For Black Americans, Veterans Day Holds Mixed Emotions
My team encouraged me to celebrate my dad, Dr. James F. Tucker, on Veterans Day. As a World War II veteran, Dad was a scout in Italy and fought in the battle of the Arno. Dad was a Buffalo Soldier and a member of the storied 92nd Infantry Division, an African-American infantry division of the United States Army that served in both World War I and World War II. At the time, the military was segregated.
Despite my team’s encouragement, it’s late in the day, and I still hesitate to write this piece. To be honest, Dad would have thought writing this article to be gratuitous. The inside joke in my family is that Dad wouldn’t have shown up to his own funeral had he not been dead. He was an economist through and through, and the only reason he chose to be buried at Arlington was that it was free. Yep, that’s my dad in nutshell.
He fought for a country that hated him and a democracy that, for years, excluded him. He volunteered because he believed in the mission and the ideals on which this country was founded. He volunteered because he didn’t want to be drafted. Dad was a pragmatist. To volunteer meant a shorter hitch. He believed that the arc of history really did bend toward justice, but he wanted his part in that history to deliver him back to the bosom of his family quickly and alive.
He won three bronze stars and went on to be a prominent economist and senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia, the first Black American to achieve such a distinction. As the lovely obit in WSJ described, Dad “rose from poverty to make a name in banking and economics.” Again, this well-written free obit would have made him smile. The additional $3,000 my mother insisted on spending on various other newspaper obits, lovingly written by my brother and me, would have had him knocking our heads together from beyond the grave.
For Dad, being a Black soldier and fighting for democracy meant confronting conflicting emotions about race, patriotism, and a history of being denied domestically what this country seemed so willing to deliver abroad. Despite having fought in every war in U.S. history, Black Americans continued to fight and die for the very rights and freedoms that even today some would deny them in the pursuit of their own power and status.
Like so many Black American veterans, Dad never questioned his commitment to positively contributing to the prosperity and security of this country. He never complained about paying his taxes or doing his duty to ensure this democracy remained on solid ground. He kept his nose to the grindstone of Black excellence and expected his children to do the same.
As this Veterans Day passes into night, I think about his commitment to the mission in the face of the nefarious actions of so many who have abdicated theirs and I remember how much the “thanks of a grateful nation” he is truly owed.
