Family

That picture a few days ago prompted some emails to my brother John Dean. What I found out was that my grandfather was living and working in Cushing, OK. He had a ruptured appendix, and when my grandmother took him to the hospital, they would not admit or take him because they "didn't take negroes." My grandmother tried to get him to Guthrie (45 miles away), but did not make it. End of story from my past. That is how it was years ago – sometimes even in "liberated" northern or western states.

I'm old enough to remember that often when traveling, we had to use the outhouse, even though there was a bathroom at a service station. We chose our restaurants with caution – pick the wrong one, and you had to eat outside. Choose a "colored" restaurant and you could sit inside and enjoy your meal. Trips were planned well, with nights spent with relatives because there were few hotels for black people.

People do change – some faster than others, but failing to learn from our history will only mean that at some point, we will repeat our failures.

Finally dug out the box with my Uncle’s pictures – reason being, I need to find those pictures when he flew to Langston, OK. Yes, there really is a place named Langston. Uncle flew there with (I think) some instructor or other such person after he graduated from Tuskeegee Instituee and got his “Wings”.

While looking for those pictures (which I had seen many times), ran across one of my grandmother’s photo albums. Not many pictures, but there was a picture of my grandfather, Joseph Dean Elsberry. Really need to get more information about him, because I have no recollection of him when I was a little boy in Oklahoma. This will be a good reason to make contact with my half-brother John Dean in Stillwater, OK.

More news to follow…