Naked Truth: Born with Autism: An African American story

By Gregory Lewis

The school system fails an African American boy growing up in Mansfield, Ohio with undiagnosed Autism and others disabilities.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Jun 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781257351671

Book preview

GREG’S MEMOIR

Chapter 1 – Before School

The United States of America; a land of freedom, opportunity, and dreams, these three words work perfectly to develop an aura for soft global diplomacy. On the contrary, America is a land of injustice, racial discrimination, and inequality.

I'll take you back into the era of the mid-20th century, some people called it the dawn of the American Golden age some said other things. However, it was a time of mere survival for me.

October 31st, 1957, was a sunny Thursday in Mansfield, Ohio, as I have been told. My father was working in a factory, and my oldest brother Larry was at school. My mother was carrying me in her belly and while she was doing dishes, her water broke. She was a strong and disciplined young lady and so she called the ambulance herself and went to the hospital. Things were very difficult for her at that time, as soon as the doctor checked her situation, he told her that only one of you can live. It can be you or your baby. Father came to the hospital as soon as he got the phone call. My mother was crying and was really upset and so was my father. Nonetheless, my mother didn’t listen to the doctor and went into labor. It was a long hard labor, and I am sure it had been quite painful and difficult for her. But it is a mother’s love and bravery of giving birth to her child that no one can truly imagine. Thankfully, I was born, alive and so was my mother. She took me into her arms and loved me. It was an emotional and hard time for both my parents but thankfully we survived.

That evening some of the folks came over to congratulate my parents on their newly born son. My father named me Gregory Lewis. I am sure my older siblings might have been a little jealous of me as I was the center of attention of the whole family. I was very loved in my early years, getting all the attention, new toys, and baby puddings. I wish I could have remembered that lovey time myself rather than being told by parents or older siblings. It could have been a great memory of witnessing my mother’s belief in God, her happiness on God's blessings, and her true love for me.

My father was a busy man, he worked all day, he worked hard, and honest. He was a fine six feet young gentleman with a strong personality and deep voice. He always dressed well, like a gentleman, no matter what type of work he did there. He was very punctual, serious, and a patriot. He worked very hard to provide a good life to his wife and four kids at home, and he did give us a good life, free of financial worries. We were not rich but not poor either, a middle-class family you can call it.

My mother was a true beauty, she was elegant, the way she walked and the way she talked, was phenomenal. She wasn't very skillful though as she didn't work and she didn't even drive a car, I guess she just loved being a good housewife. She grew up in Tennessee, and married my father at just the age of 16, and moved to a small house in Mansfield, Ohio. My father was 21 years old at that time and both were young and in love. Then they started having kids and the rest is history until I come in the picture.

1960 started, it had been a little over two years since my birth, usually by this age, kids start talking but I didn’t speak a word clearly at all. Mother was worried that there may be something wrong with me but she didn’t know what was the problem.

The beginning of the 1960s was very interesting in American History, it was the time when President Jhon F. Kennedy won the election, black civil rights movements started and America was at war in Vietnam. President Jhon F. Kennedy promised some things that meant a lot to the black people living in the USA. He promised a domestic agenda called New Frontier. It was an agenda to bring new reforms and create new laws to eliminate inequality and injustice from the roots of America.

It was very ambitious, the way I see it, one can even say that it was the American dream of a president for the United States of America. Nonetheless, President Kennedy was very popular and liked by almost all Americans. The escalations with the eastern nations, more specifically Vietnam were high at that time and as soon as President Kennedy took the oath and became president, America went into all-out war with communist Northern Vietnam. The Vietnam war was quite expensive and was deadly. President Kennedy wanted to fight a war on inequality and poverty but the war on Vietnam was the primary focus and the government kept funding it. It would not be a lie if I told you that President Kennedy's government failed to fulfill its promises.

It was an era of some very prominent Black figures of America, the individuals whom I still inspire to date. One was Malcolm X, and the other was Muhammad Ali.

Malcolm X fought for African American rights from the 1950s to the 1960s. He first started by promoting Black supremacy which got the attention of hundreds of thousands of people and got the anger of the White population. Later on, he moved a bit away from the ideology of Black supremacy and shifted his move to a more inspiring one. He taught black African Americans to love themselves, to stand up for their rights, and rather than hating white people and blaming them for what they did, get united and work hard. Malcolm X served quite a significant role in the Civil rights movement and brought Black people out of their thinking of misery and inferiority.

Muhammad Ali, on the other hand, was a different personality, he was a vicious boxer, powerful, and a very prominent figure in the Black African American community. He was even loved by many white Americans. In 1960, he won the Olympic Gold medal and not only made the African Americans proud but also the United States of America. He was also a very controversial personality, due to his views on religion, politics, and war, especially the Vietnam war. He refused to be inducted into the military because he was against the war and was very public about it. Many hated him, many loved him, and for his views on the American war on Vietnam and soon after that he had to go to jail. The heavyweight champion of the world was undoubtedly the most famous sports figure in the world.

Well, that time, I knew nothing about such stuff, how could I? I was just a four years old small kid who was struggling to speak properly and it wasn't long till I understood that my parents' love for me is going to shift to someone else.

September 15th, 1961, was the year I hated my childhood because my parents had a new baby boy. All the attention and love were shifted to him. I stopped getting new toys and the attention that I loved. I was very jealous of him and wished that I was the youngest one in the family. Perhaps, this is how my other siblings must have felt when I got birth and I guess that's how it goes.

I remember one day in September, my siblings, specifically my older brothers threw a wheel at my face. I was hurt on the head and it was painful. I cried very loud and my mother shut me up cause my younger brother was sleeping in the other room. I felt miserable and waited for my father to get home so I can ask my father to give a beating to my older brothers. At night, probably around 8 o clock, he came home with his left hand hurt. He was quite upset; I didn't know if he hurt himself at work or a fight with someone. Nonetheless, I burst at him, without asking him what happened to his hand, and I opened my case. I was complaining about how bad Larry and Curtis hit me with a wheel and my head is still hurting bad. He didn't even listen to me, opened a can of beer and sat on a sofa, and started watching television. I was standing in front of him, staring at him, showing anger but it was hopeless and I felt miserable.

I Still remember that day, when my father turned on the television, there was news of the USSR testing its new missiles somewhere in the ocean. It had been just a few months that my dad brought television and it only had two or three channels at most. I remember when my father brought a new television at home and a dozen folks from the neighborhood came to see this new machine. It was a very fascinating technology back in the early 60s and not every house had a television in it. American people watched the first presidential debate on television for the first time in that era and I am sure it had been quite a big thing.

My relation with my mother wasn't much fascinating, as my younger brother Tony got all her attention at all times. She was mostly busy doing house chores or looking after him. I remember her cleaning Tony's dirty diapers, feeding him milk with a plastic feeder, and as he got a bit older feeding him different cereals with a spoon. I liked my mother, I used to hang around her most of the time. Whenever she had to talk on the telephone with her family back in Tennessee, I used to put my ears behind her back and listened to the vibrations she made while talking.

Mostly, I had to spend time by myself and I kind of liked being in my own company. I loved sitting beside the window of the house and saw cars or people passing by. I never missed hearing the church bell from the window on Sunday's sunny mornings.

Time passed by quickly, and in the year 1962, my parents bought a new home on 255 West Fifth Street and we moved in. It was a big house and in a nice white neighborhood. We were the only Black family in that area, some white folks welcomed us but some hated us. I didn't understand it back then, the racism and the inequality in America. But as soon as I started to grow up and spent my early life in the white neighborhood, I was getting to understand it step by step.

The house felt huge to me, on the contrary, it was just a normal middle-class home in a white neighborhood. But for me, it was way too big and, in the night, the upstairs felt very scary. I was very afraid of darkness and especially when I had to go to the bathroom from my room, which was close to the first-floor window facing the backside of the house. I remember I used to ask my older brother Larry or my sister Anita (will tell you about her in a moment) to take me to the washroom every day. They got angry every time they had to take me to the washroom but they didn't understand that I was even more frustrated to rely on them for going to the washroom.

Even sometimes, I got into argument with my older siblings at night when they refused to take me to the restroom and in that event, the shouting woke up my parents which got them angry as well and it made me feel bad.

The very next night before it was time to go to bed, my father got an idea to solve my bathroom problem. He called for me, made me sit right in front of him, I thought that I had done something wrong and it was time for me to get scolded by my father. My father never beat me, he beat my other brothers but never me. He scolded me multiple times and used to be very harsh when he did that. Anyway, he asked me to look in the eye and he said, Son, the world is full of horrors and it is up to you, how you deal with such horrors. You can either get scared and run away from such things or you can control your fear, try to overcome it, and deal with it like a man. Now, you have to remember what I said, and the next time you go to the bathroom, overcome any fear that you have and be a man. I said, But I tried it and still I get terrified of darkness. He said, Let’s do something together, if tonight you go to the bathroom all by yourself, I am going to buy you your favorite vanilla milkshake tomorrow. Well, that got me pumped a bit and later that night, when I had to go to the bathroom, I thought of milkshake more, rather than thinking of darkness and went there by myself. I was very proud of myself that day and while I was sitting on the toilet, I thought I can do anything I want; I can be anything I want, and little did I know, I believed in achieving success that day. I guess I really loved that Milkshake.

I had temper issues; I used to get angry all the time, and sometimes I even got violent. Like, hitting my brothers, breaking things, and hurting animals and birds. I didn't know why I got so angry sometimes and my actions hurt other people.

I liked torturing animals, I don’t know why I did it and honestly, I feel bad remembering those habits now. Anyway, I used to hurt animals, especially cats, I hated cats. I remember I was about six years old and it was winter. I managed to make a cat my prisoner. I leashed the cat with a rope I found in the basement room. Then I hung the cat with a nail on the wall and watched