Reflections On An Extraordinary Veterans Week

As we enter the second half of November 2024, I wanted to share several events that made Veterans Week 2024 an extraordinary time for me.

I kicked off Veterans Week on Monday, enjoying brunch with a dear friend who was in town on a work assignment. She was born in Jamaica but grew up in London. She is now an American citizen and much of our conversation centered around the presidential elections and the implications for Black people around the world. Eventually, our conversation shifted to our families, and we ended up talking a deal about our parents.

I cherish Veterans Day because it is a day when I purposefully think about my father’s military service during World War 2. My father grew up not knowing his father because his parents’ marriage ended shortly after he was born. The U.S. military provided my father with the discipline and structure he needed to overcome many of the challenges associated with growing up fatherless. It was a blessing he often talked about, and the positive influences of his time in the military were evident in many areas of his life until his passing at age 87.

My father was part of the American occupation force that went to the island to ensure Japan’s total surrender. When I was a kid, he used to tell me how, at the tender age of 18, he was frightened and sick inside the hull of a military transport ship that encountered a storm while on its way to Japan. He encountered another round of storms on his way back to the United States, and he often reminded us kids of his experiences with seasickness.

Our family resided in New York City, and after the war, my father used his veterans’ benefits to earn a college degree, which helped him land a good job at Harlem Hospital. His profession provided a pathway to economic stability for our family, something others in our community lacked. My father was grateful to be a citizen of a country that valued his service enough to provide him with benefits that allowed him to not only better himself and his family but to eventually give back to his community and nation in a ministerial capacity.

My father knew that the benefits he enjoyed were not extended to all veterans, particularly Black veterans living in the South. As I grew into my teen years, he instilled in us kids an awareness that all was not right in America and that we needed to do our part as a family and individuals to make sure we and others were able to experience the fullness of the promises of America.

The day following my brunch was Tuesday, November 12th, precisely one week after the national elections. It was also the day PBS debuted an extraordinary documentary telling of a military overthrow of a legitimately elected bi-racial government in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898. The documentary revealed how hatred led para-military groups to ally with the former Confederates to topple a functioning government and destroy a prosperous Black community. The parallels between events that led up to the coup and what is being threatened in our country presently are unmistakable and unsettling. The PBS documentary showed how an emerging Black community in North Carolina, believing and trusting in the promise of America, witnessed neighbors and others burn down their businesses, murder their men-folk, and literally run many of them into nearby swamps for safety.

As I listen to the plans and declarations of Neo-Confederates who are celebrating the election of a convicted felon to the Office of the President of the United States, I, like many other “Black folk” who believed in the promises of America, look and wonder what it now means to be an American. During my Veterans Day brunch with my Jamaican-UK-American friend, we discussed just how menacing the times are, and the question was raised: What does it mean to be a Black person in a world structured to sustain White Supremacy?

On Friday, the last workday of Veterans Week 2024, I went to a theater and saw BLITZ, the latest work by film director Steve McQueen, who wrote and directed the 2013 biographical film TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE. BLITZ is a fictional account of a young bi-racial boy’s journey through the United Kingdom during the Nazi bombardments of World War 2. The film is both sobering and joyful in its depiction of the times. Overall, I found BLITZ thoughtful and entertaining, but in many ways, I now see it as a cautionary tale.

BLITZ is sobering in its dramatic portrayals of the devastation caused by the nightly aerial bombardments of the Nazi Blitzkrieg. It is a stark reminder of what fascists bring to the world. As I watched the depictions of Londoners frantically running into the subway stations for shelter, I kept thinking about the Black people of Wilmington, North Carolina, who had only the swamps and an old Black cemetery to run to for refuge against angry mobs who resented them simply because they descended from Africa and were successful.

BLITZ is also illuminating with its brief glimpses of what the Nazi bombings meant for Blacks and other Londoners of color. I have been to London several times and have extended family who lived through WW2 in that great city. BLITZ was the first cinematic portrayal I have seen revealing what my relatives’ wartime experiences in London were like. I applaud Steve McQueen for honoring himself, his people, and humanity through this film. McQueen’s commitment to telling untold stories and the caliber of his work are, in my estimation, treasured manifestations of BLACK EXCELLENCE. I also appreciate Apple Films for green-lighting the production. BLITZ makes its streaming debut on November 22, 2024.

Veterans Week 2024 reminded me of the need to be of service to MY country and, even more importantly, the need to serve in support of principle, integrity, accountability, justice, and democracy.

For Americans who did not vote for a felon to become their next president, I hope you will join me in moving beyond dismay and despair to thinking about what each of us can do to uphold the unrealized promises of America. The PBS documentary on Wilmington, North Carolina, teaches us that there is no compromising with individuals whose souls are consumed with HATE. The Good Book teaches us that EVIL is EVIL, and there is NO LIGHT in it, no matter how shiny the apple may appear.

For those who embrace the concept of a God Good, a Creator God who values all Humanity, it is time to get serious about living our faith and our commitments to Goodness. As we gather around our Thanksgiving tables, let us ask Our Creator to spare our nation and the world from the Darkness that is descending upon our government. Perhaps it is not too late for some form of Divine intervention to take hold and allow America to live up to the principles for which my father and so many other Americans served but never saw fully realized. Wilmington and World War 2 are compelling reminders of what Darkness brings to our nation and world if we continue down the path we are on.

May your Thanksgiving be meaningful, blessed, and memorable, and may it be a time in which you and your loved ones pledge to resist the Darkness and EMBRACE THE LIGHT.

Click the image below to go to my latest project, BLACKforLIFE.me, and see the ten takeaways I found in the film BLITZ.