Of rage and honesty
By Brandon Astor Jones
My adolescent years were spent in an area on Chicago's south side. Most people called it Hamilton Park from a natural forest preserve by the same name situated in its north-west sector.
The park is bordered by the Illinois Central train tracks on its east side. Almost directly across from the front door of our house was a viaduct under the tracks which allowed us easy access to the park. The tracks were a dividing line for the people who lived on either side — blacks to the east and whites to the west.
The park itself was a violent no-man's land for the unsuspecting and foolish. On Wednesday nights the skating rink was open to blacks; on Thursday nights, for whites. Officially on the nights in question, no-one was ordered to stay away. But it would be nothing short of suicide for members of one group to show up on the night the other group was designated to be there.
Every day there were roving groups of marauding whites and blacks whose only earthly purpose was to catch, outnumber and beat the crap out of members of the other group.
On more than a few occasions, black couples who obviously did not know about the violent nature of Hamilton Park were brutally set upon by white groups. After being forced to watch her companion beaten beyond recognition, the girl was subjected to repeated rapes by every member in the group.
You cannot imagine the terror of the visiting sister of my next door neighbour as she was forced to watch seven white youths with tire irons and baseball bats beat, kick and stomp her companion into unconsciousness. Then each of them (while two more held her down) had their way with her. They left her naked. Some of her bloody clothes were found by police the next day on the other side of the park.
Needless to say, these and similar acts of terrorism by whites routinely practised against blacks inspired the formation of equally savage roving groups of black marauders who strategically hid out in the park. Their purpose was to exact a violent retaliatory one-upmanship on unsuspecting whites. To serve at least one day a month on "the crew" was considered neighbourhood duty.
In a patently racist society, participating in such tit-for-tat violence is a cultural rite of passage from adolescence into young black manhood in African America.
As I remember the year 1956, I was often the caddy for one of the most powerful black men in Chicago, the late Alderman Ralph Metcafe, Sr. One of the many things I respected in Metcafe was his absence of hypocrisy.
Before teeing off from the bluff-like rise atop the Jackson Park Golf Course, Metcafe often asked me to hand him the daily newspaper from his golf bag.
On a particular Saturday morning, Metcafe read aloud the newspaper's headlines: "Negro Youths Brutally Beat White in Hamilton Park". Without looking at his golf partner, Metcafe handed the paper back to me and simultaneously motioned for me to hand him his driver. He turned to line up on the ball. Without even a glance in my direction (knowing that I lived across the street from the park), he asked me outright, "You know anything about that?"
I said, "Yes, sir".
He turned his attention to the ball. His swing left much to be desired. We all watched the ball land in a sand trap. I noted anger in Alderman Metcafe's visage. As he handed me the driver, he asked, "Did the right guy get the beating?"
I answered, "The girl he (and others) raped pointed him out for us".
He turned to his golf partner and pointed down the fairway. "Okay, even you ought to be able
to do better than that", he said.
To me, it was clear that Metcafe did not like what the newspaper headline said. Neither was he happy to hear what I told him. But it was also clear that he understood how it all came about.
There are a few black people — especially men — in regional and national politics these days who posture piously. It is as if they want to suggest to their white colleagues that they cannot understand how young black men can become so enraged as to succumb to the urge to assault white men indiscriminately.
I stand and agree with anyone who is against violence — especially racial violence. It has to stop before we all do each other in. But honestly understanding how this violence comes about is in no way a sign that one condones it.
I do not condone what happened to Reginald Denny [a white truck driver badly beaten during the Los Angeles uprising last year], but I certainly understand how the young black men felt who beat him.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]