Outside Looking In: The Long Journey

By S. Glenn Wakefield

This is the autobiography of a
little boy of mixed racial background. He was born in 1938, in rural class=GramE>Georgia, the child of sharecroppers in abject poverty .The
story takes the reader inside the thoughts of this boy and allows them to view
his feelings and actions as he becomes a man. The little boy experiences the
American process of character genocide as practiced by benevolent adults. He
refuses to accept the boundaries, the subhuman treatment and his stated inferiority
in a racist society .His inner strength and genetics enable him to obtain many
of his set goals. The boy finds that all things come at a price and he comes to
a conclusion. Although he is; he views himself not as a Caucasian, not as a
Native American or an African American but as a fortunate and gifted human
being.

He breaks 15,000 years of Native
American tradition and shares his experiences with the reader. class=GramE>"Just because the white man says it. That
don't make it so. Don't explain yourself to the whites because they will
never understand you anyway." Y ou come to feel
and understand the little boy's curiosity about adult behavior and his
determination to persevere and survive at a high personal cost as the rite of
passage takes him through his childhood. He learns the lessons of life that
good as well as bad people come in all colors. All people must be judged as
individuals and on personal merit. The reader becomes aware of the acuteness class=SpellE>ofhis pain and the unfairness of life as the boy reaches for
the American dream.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Feb 24, 2004
• ISBN: 9781414038193

S. Glenn Wakefield

S. Glenn Wakefield grew up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.  After attending West Chester College, he joined the Army and the Green Berets in 1960, serving as a Special Forces advisor in Vietnam and Laos for two years.  He was awarded a Purple Heart in 1963.  When he left military service, he completed his education, obtaining a B.A. from West Chester College and going on to obtain a Doctorate in educational administration from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. in 1972.  S. Glenn Wakefield has written three books: “Take No Prisoners” and soon to be released “Through The Glass Window” an autobiography and “Bacchus”.  “Bacchus” is a story of the personal discovery of hidden family secrets of a young Environmentalist.

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© 2004, 2005 by S. Glenn Wakefield. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording,

or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4140-3819-3 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4140-3818-6 (Paperback)

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DEDICATION

AUTHOR’S NOTE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Susan Whittlesey: helped me through the low points of revelation. My deceased parents: they made it possible and all the people who gave me a helping hand on this THE LONG JOURNEY

DEDICATION

This autobiography is dedicated to the many Americans who believe in fairness and go a step beyond and practice this belief in their everyday lives.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

OUTSIDE LOOKING IN BY S. G. W AKEFIELD

This is the autobiography of a little boy of mixed racial background. He was born in 1938, in rural Georgia, the child of sharecroppers in abject poverty. The story takes the reader inside the thoughts of this boy and allows them to view his feelings and actions as he becomes a man. The little boy experiences the American process of character genocide as practiced by benevolent adults. He refuses to accept the boundaries, the subhuman treatment and his stated inferiority in a racist society. His inner strength and genetics enable him to obtain many of his set goals. The boy finds that all things come at a price and he comes to a conclusion. Although he is; he views himself not as a Caucasian, not as a Native American or an African American but as a fortunate and gifted human being.

INTRODUCTION

I am an American, three times over. My genes come down to me from Native Americans—Seneca and Cherokee—people who were here 12000 years before the white man. They were systematically eradicated by ethnic cleansing and the concept of Manifest Destiny. Also, the English and Irish immigrants who came to these shores to escape oppression and gain religious freedom in the middle 19th century, many to live in poverty. Lastly, from my black forbears who came here to work in the gentile white man’s fields.

My father’s people came to this country in 1720 from Sussex County England. They settled in Anderson, South Carolina. Several generations pursued and after the civil war. John Henry Wakefield was born. His mother was a Seneca Native American and his father was an Englishman with a mulatto mother. John Henry married a half polish woman of color, Jane Brookousky, who was twenty years his junior. They had nine children eight lived. My father, Sherman, was the third child. The experiences he had growing up on the farm died with him. He never spoke of his personal hardships or addressed these feelings. Looking back at my father, he had many demons of the South and the North to deal with and I cannot rationalize why he treated me in such a vicious manner. But under the circumstances given his control over these demons he did the best he could. My mother protected me from his wrath and saved me from several beatings but when she was drinking she was as vicious as he. Her grandfather was a Cherokee Native American named Josh Smith. His family died on the Trail of Tears in 1838. He was adopted by a white family and raised with three white brothers near Athens, Georgia. The Trail of Tears was a seven hundred mile march from Georgia to Tahequah, Oklahoma. Josh Smith married a woman of color and had three children. Two boys and a girl, Cordelia Smith, my grandmother.

In 1846, my great grandfather O’Glenn came to the United States from Ireland. He married a Cherokee woman and had three children. My grandfather Daniel O’Glenn was his oldest child. He married Cordelia and they had eight children and six lived. My mother was the oldest and married my father when she was seventeen years old. My father is light brown with dark eyes. He is 6ft. 2 inches and weighs 240 lbs. My mother is 5ft. 7 inches and had dark brown hair and eyes. Mother had dark red hair when she was young and a fair complexion. They met in a small country school that only went to the eighth grade in Hull, Georgia.

I am the second of their five children and was born in Hull, Georgia but left when I was three and brought up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Each of the children is different. The oldest girl looks like an American Indian, I have red-brown hair with freckles and blonde highlights like my second sister. My third sister is very fair with large eyes and dark brown hair and the baby sister looks like a Native American. My red hair and appearance is not common among Native Americans or Black people. Once when I was six, I asked my mother What am I? She answered, Well, you are an all-American boy. You are all three races but belong to none. Never let anyone try to define you. You define yourself and judge others by the way they treat you and always treat them the way you want to be treated. She meant well but life is unfair to kids of mixed heritage. I was treated unfairly by Native Americans, blacks and whites. I was rejected by everyone—fellow students whose backgrounds ranged from the Philadelphia blue bloods to the Indiana white poor who came to the Philadelphia area for jobs during WWII. Adults punished me constantly just because I existed and teachers constantly make decisions that only harmed me. We are all born equal but some of us are more equal than others. I have better than average intelligence. I grew to six feet two inches and two hundred and twenty pounds with muscular strength and gifted athletic abilities. Why should such a boy have trouble growing up in the land of milk and honey? Why wouldn’t his abilities be obvious and encouraged? Why would he grow up facing pain and rejection at every turn on the road of life? Read my story. I used Hillary rather than Cordelia for my grandmother and the family name of Walker instead of Wakefield.

CHAPTER I

INNOCENCE LOST

I was born on a mat on an unfinished pine plank floor. The floor is vivid in my mind because of the splinters I later got in my feet. I don’t remember having shoes. The only furniture I recall in this sharecropper’s shack is the potbelly stove that stood in the corner. Again, this is clear in my memory because I was burned several times by this stove. The wooden shack was located off a washed out dirt road in rustic Hull, Georgia. It was divided into rooms by blue line rope with several army blankets, which hung on the blue lines ropes serving as room dividers. The two ropes were tied to nails opposite each other, changing the rectangular room into four different sections.

I came into the world weighing nine and one half pounds on October 31, l938, 6:00 am. A boy had coal black eyes and bright red hair and white skin. Doctor Banister was white, seventy years old, white hair and bright blue eyes. He smacked me on the bottom and pronounced me alive and healthy. I was told that I never made a sound as I turned my face to the Doctor with an inquisitive steel stare that said, who are you and why did you bring me into this cold and hostile environment from my warm resting place?

Now that will be fifty cents for my services. You know I came out here in my buggy because I thought Mary might have trouble with the child. She was so big. However, it all went well so I have to be off for my next call. Damn if his hair isn’t as red as mine was.

My father lent me the fifty cents, Doctor Banister. I want to thank you for your trouble. We will always be beholden to you, said Thomas Walker, my father.

It is alright boy. Hard working folks like you deserve some help. You take care him, here.

The old doctor washed his hands again and was out the door and into his buggy, off as the sun was still rising. Blue Seal Vaseline or petroleum jelly was applied to my eyes and rectum. The afterbirth was taken outside and buried in potashes. This shack was ten miles from route 29, the paved road that ran through this county. Why had a wealthy doctor made a special trip to insure the birth of a poor family’s child in the early hours of the morning? What secrets are never told in the Deep South and never spoken of behind closed doors?

I remember the pleasure of sharing fun with my siblings. I remember playing kick ball with my two sisters, Jane and Vivian. Jane was the oldest, two years older than me and Vivian was two years younger. I recall kicking the ball towards two men who were working on an old rusty car. One of the men picked the ball up and threw it back at me. He did not say anything. This large light brown man was my father. I believe this was a deduction by me because I don’t recall ever being told that he was my father. Thomas Walker was 6ft 2inches and 250 lbs. Not much on words this giant, he had lost most of his top hair at 21 years of age. He completed the eighth grade at the Judy Harris School, which was normal for poor people of color in the Hull, Georgia in 1924. After this formal education he went off to Atlanta to find a paying job. Thomas Walker found work as a tire changer, a money porter and a milk loader. Changing tires on old tractors was not easy work nor was carrying the money from the train or bus station to the bank enjoyable. The large bags of coins were very heavy; the cash was transported by white employees. Loading the heavy milk containers on to the horse drawn wagons was back breaking work also. Finally, after a year of this dull, dead end work, Thomas Walker came back to Hull to pursue farming. His father, John Henry Walker, had over 200 acres of good farmland and three mules. He needed some good farm help so Thomas signed on as help with room and board plus a share of the profits. Two seasons of farming for his father who always wanted more work than Thomas was willing to put forth, was enough. With no word to his father he left for Detroit, Michigan.

Help make America run, build a car, be part of the new future. This was the plan. A new adventure. However, the assembly lines were too much for Thomas. He found it hard to know what was up and what was not up or was it what was not down. He quit and got a job as a chauffeur, driving a limo for a black gangster who specialized in numbers pool, a form of lotto based on horse racing results, and women of the night. After being shot at a few times, Thomas believed that it would be in the best interest of all concerned to find safer employment. So he did not inform the gangster—not a word to anyone—and on a cold night in late December, Thomas left Detroit and returned to Hull. Having left without word to his father, and very embarrassed by his Detroit adventure Thomas thought it best to find work outside of the family. He hired on as a sharecropper with Bill Conrad of Decade County.

Bill Jacob Conrad was a short, stocky man with very small wide feet. His face was red from years of working in the sun, his hair was gray and his eyes were sky blue. He had a reputation of being a churchgoing man who was very religious. A white man has responsibilities and a white man does what he has to do, was his favorite saying. Conrad had a tall fat wife, a sickly son and a daughter named Ruth. Ruth was short and fat with buckteeth and crossed eyes. The wife was Martha and the son was Darien. Darien was a blue baby, his heart had a faulty valve or the old people said his heart had a leak. He could not run and play with the other kids because he would turn blue in the face when he was out of breath and sometimes faint. Martha was 6ft tall and 200lbs of muscle. Her eyes were light blue and her hair was brown and gray at the temples. She worked hard and appeared to wear the pants in the Conrad family.

Thomas was happy for a while owing more money to Bill Conrad at the end of the month than he was making. There was something missing in his life; so one Sunday he decided to attend church services at St. Mary’s Baptist. Church on Sunday was special for country people. Their roots were founded in myths and superstition and the church was really the only place people of color could meet in this county and not worry about being lynched or having their house burned to the ground. The well-to-do women of color wore light blues, pinks or whites. They were immaculate in their colorful wide brim hats and polished shoes. The men wore their best Sunday suits and white-ironed shirts. If one were to measure the cultural significance of the church during this period, they would realize that this was the beginning of self worth and an understanding of the value of an organization to achieve goals. Churches were the showcases where everyone came together to see, to talk and to judge their neighbor’s worth. This was the social event of the long week. If a little religion was absorbed in the process, so be it.

The heat was unbearable and the dust from the horse buggies made the conditions worse. He looked up and coming through what appeared to be a halo, perhaps, affected by the dust and the Sun was the most beautiful redhead he had ever seen. She was accompanied by two other girls and a ruddy-faced, wrinkled old man. The old man was well dressed and on the dusty, red Georgia clay yard of the church, his black shoes glistened in the sun. His hair was black and his eyes were blue/gray like fish eyes. Thin lips and no smile, this man’s appearance said life was all business with no pleasure. The two girls with the redhead were similar in dress style but their faces were very different. One was short with freckles, round face and stocky. The other was tall, darker and thin with angular features and a long neck. The red head was perfect in every way. About 5ft.7, maybe 130 lbs. light brown skin and long straight shapely legs. She had several freckles sprinkled over her up turned small nose. Thomas stepped back and waited until they had passed him. He decided to wait until after church and make all the necessary inquiries to several of his friends who had attended the eighth grade Judy Harris School. He would find out who her family was and what he would be getting into if a courtship ensued.

It was time to enter the small white church with the high steeple and large front double doors. Inside the front doors stood a deacon to take an opening offering before the congregation was seated. The huge single room had a high ceiling and stained glass windows. There were many rows of benches with an aisle down the middle and