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Dad’s Flag
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Like many African-Americans, my dad always flew a US flag in
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our front yard. The blue paint on our house was chipping. The
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fence or the handrail by the stairs or the front door existed in a
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constant state of disrepair, but that flag always flew brand new.
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Our home was by the river that divided our Iowa town. [1] At the
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edge of our lawn, high on an aluminum pole, flew the flag, which
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my dad would replace as soon as it showed the slightest tatter.
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My dad was born into a family of sharecroppers on a white plantation in Greenwood, Missouri, where
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black people bent over cotton, just as their enslaved ancestors had done not long before. My
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grandmother, like all the African-Americans in Greenwood, could not vote, use the public library or
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find work other than sweating in the cotton fields or in white people’s households. So, in the 1940s,
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she packed up her few belongings and her three small children and fled North. She got off the Illinois
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Central Railroad in Waterloo, Iowa. [2] Eventually, she got work – cleaning houses.
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Dad, too, struggled to find recognition in this land. In 1962, at age 17, he signed up for the army. [3]
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Dad expected that if he served his country, his country might finally treat him as any other American.
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Before the official end of his service, however, he was released under obscure circumstances. He
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had to labor in a series of service jobs for the rest of his life. Like all the men and women in my
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family, he believed in hard work. But like everyone in my African-American family, no matter how
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hard he worked, he never got ahead. [4] When I was young, that flag outside our home never made
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sense to me. I didn’t understand Dad’s patriotism.
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My father always knew that the Black Americans’ contributions to building this rich and powerful
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nation were undeniable. In an overlooked but vital role, generation after generation, we have helped
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democracy grow into the true version of itself: a democracy that aims to ensure dignity, freedom and
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justice for all. The United States is a nation founded on both these ideals and an illusion – to be read
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in our Declaration of Independence. [5] The founding document of the US was adopted on July 4,
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1776, by the 13 original British colonies of America and declared them “free and independent
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states.” The document claims that “all men are created equal”. But did the white men who drafted
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those words believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of women, Native Americans and
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Black Americans in their midst? [6] Yet although they were denied the freedom and justice promised
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to all, many Blacks trusted in the American creed.
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Through centuries of resistance and protest, African-Americans have helped the country live up to
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the founding ideals of the Declaration of Independence. The Civil Rights Movement culminated on
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August 28, 1963, in the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. [7] The demands included the
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end of discrimination in education, housing, employment, and more. Protesters and organizers met
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members of Congress and President John F. Kennedy, while the march ended at the Lincoln
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Memorial, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. It was a fight for
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equal rights. And not only for the Black Community – their struggles paved the way for every other
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rights struggle, including gay rights, immigrant and disability rights. Without the passion and the
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strenuous and patriotic efforts of Black Americans, US democracy might have developed differently.
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Now age 43, I am part of the first generation of Black Americans in the history of the US to be born
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into a society in which we have full rights of citizenship. [8] We were once told that we could never
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be American. But it was due to our oppression that we became the most American of all. My father
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knew exactly what he was doing when he raised that flag.
Adapted from nytimes.com, loc.gov, thenational.academy.