The War at Home and Abroad

We are a tired poeple. Patience and peace on our part has seen so little done over time. My black brothers and I will no longer seek justice for our poeple in silence. Last night, Jimmy Boy, Logan, Ned, and I sat ‘round the supper table for awhile after we’d done finished eating, staring down at our plates and not sayin’ a thing. None of us had been able to finish our food ‘cause of the disturbin’ thought, the frustration we were sharin’ in quiet. Logan was the first to lift his eyes from the table. He said he was aimin’ to do somethin’ , to start up somethin’ like the freedom ride or some sort of protest march. While he spoke, spittin’ hate and determination left and right, I recalled the images I’d seen a few years back on the television at Jimmy Boy’s. The horrifyin’ images of men, women, and children in Birmingham bein’ blown away by the white men with hoses. As the scene flashed again and again behind my forehead I heard Logan’s voice ringing in my ears and felt myself noddin’ at each word he said.
Not two days later, Logan got a letter in the mail from the government. Logan and I had graduated from highschool together a few years back. Though Logan was one of the damned smartest kids I knew, he hadn’t gone to college on account of his parents couldn’t afford it. My family bein’ in a simila’ position, Logan and I settled for jobs at a local convience store, hopin’ to save us enough money to eventually pay our own way through college. Logan had done a much better job of holdin’ on to his money. At the end of two years at the shop, I’d not $20 to my name, havin’ gone and spent it on things I then considered more important than an education, things like Miss Suzanna White. I will never forget the day that Logan got the draft letter, callin’ him to fight in Vietnam. I was near cryin’ when Logan burst out laughin’, a frenzied, maniacal laugh. Wasn’t it funny he said, a deeply rooted hate and sorrow in his black eyes, that a country that hardly treated him like a citizen ‘spected him to give his life for it.

Comments

[RIch Michaels]

I just don't get folks like you. You spend all your life in a country like America, and then all you want to do is tear it down. When this country is fighting for a glorious cause, you and your marches and freedom rides are just trying to divide us. Why do you hate America so much? Why can't you just stop whining about your little problems and how much you get disrespected for a minute and start thinking about the people in Vietnam who have got real problems. Always thinkin about yourself as black people- isn't being americans good enough for you? None of my friends who got drafted whined about it. None of them cried. THey just stepped up and did their duty like men. You can't expect the country to treat you like real citizens when you act like little whining babies all the time, when you probably want russia to beat us just so you can gloaat when we're all dying.

[henry]

This is a tradjidy that our government can't even get its ideas straight. Tell your friend to join me in protest of this war and by no means should he fight in it. I whole-heartedly concur that this is not a war to fight, for either black or white citizens of our country.