I am about 6 months shy of 50 years on this earth and 50 years as an American. In those years I have been witness to many acts of racism, from name calling to discrimination in the Navy, I have a reputation for calling it out. In the Navy I was harassed for calling out a group of racists trying to keep a minority from qualifying a watch station. I received notes telling me to kill myself, and an orange peel, cut out to say "kill" on my bunk. This was in the early 90s on a Trident Submarine. Yes, racists do slip through the cracks and get into the military. This was a scary time, but it was not as bad as an experience I endured growing up in a small town in Northern Florida.
Let me tell you a little background information about myself. I am white, my father is from Kansas and my Mother is from Florida. My dad was stationed at Wright-Patterson Airforce base, Ohio when I was born. After my father retired in 1973 we spent some time living in Missouri before moving to Northwest Florida. The first town we lived in was not too bad really, but the second town we moved to turned into a nightmare for me for the first few years.
The town was steeped in the "Southern Confederate heritage " so to speak. I found this out when I started school in 5th grade. When other kids found out I was born in Ohio, the north, they started calling me "yankee", "yankee boy", "n lover" whatever they could think of at the time. This was not how the majority of the kids behaved, they would sometimes jokingly call me yankee and I would remind them that the " Yankees won", but a number of others were down right mean about it. Why? Because they were taught to be this way by their fathers, a couple of the fathers were known to belong to the KKK. This bullying increased as the school year went on until a seemingly unrelated situation pushed it over the edge.
My brother happened to like this girl in his sixth grade class that one of my bullies liked. When the bully found out my brother, the brother of a yankee, like this girl and she liked him back, well he got upset and took it out on me. After Christmas or so we moved to a house my dad bought that happened to be near a small retirement community four miles outside the town, and a block away from the girl my brother liked. This really pushed the bully over the top and he recruited other boys of the confederate heritage club, not a real club I am just calling them that. During recess the would cull me away from the other kids and away from the teacher to an area of the playground blocked from view by a pine tree and a live oak. I would be put in a headlock by one, thumped in the head by the rest while the mini grand wizard would threaten to kill me if my brother didn't leave his girl alone. This was the 5th grade for Pete sake, girlfriends? Although the bully and his buddies had been held back a couple of years. Of course they threatened to kill me and my family if I told anyone, and being a kid I believed they would so I kept my mouth shut. Plus I was a skinny kid so I didn't think I had much of a chance fighting off 4 boys who were bigger than me.
Well, I didn't give into the demand to tell my brother to to stop hanging around the girl. One day on the playground I forgot to stick near the teacher and before I knew it I was jumped on, mouth covered and carted off to the blind area of the playground and a jungle gym shaped like the Mercury Space capsules. The lead bully kept saying I was about to die and since I was a yankee they would get away with it, because everyone in town hated Yankees and his family knew people. I was punched in the gut as I tried to get away. One kid brought a yellow nylon rope some was used to tie my hand behind my back the rest he tied it into a slip knot they placed around ver head as I writhed trying to get away. The biggest and strongest boy lifted me as another tied the rope to the top bar of the jungle gym. Then they let go, stood and watched as I struggled to somehow get free but all it did was tighten the rope which began to cut into my neck. I don't know how long they watched me because Imwas in pure panic, I knew I was about to die and there was nothing I could do, I was so high off the ground the tips of my toes barely touched. Finally I heard someone approach, a friend of mine who wondered where I went off to and when he heard me choking he came to see what was going on. I don't know if his approach scared of the bullies, all I know was I was greatly relieved when my friend used his little pocket knife to cut me down. Yes, back then no one thought much of a kid having a pocket knife at school. As soon as I was freed my friend took me in tears of terror and pain to our teacher. We told her what happened and showed her the rope burns on my neck. We were then taken to the principal's office where I agin explained my story in tears and showed him the rope burns. What was his response, "Boys will be boys" and " I had an overactive imagination and that it was rough housing and the other boys would not have let me die." What? That's what I wanted to know. What was this guy thinking. Things were swept under the rug, the bullies talked to and told to stay away from me.
Me, I was just left to deal with it on my own. My parents were angry but we were outsiders new to the town so they were ignored. You see in small southern towns, back then and now to some extent, if you were considered an outsider then in situations like this you were guaranteed not to get any help. My dad then told my brothers and I that if that is the way things were going to be, then we had permission to defend ourselves at school. If someone else started something then it was okay for us to finish it since the school principal sure wasn't going to do it. In a matter of weeks my brothers let it be known that we were not going to stand for small town pick on the new guys and Southern confederate BS, my brothers took care of their own bullies and mine. I still dreaded school, still have a bit of a scar on my neck, and I don't like anyone to put there hand around my neck. I hate all things Confederate, I hate the damn confederate flag with a passion. From that moment on I chose not to tolerate racism, bullies, or anything along that lines. I felt the terror of thinking my life was over and that of being helpless, a victim of hate and ignorance and I was not going to sit down and take it.
I did teach myself a few things, did some boxing, and had one of my brothers friends show me some moves he learned taking karate though I cannot remember the style now. I ended up having a few fights because someone thought because I was skinny I could be bullied, they ended up finding out that was not the case. I never ended up on the losing side of a fight, but I always ended crying. Why? Because I hate hurting people, I hate violence. I do love, or use to love watching boxing, but it is no longer a sport like it was back in the day.
I am nearly 50, and I am still haunted by an experience on a playground decades ago. I am still haunted by memories of being hanged by bullies, racist children taught to be that way by their parents who believe in the abhorrence that is southern confederate heritage, a polite term for White Supremacy, for racism. I will do anything I can to protect others from what I endured and from what I think is morally wrong, UnAmerican, unchristian, a crime against humanity, the scourge that is racism.
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