A Man Named Daniel

CHAPTER 1

This is the true history of a man named Daniel who grew up on a farm during the early forties and late fifties. On that farm, there was a lot of work to be done by the younger boys--planting cotton, corn, tobacco, or some other kinds of grains in the spring. When summer comes around, it is time for gathering the grains and picking cotton. At an early age, we had already learned to operate farm equipment such as tractors and trucks; anything that would help us to become a better farmer. On some occasions, we plowed with a mule from sunup to sundown for one dollar a day and dinner. There was not much money to be made back then. My parents had to make good of what they had. There have been times I wished for rain to get a rest from the hot sun. I think the sun was much hotter back then than it is today. On the farm where we worked for years, the owner didn’t need us to work on Saturdays or Sundays. On Saturday, all the farmhands would go to town to do their shopping for the week.

Saturdays would be our only time to go to the movies. Farm boys only had weekends to go to town. There were five theaters in town: one for whites only, two for blacks only, and the other two for blacks and whites together. The whites sat downstairs and the blacks were forced to sit upstairs due to segregation. If there was a fire downstairs, blacks would be the last to get to safety. This was just the beginning of the way things happened to us back then. All department stores had a separate water fountain for the blacks.

Our first black policeman in our county was Collin Gilliard. He was not allowed to arrest a white man under any principle or reason. It was very simple: only white officers could arrest a white man. This was a way of life for us back in those days. It was very simple. There were not many chances given to blacks at that time. After the war broke out, things became different. Many blacks had to go and defend a country that was supposed to be partly theirs (the same as whites), but their country did not do very much to defend their Bill of Rights. My father, Clifton Andrews, was one who got drafted by the military to fight in World War I. After being there for a short time, he got hurt and was unable to perform his duties. Unfortunately, he was sent home on a medical discharge.

After coming home from the military, he met a young girl named Frances Williams.

They dated for a while and decided to get married on July 21, 1920. Both of them were young at that time. She was 14 and he was 24. From that union, 12 children were born: Bubsy, Tuot, Janie, Na-ke, Drane, and Marion--the first five died before I was born and Marion died on July 14, 1988. The remaining six are Katie, Cleo, Elease, John, J.C., and myself, Daniel. We were all brought up on a farm; it was much easier for our parents. We could grow our own food on a farm, because there were so many of us.

 Between World War II and the Korean Conflict, a lot of good men were killed or lost some part of their body. I was approximately six years old. My cousin, who fought in the second war, got shot in his leg. I think that was a blessing from God above, because he could have been killed. There are many who fought valiantly in the two wars but did not get full respect for their labor. My cousin was one of those men. After the war was over, the Germans who were captured from the war as prisoners were forced to work on the farm like slaves. My brother and I have memories of the Germans going to the store to buy their lunch. The son of the white lady who ran the store helped capture the Germans and took their weapons away. His wife showed off the weapons her husband had taken from them. That was not a wise thing to do, because it could cause her to get hurt or killed. They were very upset about that.

After they paid for their lunch, the truck carried them back to our house, where they sat on our porch to eat. We traded food with them because they had never eaten our kind of food before and wanted to see what it tasted like. They told us they liked black Americans. They also said blacks had been forced to fight a war that was not their concern, and that caused mixed feelings between the two. What they failed to see in America is that it does not matter whether you are black or white. When the time comes to defend your country in time of war, if you refuse to defend your country, you could be shot by a firing squad. After World War II was over, food and clothing were rationed for everyone; things were bad. People did not have money to buy what they needed. They had a book of stamps to buy everything. Most people can’t remember that far back, but I do. Those kinds of things have stuck with me for years. Both of the wars left the world in a terrible condition.