One of them apologetically admonished the others to leave us alone. I thanked her within my stunned silence, strolling by with feigned nonchalance within measured grip of their riveted eyes passing into the lower right corner of my mind’s eye. So sad.
Mo pointed out a building in the distance across from the school as the one where the National Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan had addressed a full audience just the other day. “What in the world?”, I thought. “No police cordon in sight. No children. What’s wrong here?” Motion caught my eye towards the left and at the top of a steep residential street. A crowd of young men began shouting, pointing our way, breaking way, then running as a mass down the hill towards us, bats waving, shouts everywhere. In the eery quiet of my mind, I saw an arsenal of large stones piled along the bottom of the hill, clearly in wait for the school kids. A rock half the size of a human head passed in slow motion before my eyes. I imagined what my head would feel like smashed.
The world stopped. An angry mob rushed towards us as I stood before the converging bodies. Charles sprinted towards the ocean water’s edge and the crowd broke off running after him in chase. In the split moment of mass instinct, Charles’ dash for his life galvanized the ruffian bunch into one coherent phalanx in singular pursuit. I found myself in a bubble of irreality, covering my head with my tan suede leather jacket and running with the crowd, trying to blend in. As I looked out from within my momentary disguise, a young terrified face snarled at me as he raised his bat to strike. How I got rid of him will remain a mystery, yet I do recall a muscular grapple and my scaring the shit out of him, tearing his bat away. A lone police car showed up, siren blasting, car door flinging open. Somehow we were alive, careening out of the Square. All I could think of was how we had succeeded in defusing what could have been a tragedy for some unwitting innocent schoolchild. But for the grace of God, lay one more martyr footnoted in dusty archives.
…Those young men, so eager to inflict lifetimes of pain on kids now have grown children of their own, some choosing to impart lessons of tolerance, of compassion. Others may urge sons and daughters to wield sticks, stones, guns and bones against our deep history of mutual good will, unleashing hatred anew. Facing hate, we true blue Americans choose to love the “other” even more, with unbroken faith in our rights hard-won, swords sheathed within the sacred Constitution of our national soul.
Terrence Barber, a Japanese Cherokee African American, is a former Clinton Administration Presidential appointee, senior US diplomat and chief marketing officer for US Agriculture in Japan, California Governor’s Representative and Managing Director for Asia, Principal Consultant for Economic Development in the California Legislature and Community College System, University Professor and international banker throughout the US, Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, advancing entrepreneurial interests of American communities.
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Terrence Barber © 2017
