The year 1941 was a hell of a year to be a black person in the United States.. and a nightmare to be living in what I call the “Cut.” The Cut is the real Deep South. Places you don’t see on a map, places like Cornbread, Mississippi or Lickety Split, Alabama and Before The Sun Goes Down, Georgia. Yeah, back in them days there was some real genuine, tobakee spitting, hard rock rednecks down in them dirty swamps.. and they would cut yo head off just as soon as look at you. So in 1941 the separate but equal doctrine was still the law of the land. Separate but equal came about in 1892 when a man named Homer Plessy decided he wanted to ride in the train car wid de white folks. He was real light skinned.. but he wasn’t white… I guess somebody didn’t give him the memo. Plessy: ” Ima sit on da train wid de white folks and den Ima go see my gal and eat me some fried chicken wid budda melk biscuits..” He went to court and lost. This happened in 1896 and it wasn’t until 1954 when Thurgood Marshall won Brown V. Board Of Education that the doctrine was overturned and segregation became illegal in the United States. I do a lot of joking about Plessy, but for real his demonstration against racism was part of a well planned strategy to overturn separate but equal. Rosa Parks was also a participant in this strategy. These lawsuit in the lower courts were designed so that the cases would eventually end up at the Supreme Court. So if you look at the civil right pioneers that participated in these cases, they all had one thing in common, “dey was all high yellow and lydda den da average fellow.” Yes they were light skinned. There was a reason for that. The leader’s felt that dark skinned civil rights pioneers would be killed before they got to court or once in court the case would be summarily dismissed. If Plessy would have been my complexion than it was a good possibility one of the passengers would have shot him, thrown his body off the train and then the train would have left. Racist 1: “I had to shoot dat boy Zeke!!” Racist 2: “Belvedere, you idiot, dat was my boy!! He was bringing me my luggage!!” It all goes back to the days of those who worked in the fields and those who worked in the house. Most of the personal interactions between blacks and whites since slavery times were between those blacks who worked in the house with the plantation owners or homeowners. Although we see a lot of movies about blacks being enslaved on plantations, most slave owners didn’t have plantations and only owned a few slaves. But one of those enslave people would inevitably be tasked with house chores and thus privy to the “massa’s” private life.. Anyway, Blacks who worked in the field only talked to “Mr. Boss Man” or his second in command… Mr. Bullwhip. House Slave: “Massa may I approach…” Massa: “Yes, Othello..” Field Slave: Massa… Massa: Whap! whap whap!! So yeah they had a long and mostly trusted relationship with the lighter skinned enslaved house servants. Anywho, this is where our story begins. Pvt. Albert King had boarded a segregated bus in Columbus, Georgia on Sunday… March 23, 1941.
The Cozy Spot
“TI: “One monkey d*ck, two monkey d*cks, three monkey d*cks…” You might be wondering what in the world am I talking about? Well a lot of us who have been through basic training would recognize this as an instructor counting out his recruits 50 push-ups… and the first one who laughs.. well then everybody would have to start all over. It was hard not to laugh because he would be saying it in his TI voice and when he got to around 25… that was some hilarious stuff cause he would start slowing down trying to make somebody laugh. “Twenttty fiveeee monnnkey d*icks…” Most of us have heard a Marine Drill Instructors voice… same voice but different branch of service. TI stands for Technical Instructor and although I can’t say mine was really mean, he was ornery. In fact that little short !@@# set me back and I had to do two weeks all over. I didn’t say anything when he told me, but boy was I mad. ” Man I gotta go through two mo’ weeks of this!! “ The next day me and another guy was transferred to a new flight. A flight is the same as a company in other branches of service. I saw my original flight graduate two weeks ahead of me and that was one of the toughest things I have ever endured. By this time I was in my fourth week of training in my new flight and was able to get weekend passes. We didn’t have street clothes so we dressed up in our uniforms. In order to wear civvies you had to be in your sixth week. Anyway we dressed in our blues, caught the base bus to San Antonio and partied like it was 1999… actually it was a couple decades earlier.. but what the heck…“
LIke so many servicemen had done before and after him, Pvt Albert King boarded a bus from base and headed into the city. He was stationed at Fort Benning in Georgia. Fort Benning was named after a Confederate Brigadier General named Henry Benning. It is one of ten bases named after Confederate traitors and has been slated for a name change. Personally I would like to see the name changed to Fort Obama, but I know the racist down there wish a @!!# would. You think the storming of the Capitol was something… there would be more sheets and pillowcases down there than at a linen sale at Dollar Tree. Fort Benning sits on the border straddling Alabama and Georgia… home of the brave and land of the free. In 1941 over 50,000 men were training at the base in anticipation that Hitler would try and export his 1000 Year Reich into the cotton fields and bayou’s of the south. Little did they know at that time it would be Tojo who would bring the US into WWII when he attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Pvt King went straight away to his grandmother house. She had passed away earlier that year, but still owned a small shotgun house there with a wooden porch. A shotgun house is a house that doesn’t have hallways. It has one main room and all of the other rooms are connected off that main room. Anywho, later that night it was time to get it on. King and another soldier, Pfc. Lawrence Hoover went to a popular club named the Cozy Spot, where they dropped it like it was hot and wasn’t nobody’s business. Now they wasn’t dropping it by themselves, Kings girlfriend and a girl friend she brought with her were part of the crew. Now I want to make one thing clear in case it wasn’t. The Cozy Spot was a black joint. So you know how we do it. When I think of the Cozy Spot, I envision a place like Shug sanged at in the movie “The Color Purple.” Anyway they partied late into the night and didn’t leave until 3:30 am. Now I’m not sure how they did it back then, because nowadays the bar closes about half an hour before the club closes, but I suspect back in that time they sold liquor right up until the doors shut. Anyway, the story says they was higher than Cooter Brown when they left. Most blacks folks I know always call him “Cootie” Brown, but history records his name as “Cooter” Brown. I tell a little bit of his story in a piece I did called “Springfield 1908” if you are interested. Anywho, it was time for King and Hoover to get back to the base. The group headed to the bus stop and waved a bus down, paid the fifteen cents and headed for the back of the bus.. separate but equal. So its 3:30am in the morning and you would think they would be the only people on the bus.. but uh, uhh. On this bus there were a majority of white passengers coming from who knows where. Now normally I would make a joke about this but I’m not gonna do it, because I don’t want to upset the sensibilities of my white friends. So just because a few of them was carrying folded sheets in their laps, had a few leaves in their hair and was singing that old confederate ballad, “He Shouldn’t Have Looked Me In The Eyeball,” well that don’t mean a thing. Anywho, King and his party boarded the nearly full bus and it departed.
Segregationist Jesse Helms, (R) North Carolina
“White people, wake up before it is too late. Do you want Negroes working beside you, your wife and your daughters, in your mills and factories? Frank Graham favors mingling of the races.”
Frank Graham was the President of UNC and senatorial primary candidate against Willis Smith in 1950. Helms working with Smith allegedly called UNC the University Of Negro’s and Communist. Hampered by Jim Crow laws, blacks were prevented from supporting Graham in large numbers. Smith went on to win the Senate seat.
“Watch me make her cry. I’m going to make her cry. I’m going to sing ‘Dixie’ until she cries.” – “allegedly” said to US Sen. Orrin Hatch about Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, an African-American.
Moseley-Braun was the first African American woman to serve in the US Senate. He sang Dixie while she was in an elevator.
“The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that’s thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men’s rights. They are nothing but a bunch of moral degenerates.”
Helms referring to Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights protesters of the early 1960’s
Senator Jesse Helms was the longest serving senator from North Carolina. He pioneered conservative right wing media and was the torch bearer for the segregationist movement. On his deathbed he said…
“Honey keep the barn door locked so the nigs don’t steal the chickens..” Jesse Helms 1921 – 2008
Okay… he didn’t say that…
That’s A Fact Blackjack
“In the good old days they used to treat them very harshly,” said one former president. King, Hoover and the ladies sat in the back of the bus and according to the bus driver, acted like they were still in the club. They were shouting and cussing and laughing and just living their best life. We all have a friend that after a couple of shots don’t believe it’s possible to hear them unless they’re talking at the top of their lungs… well King had taken his lungs out of his chest and put them on top of his head… he was really, really loud and this was according to other black passengers who were on the bus. He was shouting and cussing… not at anyone.. you know… just having a good time. The girls were also having fun, sitting on their laps, cussing and shouting and as the bus driver put it “cutting up too.” So now is when things started going south, figuratively and literally. The bus driver started feeling some kind of way. He stopped the bus… then started it… drove down the street a little ways and then stopped it again. This time he sent another fellow to the back of the bus with a blackjack before pulling off. A blackjack is a heavy block shaped piece of metal usually encased in leather, about as long as a spoon or fork with a leather handle and if you see somebody with one in their hand coming for you.. you can almost bet that a hospital stay is a possibility in your near future. Anyway he came to the back of the bus and threatened to throw King off. By now that liquor was starting to talk to King.. “You gonna let that white man come back heh and embarrass you in front of yo woman and friends!! If I was you I’d smack him across the lips!!” Luckily for him he didn’t pay no attention to that gin and juice and instead demanded his money back if he had to get off… For a second there I guess you thought he was going to smack a white man… across his lips… that was holding a blackjack… in Georgia?… on a bus full of white people… in 1941… late at night… on a dark road… Nope, he wasn’t that drunk. You ever heard of one of those “you rather” saying? That’s what this is. You rather set yo hands on fire and shove a porcupine up yo behind rather than do that. Anywho, the driver stopped again, but this time near the entranced of Fort Benning.
It’s Lummus With A “L”
Shortly after basic I had been assigned guard duty in the airfield at Lackland AFB while awaiting my MOS class to start. It would be about two week before the new class started and I had a choice of working as a guard or in the kitchen… naturally. MOS stands for Military Occupational Specialty. I had put in for Electronics Technician but because I was color blind I was not allowed to go into that training. A few months later I found out what they meant by color blind and it didn’t have anything to do with my eyes.. feel me. It was at that moment that I realized that they grow them bigger in Texas. Anywho, on this particular day I was on sentry at the gate. Now before you enter the airfield you “Have To!!” show ID. That’s written in stone… right under… “And he commandeth that thou Negro’s shall either be a guard or a dishwasher.” It’s right there.. “And he commandeth that thou Negro’s shall either be a guard or dishwasher. And he shall giveth dominion to that Negro over all who enter;” Petty 1 :1. The kitchen folks had a similar commandant.. “Thou shall only get one meal per meal ticket!!” McDonalds 2:1 They were petty and so were we. So on this particular day a Captain came up to the gate and said ” I don’t have my ID, but I have to get to my aircraft.” I said with a smile.. ” Sir you can’t enter the airfield without an ID. “ He said, ” These bars on my shoulder are my ID!! Stand down!! ” I repeated what I had said earlier that you need ID to come onto the airfield. He said, “Boy I am a Captain in the United States Air Force” and then he shifted the gears in his jeep, pressed on the gas and drove off right by me. Now my first thought was to shoot him.. right in da back… which I had every right to do… but after careful consideration I’d rather… Anywho, I went into the guard shack and alerted my TS (Tech Sergeant). My TS was black and he immediately had a jeep full of SP’s in pursuit. They caught up with him and escorted him back to the gate. The TS gave us orders to search him. Man I have never seen anything like that. Them black SP’s ( Special Police) made me turn red the way they was searching that officer… every crack and crevice, turned his pockets out and made him take off his belt and shoes… you could smell the confederate juice coming out of him, he was furious!! After the search the TS told them to put him in the back of the jeep face down and escort the prisoner to the stockade. I got into the back of the jeep with my weapon pointed at him. My TS told me to “secure the prisoner…”, that meant kneel down on his back. When I put my knee on his back he slammed his fist on the floor. I knew right then and there I would have to lock my room door at night from now on… and that going out at night meant I would probably be missing in the morning. We got to the stockade and the SP’s escorted him in, but not before the Captain gave me that “reckoning day” nod and stare. If I fell off a cliff, he was going to be the one who pushed me. I had seen the Captain come to the airfield before that day and had recognized him when he first got there. After that day I never saw him again.
Sgt. Lummus was one of those kind… the kind that you see in Cool Hand Luke. Whenever that kind comes across a black man, there’s going to be a failure to communicate. The bus stopped, Lummus rode up on his motorcycle and boarded it. Lummus was the military police officer on duty that night. He was white and around 20 years old. The driver whispered something to him and pointed King out. Lummus told King to come to the front. King asked him, “What do you want with me up there?” So here is where the records get a sketchy. Everyone agrees words were passed when King didn’t comply. If past history is any indication it might of went down like this… Lummus: “Boy didn’t you hear me correctly.. get yo black azz up here right now!!” King: I’ll be there in a minute.. I’m back heh with yo mamma..” Okay.. I don’t know what words were passed… maybe the liquor did start talking to him. Anywho, history does say the encounter escalated after words were passed. Now Lummus had a blackjack also and swung it at King but missed. Both men were about the same age, so it wasn’t like Lummus was going to overpower a cornbread and biscuit eating, born in the cotton fields of Georgia, young very muscular big black man, that Henny was telling… “If he want some of this, Ima give him some!! So Lummus did the next best thing… he pulled out his .45-caliber. Now when his boy Hoover saw six and a hot barrel… he told Lummus, “I can keep him quiet” and they agreed to come up front. So I told you that there were more white folks on the bus than blacks, well as Hoover and King started to make their way up front, the white soldiers on the bus jumped up and begin closing in on them. There was going to be a misunderstanding. King bolted out the front door and into the darkness. Hoover ran also but not before Lummus had cracked him upside the head with his blackjack. A group of the white soldiers chased him and he was later found hiding in a ditch. They detained him while Lummus went off to get a transport.
Oh… You Back There With My Momma
March 22, 1941
This day goes down in history as being the only recorded case of a black man who was lynched “on a military base.” His name was Pvt Felix Hall.
“Pvt. Felix Hall was strung up in a jackknife position in a shallow ravine. A quarter-inch noose, tethered to a sapling on the earthen bank above him, dug into the flesh of his neck. His feet, bound with baling wire, were attached by a second rope to three other saplings, and his hands were tied behind him.
Hall succeeded in kicking loose his legs and freeing his left hand. Then, while he still had breath, he desperately scraped dirt loose from the ravine wall, trying to scoop out enough of the sienna-colored earth to build up a mound beneath his feet that he could stand on “to take the strain from his neck,” the FBI would later report. He got the dirt up to the arches of his dangling feet. But the earth was soft and loose and ultimately not enough to support his weight.
When investigators eventually arrived on the scene and examined his body, he’d been suspended in this position, in the woods of Fort Benning, for more than six weeks. Maggots were eating his flesh.
It was early in 1941, eight months before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and with World War II already raging overseas, the United States was recruiting young men to serve their country. Hall, a 19-year-old black man from Alabama, had volunteered just a few months earlier. At Fort Benning, he was training for the possibility of fighting overseas in a unit of African American soldiers.
The government never solved his murder.” –The Washington Post
After Hoover was taken from the scene, Lummus returned to his motorcycle patrol. Shortly afterward he saw a black soldier walking toward the base. Lummus wasn’t sure at first if was King and pulled up behind him, turned off the light on his motorcycle and said “You the one who was back there with my momma?” Okay.. I’m just talking figurality. The official investigation said Lummus told King he was under arrest and that King replied, “You can’t arrest me, you son of a bitch.” Lummus emptied five bullets into King. Lummus was the only one to testify and the only witness. The pretrial investigation was nothing but a military Klan meeting. In just a few hours their four page report concluded that Lummus had told “a straightforward story of justifiable homicide” and was “to be commended for his conduct.” They also recommended that the court martial proceed in order to “protect” Lummus. The court martial started the same day and just like when the governor of Mississippi shook the hand of the man accused of killing Medgar Evers in front of Mrs Evers, a similar spectacle took place. According to the transcripts of the trial, Hoover and King were not called by their names, but instead referred to by their race. The transcript was full of racist slang and the body of Hoover entered into evidence was stripped of the army uniform. It was a picture of him naked. and although King had only been shot in the torso, the evidence picture showed his genitals also. The trial officer in charged asked that the air conditioning be turned up because it was getting really hot wearing those hoods… Anywho, like the bible says there is nothing new under the sun.. the military said a knife was found near King’s body. As to why it was found near his body but not in his hand, they said, “it is not unusual for a knife to be flipped out of a man’s hand through nervous reaction when he is shot. Moreover, his head was so placed in that direction.” Now mind you the knife was twenty six feet away from him. Hoover testified that King did not have a knife. He checked his pockets that night at the Cozy Spot. King had hidden his cigarettes and Hoover had checked his pockets for them. Lummus did not initially say he saw a knife, but now added that King lunged for him and it was dark so he could not see. That’s when he shot him. The judge asked Lummus to come to the bench because he thought he saw some dust on his shoulders and he wanted to brush it off… okay I’m kidding… anywho… the court adjourned at 5:37 p.m., about 13 hours after King had died. Lummus was found not guilty and shipped off to his new post at Fort Knox, Ky., the next day. Eight months later Japan would attack Pearl Harbor and for the first time in modern history blacks would be enlisted to fight for America. By the way… the same day Lummus walked… that was the same day they found Pvt Hall body. As for Hoover, a few days after the trial on March 26, 1941, a letter addressed to a soldier’s mother described how his friend Hoover had been so badly beaten by white soldiers that he is in the hospital looking for him to die.” Albert King like Felix Hall remains whereabouts are unknown. King was buried in an unmarked grave at Porterdale Cemetery in Columbus, Georgia.
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