Mama’s Black Child: A Veteran’s Memoir

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At the tender age of eleven years, I knew that I was not compatible with my community or my family. The available careers dangles before this impressionable black boy were construction worker, schoolteacher, or maybe working in the orange grove. My qualms about becoming a construction worker centered on working for my older brother. I had misgivings about going to college to become a schoolteacher (which was my mother's wish). If I became a grove worker, I would have to work for a white man with an education probably inferior to my own. At that age, if I could have selected a career for myself, I would have been an airplane pilot. However, when I was eleven, little black boys were not allowed to become airplane pilots. In my community, I knew only a few people who could be called successful; that is, if success is defined as succeeding fully or in accordance with one's own desires. That is how I determine success. However, with the black mentality usually subordinate to the white man's wishes, sometimes blacks were confused about their "success.' If they were in their so-called station in life, perhaps kept there by subtle or not-so-subtle force, they mistakenly thought they were successful. Using my definition of success, those men in my community who were successful have left an indelible mark on my life.