Out of the Darkness Comes the Light: When You Have Given up Hope You Have Lost Everything

By Andre Gilchrist

"Out of the Darkness Comes the Light", is a novel written by Andre Gilchrist. This novel follows the authors first book "You Thought You Couldn't Change, Either", which was a true and actual account of the life of Andre Gilchrist. This is a novel based on the fact that much of the book comes from actual facts while other parts are derived from the authors life experiences and events the author has lived through.

The background information in this novel is actual. The author took an enormous amount of time researching the information from family members still alive, documents that have been saved and passed on from one generation to another to have the story as true and credible as possible. The main action takes place in a fictitious town called Hopesville, Michigan.

The author through much of his life experiences during the course of the novel covers the time periods covering much of the civil rights area extending from Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in May, 1954 to and including other events lasting to the race riots in Newark, New Jersey and Detroit, Michigan in July of 1967. The novel touches on major events occurring in the present day such as hijacking and terrorism.

The main theme that the author is trying to touch on in this novel is that there is always hope, hence comes the name of the town Hopesville. The author believes that when we cease to believe in hope we close the door to the future. The author wants to impress to those reading this manuscript that no matter how dark and gloomy and totally helpless and hopeless the times might seem to us and we feel that there is no reason to continue that Out of the Darkness Comes The Light!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: May 31, 2009
• ISBN: 9781467056311

Andre Gilchrist

The author, Andre Gilchrist, author of the play Addiction and Its Effect on the Family Unit, is writing this play based on his own personal experience with being caught up in the bowls of active addiction. This is not fiction but is based on actual events that the author has experienced and lived through himself. The author, Andre Gilchrist, was born in a middle-class African American family with a mother, father, and brother (all of whom are deceased now and have been deceased for quite). The author wants to emphasize that whatever he has gone through and the things in the past he might have done should in no way be construed as a shortcoming as his parents’ fault. The author in no way came from a dysfunctional family. He came from a loving household where his parents were married the whole time until their untimely deaths. Their only concern was to provide a life that would be better for their two young sons than what they had to personally endure. The author, Andre Gilchrist, was given all the opportunities in life a child could every possibly want, need, or desire. The author was afforded luxuries—such as being sent to a basketball camp in the summer and being sent to a private high school, where the author never took advantage of—and now can see the errors and misguided behavior of his youth. After entering the military and his life constantly going a downward climb to degradation, the author finally reached rock bottom. The author reached a point where there was no turning back, and he made a decision to change his life around. Being a high school dropout, he entered college and went from that stage in his life to achieving a master’s degree in political science. To learn more about the author, I invite you to go to his website at http://www.notjustawriter.com. There you can read about all of his present-day achievements, acclamations, degrees, and awards, and there is also information there on some other books he has penned.

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BIRTH OF FRANK WILLIAMS 

It was a chilly Saturday late in the morning of January 22, 1923. The town of Mullins, South Carolina was just recovering from the effects of Hurricane Belinda that had swept through Marian County destroying everything within its path. Then Hurricane Belinda had been recorded as a category four hurricane. Larson and Martha Gilchrist had been residents of Mullins, South Carolina; Marian County their entire childhood and adult life. They had never faced or went through a storm with the kind of potency and destructive force that Hurricane Belinda possessed. They had already given birth to and were raising four other children, Sarah, Claire, John and Nathaniel. One male child had died after being alive for two and a half days. Larson was working as a sharecropper while Martha was a housewife. Martha was about to give birth so the family was gathering around waiting for the midwife to show up and at the same time working and cleaning up their home from the effects of Hurricane Belinda. It was a disaster area. Trees had been blown down from the powerful winds of Hurricane Belinda and there was flooding every where the eye could see but all this negativity did not seem to matter because a new life was about to be born and with that new life was an increasingly strong hope for the future. Struggling through the blowing winds and flooding the midwife, Ann Marie Perkins, finally made it to the home of Larson and Martha Williams. Martha was having an unusually rough time; she had been in labor for 10 hours. There was a lot of concern and worry about the birth and even for Martha herself if she would be able to make it through this rough labor. The weather conditions were not helping either. The one thing that the family had going for them was that they were a very spiritual family and their faith in God was unwavering. You can describe their faith like the palm trees in Hawaii. They might bend from the powerful blowing of the winds but they do not break. As the family sat around praying and holding hands the midwife came out with a majestic glow over her face and then everyone knew that every thing was going to be alright. She had announced that Martha was fine and that she had just given birth to a male child and that Larson and Martha had named the child Frank Williams.

Frank Williams was born into a time period where African Americans found themselves struggling to live from one day to the next never knowing what the next minute or hour would bring. Yet, there was a sense of hope for the future and that hope was in the lives of their children. Frank’s parents were sharecroppers who lived on land owned by their white employers. The house consisted of a fireplace and heating in the house, with an outdoor plumbing that was frequently referred to as an outhouse. They lived out in the country. Being a sharecropper they worked on another individuals land but at the same time was given a small portion of land for themselves. When working in their employer’s farms they usually would earn about 8 cents a day and they usually worked five days a week depending on the weather. On their portion of the land they raised hens and roosters, chicken, and cows which provided them with their milk. They also grew their own vegetables Their employers would send a truck around to pick up the sharecroppers to work on their farms, where they grew tobacco and cotton. They would work five days a week usually from 6-7 am to 4 pm with one hour off for lunch; where they would usually go back to their farms and cook their meals at their homes. They had a local neighborhood store which was in town and since they lived in the country Frank and his siblings either walked to the store which was about two miles or was able to catch a ride there from Frank’s father. Since Frank and his family lived in the country when the time came for Frank and his siblings to start attending school they had to go to the school (Mullins Colored High School) in town and their mode of transportation was either by car or they had to walked there. The social climate there was a lot better than in a lot of other places in the South. The blacks had not been given the right to vote yet but in the area that Frank grew up in their was no lynching going on or at least he was not aware of it. Sarah, Frank’s older sister, was fortunate enough to work in a local diner in town as a waitress even though the blacks who would go to the diner had to go around the back to acquire their food.

Life in this time period pre dating six years before the start of the Great Depression life was not easy or rewarding for Frank and his family, but being brought up in a Christian home their faith and belief in God was unwavering. Frank and his family would attend constantly the local Baptist church. For some unknown reason the spiritual uplifting they received on Sunday was enough to sustain them through the rest of the week. Frank would later rely on this upbringing when things would seem like they couldn’t get any worse. Even when working in the field the constant singing of spiritual songs seems to make those long hours go by amazingly quick. As rough as life was Frank and his family were amazingly close. They might not have had as much food as they would have liked to have but one thing they did have and no one could take away from them was that they had each other. As Frank started school he found an escape in the world of education and that escape would magnify itself later on his life. Frank started school at the ripe age of 6. In elementary school Frank studied basic Mathematics, Writing, English and History and once he went into high school he started taking courses that involved the sciences: Biology, Chemistry, Algebra, Geometry and Physics.

Even though life was pretty rough for Frank and his family they always managed to find ways to enjoy life. One such way was on Saturday’s Frank and his family and friends would walk the two miles into town, which usually took a number of hours and once they arrived in town they would proceed to an area referred to as The Block. The Block was a number of streets in downtown Mullins, which consisted of various restaurants and stores and they would just go window shopping, but never going inside of the stores. During the weekdays Frank and others his age were in school, but when school was out they would return home to the farm in the country and they would either work on the farm with their parents or they would do chores around the house being that their parents were sharecroppers and had a farm at home in which they grew their vegetables and other food to eat. In between time they would have to study for school the preceding day. In the morning before school started and they started the two mile walk the men would usually go to the barn and take the tobacco that was picked and cooked from the fields and grade it and get it ready for distribution.

Frank graduated from Mullins Colored High School in May of 1941. At this time there was no twelfth grade so when people passed the eleventh grade they were awarded their high school diploma. That summer Frank worked on the farm with the rest of their family picking and cultivating cotton and tobacco. Frank knew instantly that he did not want to spend the rest of his life working on the farm, making money for someone else and being paid peanuts for all the hard work they were putting in. Frank realized that the type of life he wanted was going to require that he gain some type of education, so the following fall Frank enrolled at Voorhees College in nearby Denmark, South Carolina. Frank was taking classes that would enable him to have a meaningful career once he graduated. Unfortunately, like everything else in Frank’s life as soon as things were looking up something would come up and swap his ambitions and goals for the future. This time it was World War II. On June 30, 1943 Frank had to cut short his college education because at the young age of 18 he was drafted into the United States Army.

FRANK WILLIAMS MIGRATES TO DETROIT, MICHIGAN 

Frank Williams was drafted into the United States Army on June 30, 1943 at Fort Braggs, North Carolina. Frank’s military occupational speciality was a Longshoreman. Longshoreman was a soldier who loaded bombs and explosives onto Liberty Ships ( Liberty Ship was the largest class of civilian made warships during World War II or ever) for transport to Europe at what was called ammunition piers. This was a very dangerous and hazardous occupation but Frank was determined that no matter whatever position he held in the Army that he would excel at it. In this occupation Frank qualified at the MM 30 Caliber Rifle. After receiving the necessary training at Fort Bragg Frank set out for his overseas duty on one of these Liberty Ships.

* Even though Frank found himself fighting blatant injustices during America’s fight against Nazism and Fascism during World War II, Frank and the other black military personnel found themselves also fighting racial injustices in this war. This war of injustices continued for Frank and the other black men after the end of World War II.

Frank saw firsthand the Army’s policy that black troops couldn’t be relied on in combat and were best used as service troops or to serve on Liberty ships loading dangerous weapons, even though they had not been properly trained to handle ammunitions. This is where Frank has been assigned to serve. A lot of Frank’s friends he met in the military had lost their lives doing this type of work. One of the men that survived along with Frank was a man known as Ben Jones, whom Frank and Ben would become very good friends and Frank after the war was over would go to live with in Detroit, Michigan.

All the branches of the armed forces were segregated. In 1942, after intense pressure from the Roosevelt administration and civil rights groups ( mainly the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP), the Army and other branches of the armed forces opened its general services to blacks, but they were denied positions as clerks, radio operators, and gunners. They mostly served in positions as mess attendants, steward’ mates, common laborers-cooking, cleaning, shining shoes, doing the laundry and loading ammunition ( where Frank and Ben served).

When not on ships the black servicemen were housed in segregated barracks and base facilities. They were served their meals only after the white servicemen had finished eating. Frank wrote home complaining of being treated like a slave outfit.

Frank departed Fort Bragg on March 1, 1944 and arrived in Northern France on March 7, 1944. Frank took part in several major campaigns in France, including the major one in Normandy, which would end World War II. Frank departed France for the United States on February 28, 1946 and arrived back at Fort Bragg, North Carolina on March 10, 1946. Before leaving for France Frank had to be immunized for tetanus, typhoid and small pox. Frank was discharged from the Army five days after returning back to the United States from France. Frank was discharged as a private and had served in the Continental United States for seven months and twenty two days and served overseas for two years and ten days. During Frank’s tenure in the military he earned the Service Medal with 2 Bronze Service Stars, Good Conduct Medal and the World War II Victory Medal. Being young and idealistic about life and the world in general Frank was beginning to form goals and ambitions as to what he wanted to do with his life. These goals and ambitions were based on the premise that life would be different for Frank when he returned home from the war since he was risking his life for his country and the freedom for others. When Frank returned home and found nothing had changed back in Mullins the revelation that he had risked his life for his country who really did not reciprocate was becoming a very disappointing fact of reality. This realization helped to form Franks social and political views of his country and government, which would play a large part in Frank’s later life.

Now back at home in Mullins, South Carolina Frank found himself back at working on the farm and after getting a taste of life outside of Mullins being on the farm sharecropping was the last thing Frank wanted to do. Frank found himself trapped though because he knew he needed to work to feed himself, so Frank settled in back at home but never gave up hope. While working on the farm and helping his parents work on their own little farm Frank continually was attending the local Baptist Church where he was developing and strengthening his belief in God. So Frank was living and working one day at a time and at the same time praying and hoping for something that would come by and change his life and at the same time knowing he needed to take some action on his part to make his wishes and hopes turn into reality. Frank started communicating through letters with a friend of his whom he had met while in the army, Ben Jones, who happened to reside in Detroit, Michigan. After much conversation Ben was able to convince Frank to relocate to Detroit, Michigan and live with him until he was able to get on his own two feet. So in the summer of 1948 Frank found himself relocating to Detroit, Michigan where his friend Ben Jones had helped him get a job with himself working at the Ford Automobile Factory.

* Information here was obtained from A Soldier’s Story by Joseph L. Galloway and Explosions At Port Chicago by Earl Ofari Hutchinson (commentator for Pacific News Service and author of The Assassination of the Black Male Image and The Crisis in Black and Black).

BIRTH OF ETHEL JACKSON 

Harold Jackson ( Ethel Jackson’s father) was born and living in Virginia Beach, Virginia where he met and married Henrietta McDonald, who was from Madison, Florida. After living in Virginia Beach for about five years after their marriage they relocated to Hampton, Virginia where they lived and raised their four children until their deaths many years later.

When Harold and Henrietta Jackson moved to Hampton, Virginia they lived on a small farm in the country they had purchased until their death. Harold was a dairyman while his wife Henrietta was a typical housewife. Harold Jackson worked as a dairyman ( delivering milk to people in the neighboring community) even though he had attended and graduated from Hampton Institute (a black institution of higher learning). On the farm they grew their own vegetables and raised cows, chickens, a few pigs and other small animals. On special occasions they would have fish that they would purchase from people who caught the fish from the neighboring fishing pond.

The interstructure of Harold’s and Henrietta’s home was the type of basic housing you would find young blacks living in this period of time. There was no indoor plumbing so they had what is referred to as an outhouse to meet their bathroom needs. There were no electrical appliances anywhere to be found and they had a wood stove (usually fueled by wood or coal) to heat up the house and cook their meals on. A large majority of their transportation was done by walking and if they were lucky they would find someone with a horse and buggy they could hitch a ride with.

Harold and Henrietta had given birth to three children already ( two boys and one girl ) when one chilly morning in January ( to be exact January 28, 1930; 3:45 AM) Henrietta gave birth to their fourth child, a girl, with the aide of Sheryl Atkins, a local midwife. Henrietta had pretty painful pregnancies and the same was true for this last one. You have to realize at this time the women giving birth were not given any type of medication or anything for the pain. Henrietta was in labor for about six hours when Ethel made her entrance into this world.

As a young child Ethel mostly worked on the farm and attended church. The church building was really not that much different than many of the small country houses at that time. It was a small country building with an outhouse and like many restaurants and schools at that time it was still segregated. This separation of schooling continued until 1954 when Brown vs Board of Education in Topeka, Kansas overturned on May 7, 1954 a previous legislation called Plessey vs Ferguson which dealt with separate but equal education in terms of schooling. Ethel started her school education in the year 1936, when she was six years old.

When Ethel started school she walked along with the other black children to a local elementary school, which was only a short distance away. When it came time to go to High School ( George P. Phoenix High School ), Ethel and her friends caught a bus to George P. Phoenix High School which was located on the campus of Hampton Institute, which like everything else was still segregated. The white students went to school on a campus on the other side of town.

Ethel maintained a very close personal relationship with her parents and other siblings. Living out in the country all Ethel’s family had really was one another. When they weren’t working on the farm or going to church they were in close proximity to one another. Many times Ether found herself in fights protecting her older sister. In those days Ethel was known for having a quick temper but with age she started to mellow out. After class Ethel would hurry back home in order to take care of her chores she had to do around the house and work on the farm before it got dark.

The social and political environment during Ethel’s childhood was no different than in other parts of the South. There were separate bathrooms for whites and blacks as well as separate water fountains. There was no lynching going on in the vicinity where Ethel and her family lived but they always lived under the social umbrella of knowing that it could happen at any given time. There really wasn’t any such thing as entertainment to speak of as for the women because they were indoors most of the time except for when they were in church or going to school. There was a movie theater in town the men would go to but like everything else the theater was for blacks only. The whites attended a separate theater which was distances away from the black theater.

ETHEL MIGRATES TO DETROIT, MICHIGAN 

After high school graduation Ethel’s brother and most of the young men in the area went into the Army to fight in World War II. The area they lived in catered to the service men. Langley Air Force Base was in walking distance to Ethel’s family home. In Norfolk, Virginia you would find the Navy shipping yard and in Newport News, Virginia there was the shipping yard that built most of the ships that were used in World War II.

After Ethel’s graduated from high school she didn’t see much of a future for herself living at home on the farm. Ethel wanted more for herself and like many others she knew that the work and money was in the North. Ethel contacted an aunt she had in Detroit and soon was on her way to start herself a new life.

During the summer following Ethel’s graduation from high school she worked on her parents farm helping them with the farming and growing of vegetables and other forms of substances to be used for their meals. Ethel was already missing her older brothers who had already left to join the Army. Ethel envied her brothers for getting out of Hampton, Virginia and now were getting an opportunity to travel and see the world. Up until this time Ethel’s who world and life was centered around her parents home in the country and the few trips into town where their schooling took place. Ethel’s mother, Henrietta was a very smart intuition when it came to things that her husband or children were feeling. She could see the depression in Ethel’s face even though Ethel fought hard to hide her resentment with being stuck on the farm. Like most parents Henrietta wanted more for her children than what life had presented for her.

Henrietta and Frank had many long conversations after Ethel and her sister had went to bed or when they found time to be alone about what they could do to help their children. After much discussion they decided to contact Henrietta’s sister, Essie Browning, and asked her if it would be possible for one of her children to come and stay with her in Detroit. Essie’s response after talking with her husband was an overwhelming and exciting yes. Now Henrietta and Frank found themselves in another and difficult predicament. Which sister would be the one to go to Detroit and which one would remain at home and aide them on the farm? Frank and Henrietta would loved to have been able to send both to Detroit but realistically they needed one to remain at home and helped them on the farm, after all Frank and Henrietta were starting to get up there in age and were starting to experience health issues.

Essie Browning, Henrietta’s sister from Madison, Florida met her husband, Alexander McHoney in Florida. After a short courtship they were married and moved to Detroit, Michigan and lived with Alexander McHoney’s parents for a short time until they were able to purchase and move into their own home. Like most young black men at that time living in Detroit Alexander McHoney worked at the Ford Automobile Company. He started working as an assembly line worker and worked his way up to a shift foreman. It was here that Alexander met Ben Jones (Frank’s army friend) who was one of his workers and eventually invited Frank Williams to come up to Detroit from Mullins, South Carolina and stay with him until he was able to get his own place. Essie McHoney worked as a waitress in a local restaurant and made extra money sewing clothes for her neighbors. The McHoney’s were very involved in their local Baptist Church. Alexander was a deacon and his wife was a deaconess. For some reason they were unable to have children of their own so they were just as excited as Ethel was about Ethel coming out to live with them and at the same time Ethel and her aunt Essie would be able to catch up on lost time.

Now the decision needed to be made of which sister would be the one to send to Detroit to live with Alexander and Essie McHoney. This decision was of such importance to both sisters that Henrietta and Frank believed that both sisters should have some input into this decision being made. Their one fear was making the decision themselves and having one of the sisters resent them later on in life for not being the one given the opportunity to start a new life. Henrietta and Frank even went to their local pastor to get some spiritual input and direction into this ever so important decision to be made. After much conversation back and forth the day came for a decision to be made and start arranging plans for the one sister to get ready for their trip to Detroit. Boy did Henrietta and Frank have a surprise waiting for them. One Sunday after coming home from church service the family sat down after eating dinner to make this decision. It was time for the sisters to give their input and Ethel’s sister had a shocker for them. She was not interested in leaving home. She had just started dating a young man that she had met in church ( who would eventually wind up becoming her husband) and that she was perfectly content in staying at home and working on the farm and helping out her parents. She boldly stated to let Ethel go. Unlike Ethel she had no visions or wishes to travel and see the world outside of the Hampton, Virginia community. The rest of the family could not believe what they had just heard. They repeatedly asked her two or three times was she sure that this is what she wanted. After she emphatically replied that she was sure and that this is what she wanted Henrietta and Frank told Ethel that it looks like you will be the one going to Detroit. Ethel and her sister was so close but this sacrifice made them even closer but at the same time made the leaving more difficult than expected because of the perceived sacrifice that they thought Ethel’s sister had made.

Even though the decision had been reached as to which sister would go to Detroit it would be a while before the event would actually take place. Henrietta and Frank were not exactly living an affluent life style and didn’t have extra spending money just laying around so they would have to find a way to raise the money for the bus ride to Detroit and have extra money to give Alexander and Essie McHoney to pay for their daughter’s room and board until she was able to find work and start paying for herself. Because this family was so close everyone pulled together to help out. Both of the brothers who were in the Army would send money home from their pay to help out, Alexander and Essie McHoney also had extra money put aside to help them and even Henrietta’s and Franks church community took up a collection to help Ethel when it came time for her to leave.

Ethel took the remaining time at home and put it to good use. She engaged in meaningful conversations with her parents and sister. Ethel realized that once she left for Detroit that she did not know when she would be able to see her family again. For once in Ethel’s life working on the farm and doing her chores in the house did not really bother or upset her. She kept foremost in her mind the fact that soon she would be leaving Hampton to start a new life in Detroit, Michigan. There was a new calm that you could see over Ethel’s face. Nothing seemed to bother her now. She always had a smile on her face and something cheerful to say to everyone. Ethel and her sister would spend hours and hours alone just conversing about life and the expectations for the future. Ethel’s sister would engage in conversation about her first boyfriend and about being in a romantic relationship for the first time in her life and that soon Ethel would understand how she felt and what she was going through. Not only was Ethel a beautiful person on the outside but also on the inside. Also during this time Ethel was constantly keeping in touch with her two brothers in the Army and would look forward to their letters describing the things they were doing and the various and different places they were going and the people they were meeting. They talked about meeting blacks from all over the South who had used the Army as an escape mechanism to get away from home and start a new life elsewhere. Ethel was so envious of her brothers but now she was going to have something to write to them and describe her experiences and the people she would meet once she migrated to Detroit, Michigan. Ethel also at this time was writing weekly letters to her aunt Essie developing a relationship with her through the mail system and letting her aunt know about herself and her ambitions, hopes, goals and dreams for the future and in return Essie would answer letters letting Ethel know what to expect as a young Black woman up North.

Finally, the moment was coming upon Ethel that she had been waiting and dreaming about for the better part of a year after the decision had been reached that she would be the one to go to Detroit, Michigan. She was to leave on a Monday morning in late July and the previous Sunday after church service they gave Ethel a going away party. They