Transcripts For CSPAN3 Oral Histories Hank Thomas West Point Interview 20180221

How are you doing . Pretty good. Welcome. Thank you. Were very happy to have a chance to talk to you today. Um, can you tell me a little bit about your childhood . Im interested because it seems like your independent, fighting spirit seemed to emerge early. Perhaps earlier than for most. Yes. I spent part of my childhood in georgia, in the middle part of georgia. However, i was born in jacksonville, florida, and i think from age probably 3 to 8 was spent in georgia, wattela, georgia, which is considered middle georgia and not that far from augusta, georgia. After that, i went to with my family to st. Augustine, florida, and thats where i came of age as a teenager. I came by my activism very early. I always had sort of an innate sense of what was right and what was wrong, and i dont know exactly where i got that from, but the idea of segregation and things that white people could do and black people could not do, i understood very early, maybe as early as 7, 8 years old that there was something wrong with that. I was not capable of any deep, philosophical thinking its just that why cant we go there and white folks can or why are we poorer than white people . Those were the things that as a child concerned me. I did have one incident in georgia wherein, i guess i violated a very sacred and lifeendangering taboo. I put my hands on a white woman. It happened that we were in a store with very narrow aisles and i was coming down the aisle and she was coming up the aisle and it was such that you had to turn sideways to get past each other and i veered to the right to go past and she veered to the right and it was a two for two step dance and she put her hands on the shoulder with a smile and said you stand here and let me scoot past you. When two of my friends saw that they were scared out of their wits and they ran out of the store running home, and im thinking what in the world is going on . Have they done something wrong . So im running behind them and by the time we got back to where we lived they ran home and told their mother that i had touched a white woman. I still didnt understand what that meant. Well, my mother knew what it meant and she immediately grabbed me and hugged me and started praying. I still didnt understand what was going on and about a week later, the ku klux klan paraded through our community, and they did that at night. What they would do is they would drive through the neighborhood in their robes and i still didnt know what was going on, but later i learned that there have been cases where black boys as old as i am had been killed because they touched a white woman, but once again, i just kind of shrugged my shoulder, and i didnt understand why. In florida you had the colored and white signs, especially at the drinking fountains and i naively wanted to know what color was the water in the colored fountain, and of course, i drafr i drank from the colored fountains and we had a small bus company in st. Augustine, florida. I never sat in the back. St. Augustine was unlike any other town, had i done that in birmingham or montgomery, there is a very good possibility that i would have been killed, but i had the reputation of being henry james and you know henry james is a little bit crazy, so i guess people kind of dismissed my actions that kind of way, but i always knew that this whole thing about segregation and what white folks could do and what black folks could not do, i knew there was something wrong with that. It wasnt until many, many years later, i think im in my 40s when i attended a funeral of a relative of mine, and this was in wattely, georgia. Outside the church was a cemetery, and a lady who has since passed who was the oral historian for our family took me to the cemetery and had me walk among the tombstones and im reading the names of people who had died many years ago, and she brought me to a tombstone which said tobiath awash waa washingt 1927 and she told me the story of this lady. This lady was the most whipped slave in all of that particular county, and what happened to her as was related to me was one day she was working in the field, a tall lady for those times. She may have been 56 tall, the owner of the farm where they were slaves sent for her to come into the house. It seems that everybody knew what that meant. That meant she was going to be eventually raped by the owner of the farm. After she was working there for maybe a few weeks he attempted to rape her. She fought him off. That in itself was a capital offense. She was taken out to the middle of the yard, tied to the whipping post and whipped so badly that she was not able to go back to work in the fields for maybe a couple of weeks or so. Once she healed, went to the fields and after an amount of weeks she was sent for again, and again, she went to the house and then after a period of time he attempted to rape her again. Again, she fought him off and again she was whipped severely. A third time after all of the healing process, when she was sent for she went to the whipping post and tied herself to the whipping post and when the women of the field saw that they all came from the fields and surrounded her, and of course, she was not whipped and so as a i was standing there and my cousin said introduce yourself. I said introduce myself . Yes, introduce yourself. I says, maam, my name is henry james thomas. And then she said tobiatha, this is your great great great grandson henry james. Well, i lost it. I fell down on my knees and i was crying and then i said to her i am so sorry i was not there to protect you and she, my cousin looked at me and said, you see . And of course, she asked me how many times id been arrested and i said 22 times. She said white folks been whipping you, too, but you didnt give up your manhood did you . I said no. She didnt give up her womanhood and thats when i learned something about the other side of my family and probably at least once a year wattelay is about a three hours drive from atlanta, i go to her grave and i talk to her. So is she on your mothers side or your fathers . Shes on my fathers side so thats where i get my rebellion from. Did your mother and father talk to you about these things at all . No. They just no. They never did and blacks did not talk to their children about slavery, and you can tell me if im right or wrong, i dont think many Holocaust Survivors talk to their children. It was a matter of shame and it was a matter of revisiting something that was just awful, and so i never when i talk to my mother about that particular story she ujust silent. No doubt shed heard about it. The complete irony is that particular farm where my family was held as slaves is now owned by one of my Family Members. The one who the historian who died early last year, but she owned that particular and we would have on our fathers side some of our family reunions there. She would constantly try to get mae to spend the night in that house, and i just told her. Im sorry. I cant do that, but the irony is that they the Family Member owned that because obviously, over the years whoever owned it from the white side fell into had some Financial Difficulties and had to either sell it or be sold for taxes. So when did you graduate from high school . 59. And did you go to college . Howard university. And thats where i got started in an organized fashion in the Civil Rights Movement in 1960. So what was going on at school . Was this was this something that i mean, im that you found yourself in an environment which was supporting ideas that you had that you felt i would imagine you were chomping at the bit. Absolutely. Thats the way to describe it. September 1st when the four students from North Carolina ant sat down at the lunch counter and it came on the 6 00 news that this had happened, i remember sitting in and we had what was called there was only one room in the dorm where there was a tv. The rest of us could not afford television ps it was the day room or the activity room and im watching this and i dont know what particular channel, whether it was a network, cbs or nbc, and they talked about what these students did, and i remember jumping up and said yeah weve got to do the same thing the city of d. C. Had a public accommodations law. Right across the bridge to the south is virginia, segregation, to the north and to the east is maryland, segregation. So while we could go to any restaurant in d. C. , but you know, just a few minute away, we could not. So we got started, and i helped organize the first chapter of the Nonviolent Action Group which we call n. A. G. And every weekend we would either go into virginia or maryland to do sitins and i think some time that year in march, and i was first arrested in hyattsville, maryland and protesting racism and it was a movie theater. So it was, like you said, i was chomping at the bit, and this was tailor made for me. So you got involved in snik fairly early . Yes. How did that happen . Howard university had the second largest student protest group, Tennessee State had by far the largest. All during the month of february, march and up through april, a lot of the colleges, historically black colleges throughout the south were having some form of demonstration or sitins. Ella baker who at that time was a member of sclc, southern christian Leadership Conference came up with the idea that all of the students who were involved and needed to be some coordinated effort, she organized this for students to come to Shaw University in raleigh, North Carolina, and we did and it was for that weekend we met students from Tennessee State Fisk University, morehouse, and spellman and thats when miss baker said we should form our own organization so the various organizations that they had at these campus we decided to form one group, and it was called the student nonviolent coordinating committee, in other words, the acronym for snc, and we folded our organization into that one organization and thats how we became snc. That was when you were a freshman . Yes. And did you i was just curious about the academic side of your college years. Were you did you have an intention to major in something in particular . Did you have any ambitions . I left home with the idea of becoming a doctor. My lady who lived across the street and a lady who also had a little private school. We called her mama joshua, and she thought i was a pretty smart kid because i memorized the books of the bible quicker than any other qukid and to this day could recite some of them, leviticus, numbers, and deuteronomy, and i did that much quicker than anyone else and she thought i was pretty smart and she said you need to go to school to be a doctor so you can come back here and take care of me and my sister. So i left Howard University with the idea of becoming a doctor, and the first time i was arrested, and i was in jail the heck with being a doctor, im going to be a lawyer because i have to fight this injustice. And so that was the idea and i was never a stellar academic scholar in the classroom. I had to work harder than anyone else just to get a krshg out of her class, but thats when i got thoroughly involved and i guess i realized what my calling was. When did you first hear about the freedom rides . 1961 because we got started in may of 61, and i think i got the flyer or the news about it from core probably in march. They were looking for someone at least 21 years of age or older and of course, i was only 19 so my roommate, john moody who had been a had spent ten years in the air force when he came to howard, so he was ten years older than myself and he had also volunteered and he was selected because, obviously he was over 21, and i think two days before we were supposed to report to a friends Retreat Center there in northern virginia, he got sick, and he could not go, and then he said to me, why dont you just go . I was always big for my age and people always thought i was older than i appeared so i showed up and i told him the story, and i did not tell him how old i was, however, so i filled out the form and the part where it says age and date of birth i left blank. So i was accepted and it was an oversight on somebodys part and i was accepted and it wasnt until two days into the training that somebody asked me how old was i because i left that at 19 and i went oh, my gosh and so, but it was too late then and i said i am 19, but i act 30, and thats how i got selected and remained selected for the freedom ride. So how long was the training and what was the training . I think im a little bit confused. I thought it was at least two weeks and ive since learned that it was probably only a week that we were training and in that section of northern virginia, even though it was said to be more liberal than the rest of the country still people were not ready for blacks and whites to be meeting under the same roof and certainly sleeping under the same roof and we had some trouble with the local authorities when they found out what we were doing. Fire inspectors got there under all kinds of violations. Police started checking license plates and giving speeding tickets on people coming and going. In other words, we got properly harassed by the authorities, but that was only about three days prior to our completion of the training and so we did and none of us got arrested there in northern virginia. How many were training . Was it enough for the first couple of rides . Yeah. We had a total of 13 people training. Six whites and seven blacks, and i think ive forgotten that may 4th is when we left washington, d. C. That particular building, the bus station in new york at 7th avenue is still there in d. C. , and our first stop was richmond, virginia. So you must have been excited and scared. Excited, but not scared. I had no idea what i was getting into what we were getting into. Besides, im 19 and at 19 you thrive on either the perception of danger, okay . You are used to breaking the rules, and all of that so i had no idea and especially in richmond, virginia, nothing happened. The people there acted decent. The fbi, of course, knew everything we were doing and ive since learned of the kinds of dirty tricks that j. Edgar hoover tried to play on us and succeeded in some instance. The next stop was charlotte, North Carolina, once again, no problems. The time that we were there, at least, the bus stations were integrated and we had no problems. It was when we left charlotte headed into south carolina, rock hill, south carolina, was the first incident of violence. John lewis was beaten pretty badly in rock hill, and i was on a bus that was stopped in windsboro, south carolina. The jim peck was beaten pretty badly as he got off the bus. While i wasnt physically attacked, the Police Arrested me in the night. They took me out to a klan mob. They did not book me into the station. Theres nothing on the records indicated that i had ever been arrested and because the idea was to deliver me to the klan and the klan would kill me and the police can say we never heard of him. We never arrested him and we have no record of him ever being in rock hill. I was rescued by a black man who had watched the police and who had been assigned by core to if anybody is arrested to report back to core and this type of thing and he had been watching the police, and when i was ordered out of the police car at gun point, and i had to run from the mob and he drove up beside me to tell me to jump in the car if the backseat and get down on the floor and thats how i escaped from windsboro, south carolina. Do you still know that man . I never knew his name. I have tried all of these years, and im pretty sure hes passed. The city of windsboro is inviting me back and i said let bygones be bygone, right, guys . The police chief now is an africanamerican and he and the mayor are having a welcome back hank thomas after 54 years and that will take place probably some time next month or in april, and thats it. Thats amazing. So the so the ride continues . I caught up with the group in atlanta, georgia, and we were warned and advised by dr. King and his folks. You need to stop this ride because youre going into alabama and its a hot bed of klan activity and somebody is liable to get killed. Well, because i was missing for a period of 24 hours we thought for sure that i had been killed because when they call rock hill to inquire about my whereabouts that police said we dont know what youre talking about and that was a very good indication there that they have done something to him. So when i showed up again and there was great rejoicing that, you know, i didnt think was such a big deal after i escaped. And they were just happy to see me and obviously they had to do some thinking, should we continue with this ride and my answer was, of course, were going to continue and so we went on into aniston. When we got into the city limits of aniston, the streets were deserted and we turned the corner of the street leading into the bus station and that was the mob gathered at the bus station and when the bus pulled in they were yelling and screaming and that the bus driver had bought them the freedom riders and now they were going to take over. They started breaking out the windows and the bus driver had, fortuitously for us, locked the door as he escaped from the bus so they couldnt get into the door and after a while of beating on the bus and rocking it, Robert Kennedy, ive since learned had contacted governor patterson and the president of greyhound that the freedom riders were trapped in aniston, alabama and its only going to be a matter of time before the mobs going to kill them and so youve got to get them out of there and so the bus driver got on the bus and tried to drive away. There was a line of cars behind them and cars in front of them that wouldnt let the bus drive anymore, 15 miles an hour. The tire had been punctured and two of the tires had been cut and it takes a great deal of whatever it is you have to cut the tire of a bus, a big bus. The bus stopped at the Country Store along the highway and another mob there was and they continued the job of beating on the bus and they had their children and their wives with them and they had come to see the freedom riders get lynched. An incendiary device was thrown into the bus through a back broken window and the bus ignited in fire and the thing that saved us because they held the door shut as the bus was burning and they were saying lets burn these niggeres alive. Lets burn them alive and it burned the back of the bus and everybody on the outside scattered and thats the only way we were able to get on that bus and then the mob followed us to the hospital, and the attorney general pleaded with the governor patterson to provide Police Escort to take us to the hospital. They came to the hospital asking the hospital to put us out and when the hospital they didnt have to refuse because we were not going to leave that hospital, they threatened to burn the hospital down, and finally governor patterson agreed that fred shells and three other men could drive cars, i think it was three, it may have been four, to aniston, alabama, to rescue us and thats how we got out of aniston, alabama. So i read that that rescue was an armed rescue. Do you remember that . I know fred shellsworth said he told his people not to bring arms, and i remember hearing a couple of the people said to hell with that, they brought their guns because, you know, if wed been stopped by any of those mobs they had to do something to protect us, but we also found out and i had a chance to talk with John Patterson and then governor, hes still alive and i think hes 93 years old, and he had lunch with us, and he asked for forgiveness and said that they were wrong and asked to pose for a picture with me and ask me if he could take a picture with me, and i had that picture in my house with me and my daughter. So he said he was sorry and he apologized. He was wrong, and as you probably know, george wallace, before he died and went to a black church and asked for forgiveness, but thats how we got out of aniston, but some of those men said they had they had weapons, okay . So were you injured during this process . Yeah. I was of course, we all suffered from smoke inhalation, and i once you get that kind of smoke in your lungs it takes some days for it to get out and that is a horrible feeling. I was hit by i think a fellow with a baseball bat as i came stumbling off of the bus. He asked me and he said boy, are you all right . And im thinking, well, somebody is concerned and the next thing i knew i was on the ground because he hit me on the side of the head and there is a picture of a Police Officer and an Alabama State trooper standing beside me as im on the ground, but they did absolutely nothing to protect us. So but thats the only injury i had. And that was i wondered when john lewis was heart a few days earlier, right should. Yeah. Was he with you . Did they patch him up . He was physically in no shape to continue. Yeah. He later joined the group in montgomery prior to us going on in to mississippi, but he had to have a few days to recover. So the ride did continue after this. Oh, yes. So what did how did it what was next . The students from Fisk University and Tennessee State heard that we could no longer continue the ride, and they took up the cause and started the ride again and its a group of them with Tennessee State from nashville and decided to come to montgomery and they got the crap beat out of them, as well, and one of them was came pretty almost close to being killed when the mob just attacked them. The Montgomery Police told the ku klux klan that when the freedom riders come to town you have 15 minutes to do what you want to do, and after that well have to move in and those 15 minutes they almost killed some of the freedom riders and lookly for us, rob seeingen that willer who was a direct representative of Robert Kennedy was beaten and knocked out and when Robert Kennedy heard that, if nothing else moved him to act, thats when he got on the phone again and told the governor of alabama that president kennedy is going to nationalize the National Guard if they didnt do something, and it was only then that they decided to do something. And years later in the meetings with john segenthalor, he was sacrificing his head because if he had not been knocked out for newspaper photographs clearly sprawled out on the sidewalk and said you were the cause of us getting rescued and we appreciate it. So youre this is may. Youre supposed to be in school during this time. Did you go back to school . Eventually. After i went back to school and the freedom rides ended and i went back to school in 62. Okay. And thats when the army came looking for me. So tell me about that, the army coming looking for you. At that time the army, the draft boards or the draft boards were using their powers to punish people who were involved in civil rights and the way they did that was to draft you into the army because chances are if you were from piedmont, alabama, and you were in school in nashville there was a good possibility that you didnt notify the draft board that you were now living in nashville and the law stated or the regulation was within 90 days after you leave a particular jurisdiction you are to notify your draft board. Well, very few of us did that, and so if you didnt notify your draft you were immediately subject to be called up or drafted and inducted into the army. So in washington, when i got my notice, i knew what that meant. So i was thinking and i was told that if you go and present yourself to the local recruiter, you then are no longer in violation and at least you have an opportunity to select what occupation you wanted in the army, but you werent going to be in the army and so i didnt necessarily want to go into combat and so i said i would like to become a medic and i thought that being a medic meant that i was going to be working in a hospital and little did i know that being in the infantry needs some medics on the battlefield and thats when i found out the hard way that i was going to be where the action was. And so you went back to school in 62 and the draft board contacted you and after the school year they started to yeah. I finished that school year. In 63. In 63 i presented myself for the draft, and was inducted into the army in october of 63, and so there are only those 16,000 advisers in vietnam in 63. Yeah. They kept increasing each month, and so 63, and i was in jackson and after fort jackson, i went to Fort Sam Houston in san antonio for my medical training and for my medical training, i knew that you could make an extra 55 a month and i was already married and so that 55 extra a month was a huge amount of money so i volunteered for the airborne, and i became an airborne soldier and getting an extra 55 a month plus the chance at faster promotion which meant another extra maybe 30 a month which was a lot of money for me at that time, and i was then sent to fort benning for my Airborne Training and it was at fort benning that the new air cavalry unit was formed and they called it the air mobile unit, and this whole concept of using helicopters as vehicles instead of trucks and things of this nature, and so i went to vietnam in september of 65 with the air cavalry unit and we arrived in vietnam the end of september, and by the middle of november i was in the battle. So i want to back up a little bit. Okay. Im wondering how you felt about this because this is the moment when the Civil Rights Movement is grabbing the country and you have to go off and do this. Oh, i was conflicted. No doubt about it. What do i do . My grandfather served in world war i. My father served in world war ii. Always for a black man, whenever you served, it was your military service you hope would confirm your bona fides as a firstclass, redblooded american citizen entitled to even though you knew that that was not the case of the tenth of the cavalry, the buffalo soldiers. That was not the case of the black soldiers who served in the civil war, and at one point, 15 of the Union Soldiers were black and all of them thought that with our service this will prove that were entitled. So its like the greens fees if you will, for becoming a firstclass citizen. Naively, i felt the same way. You wanted an opportunity to prove that you are truly an american, and so that kind of inner conflict i had when i went to vietnam and there was more than once in vietnam, im thinking, what am i doing here when im reading about all of this stuff thats going on back home . But for me and the other vietnam vets and the black vietnam vets the country was changing and it did change, and while we still had some problems, theyre in vietnam and black soldiers who came back in 65 and 66. 67 had lots of problems, but they were nowhere near the intensity of ill treatment that world war ii suffered when they came back. So where were you deployed in vietnam . It was in the central highlands, and we landed at a city called quinyan and traveled over land to ankay in the central highlands. November of that year was the year that the first large American Unit had contact with the north vietnamese unit, in what was called the battle of the valley. There was a book written about it and a movie and somebody asked me did i see mel gibson over there . No, im afraid, i didnt get a chance to see mel gibson. I understand he won that war for us, though, but i was at the tail end of that battle. By this time in the army i was called a senior medic and i had four other medics serving under me and three of them were killed. Two of them were killed on the same day in that particular battle and that was one of those days and i heard about them being killed and i was at Headquarters Company, and the two that were killed were both 18yearold white boys, and i emphasize the fact that they were white because for the first time in my life, and im pretty sure the first time for other black soldiers im not a subservient level, and these young white boys, i was 22 at the time so for them i was an old guy and they looked at me as being their protector. I dont know why, but maybe because of my age and everything and never had any problems with them following my directions and everything and so when i found out theyd been killed in that particular battle this was a pretty difficult day for me. So how did you feel about the war in particular . I mean, i understand the idea of service and you had a hope that that would be meaningful, but what did you think about it . You didnt think that much about the politics of the war. You were concerned about staying alive, and especially if you were in, shall we say a frontline combat unit where youre going out on patrols and people around you are getting killed. You think about staying alive and the politics of it and the fact that you were there and there were a few times when i kept saying what am i doing here . What am i doing here . How am i going to be received when i get back home . Are things really going to be changed when i get back home . I had my problems with whites in vietnam as a lot of blacks did because you had the white southerners who came in with these particular attitudes especially in terms of the noncomes and the officers who were in charge. My captain threatened to have me courtmartialed a couple of times while i was over there, and he was from mississippi and he brought his own particular prejudices into the company and there were some Serious Problems in vietnam especially after tet. The racial problems in vietnam especially with the rear echelon units threatened to tear the army apart and really ruined its effectiveness. There were a couple of times and i think this in the early 70s where junior officers, first lieutenants or even captains would not take their men out on patrol. I remember cbs interviewing one lieutenant who had refused, i dont know whether that was the end of his army career or not, but refused to take his unit out on patrol. He disobeyed a direct order and he simply told a reporter when we go out and the shooting starts, i dont know who will be shooting at whom. Thats how bad the racial situation had gotten there. You had some whites who came in and didnt realize that when you used the n word toward a black that you could have some Serious Problems, and some of them did that. So the army saw that it had a problem and it had to do something and indeed they did and what they found out was i think only about 2 of the officers in vietnam were africanamericans. During the first part of that war, lets say, 65 and 66, 25 to 26 of the kias were africanamericans and that became a problem, and the word canon fodder, and the africanamericans being used as canon fodder. Ill tell you that wasnt the situation. What it was was africanamericans generally preferred and went to the combat arms and that was when you got the rank because all rank came down first into the combat arms and you had a chance of making rank pretty fast and you did it there and second, those were the elite unit of the army at that time and yes, a lot of us were gung ho. We were predominant in the airborne units and then the other reason was we wanted a chance to prove that we were good and that we would fight for our country and we did. The down side of it was when it was time to give up the medals and thats when i began to get into trouble. Blacks were not getting the medals and that was one of the issues with my captain when i im only an e4 now and im confronting as diplomatically as i could a captain as to why there were no blacks getting medals when all of the medals were given to the whites and i guess my tone accused them, and i asked why arent blacks getting medals . Listen, we recommend this particular person for a bronze star. We recommended this guy for a civil star and nothing ever became of it, so that was the basis of my confrontation with the captain and of course, i requested his permission to go to the i. G. And once again, you just dont do that because youre saying that you have no faith in his particular leadership. So thats when i began to have my problems. Another incident that happened was some of the white soldiers had sent home and asked the relative to send them Confederate Flags and one day, and our company headquarters, the Confederate Flag was hoisted instead of old glory and when some of the black soldiers, because id gotten a reputation as being the guy who didnt give a damn and i would confront the authorities told me what had happened and i went out there and saw this rebel flag hanging up there i got my m16. I got about three or four magazines, because i wasnt very good as a boxman. I put that sucker on automatic and i fired a magazine and didnt bring it down, shoot up the top of the flag pole and everybody started running at the same time wondering what the heck is going on, and i emptied that magazine and put in another one and finally that flag came down. I walked calmly back to my tent, and of course, obviously the captain sent for me. I got my m16, shouldered it and went to see the captain, and he told me not to do it again. Okay. All right. So but i became a hero to the black soldiers and there were a few other incidents that we had to contend with, as well. Was that the captain from mississippi . Yeah. And he only told you not to do it again . I dont think he wanted to tell me anything else at that particular moment, okay . So lets just put it that way, all right . So i was going to ask you what how did you cope with your rebellious streak while you were in the military that you clearly had plenty of avenues for expressing it. I wanted to stay in the military, i really did. I had qualified to go to Aviation School and the idea of becoming a helicopter pilot. You get a warrant. You want to become a warrant officer and i really thought when i looked at what my possibilities of employment outside of the military given my history and everything staying in the military was a very attractive idea. The problem was my captain was in no way going to recommend me for going to Aviation School because another little incident happened. The supply sergeant, again who was from mississippi and the supply sergeants were i dont know if they still are today were notorious for being scroungers, and they were criminals. Lets just put it as the supply sergeants were criminals and they could do all kinds of things and so, as with a lot of initial equipment in the army it was hit and miss. Some of it was not suitable and one of the problems we had was with the boots. They would wear out prematurely as a result of that high humidity and everything and so we had to experiment with getting a boot that would last and then the army set in a new boot. Well, they would obviously come to Headquarters Company first and your job was to ship them out to the other company. Well, all of the blacks in our company were not getting the boots. The white soldiers were. This is outrageous so the whites the black soldiers came to me and said sergeant cherry is giving boots to the white guys and hes not giving them to us. Thats all you needed to say. Crazy ass hank thomas made a beeline to the sergeant and called out sergeant terry. I understand that blacks are not getting any boots . And once again, im an e4 and hes an e6 and im not supposed to be talking to him the way i was and he just told me, at ease, soldier. Which means, you better realize who you are. And he said you need to mind your own business. Do you have any new boots back there and before he could answer i went behind the counter and tore open the lock on the locker and a line of blacks came up behind me and i said what size do you wear . The sergeant was standing there and he cant do that and im handing out boots to the blacks and he makes a beeline to the captain again. So once again this time the captain did tell me we were slated to go out on another patrol on another big operation the next day and he told me i want to see you when you come back, if so my days are remaining in the army, i knew, you know, he would be happy when i leave and maybe all of the reports he wrote up on me. But to my surprise when i got my discharge papers and what is it, my dd form 214, none of those particular things were on there that he threatened me with. Make he was glad to say good riddance to me and that was it. Can you tell us about how you were injured . We went out to set up an ambush. I had always thought it was not a good idea to try to sneak up on the enemy. All these times before had not worked out very well. Maybe we need to let them know that were coming and they say, it is not worth it and go some place else. We got up very early in the morning. How can you sneak up on anybody with 25 helicopters . But we thought we would get there at about 7 00 in the morning and travel the vietnam trail, if you will. By the time we got there, got set up, all hell broke loose. They were already there. Just waiting for us. I think three of our guys were killed. By four or five were wounded, including myself. And i remember being knocked out. I knew i had been shot and the old saying goes is, if you feel something, youre still alive. Im trying to figure out where i had been shot and this particular handed been knocked behind me and when i was able to remove my hand from me, it was uncontrollable. I could not keep it from shaking and bones were sticking up through my hand and they said that i said, oh, hell, im going home now. Because if you had that kind of wound that required that kind of extensive surgery, then you went home. I had been hit in the chest as well. That particular wound was not as grievous. One of the reasons being, i had a superstition. I was the most heavily armed medic in all of the vietnam. My superstition was, if i lowered myself down and in addition to my medical supply, with the 45 that was standard weapon, i had an m 16, and then i had the grenade launcher. And people would ask me, what in the youre a medic. I said, if i carried all of this stuff, ill never have to use it, okay . Ill never be in a situation where i have to use it. One of the bullets i think hit one of the men. I carried about 200 rounds of ammunition. One of them i think must have hit, glanced off one of the magazines and it didnt go that far into my chest. So that was one of the things that saved me. But yeah, when i got ready it treat a soldier, unarmed first, and come on, doc, help me out. Well, that was my superstition. So when was the injury . It was i got injured, and of course everybody came running around me and ill never forget the movie, hamburger hill, where the medic. And i had a chance to meet in advance. Sometime later who played that role and i told him about it. I said, do you realize you were me . Because he was that same kind of soldier and i said, where did you and we laughed and reminisce about that. And i said, only deal was, like the soldiers gathered all around you when you were injured, they did the same thing with me. And im telling them to get away from me. Because all youre going to do is get me shot again. But when the medic is hit, it has a psychological effect on the guy. Hey, doc has been hit. Doc has been hit. I remember this little sergeant robinson, big burley black guy that came to me and looked down and said, doc, you been hit. I dont know if youre going to live or not. Thanks a lot and of course, the chopper came down and we were up in the mountainous area in the morning and the air was very thin. Loaded about six of us on the chopper. This huey. My head is out one end and my feet the other end. I said, theres a bead on me and that brother is going to hit my head at any minute. Tried one time, it came back down. Tried again and they finally got out of there and got me to the hospital. So i think from the time ways shot within 45 minutes, i was on the operating table. In hospital. The next morning the doctor came in who had operated on me and showed me the bullet he had taken out of me. I wanted the bullet. He said, oh, no, im putting this in my office. He was from texas. So that people will understand. I said, you mean he said, this is my trophy. So i ud underwent one operation in vietnam and two at walter reed. You said you were married when you went to vietnam. When you came back from vietnam, if you were injured, you came back to where . I tried to go back to school at Howard University. But i had obligations to take care of. My sister came to live with me in d. C. She was subject of abuse by my stepfather, her father, so she came to live with me. I had this thing, i had family to take care of it. I couldnt do that by working a parttime job. So i came back later on. I did not have a lot of the post combat stress that some of the Vietnam Veterans had. I think mine was delayed if you will. I did see some things in vietnam that even today i try to talk about them. I get emotional. Civilians in war and any modern war always get caught in the middle of the soldiers, whether it eat north vietnamese soldiers, whether it was us, civilians get caught in the middle. Accidental tire or artillery shell in the wrong village, all of these, they kill people. They kill children. So as a medic, i saw, other soldiers saw it too but as a medic i saw some of this. And it was even today many, many years after there are few of those things that i saw that still haunt me in terms of the civilians who were killed. There are times when my wife has to wake me up when im having nightmares and a couple of times when i got really really scared because i woke up hitting her because i was dreaming that we add problem with an m 16 rifle when we first went over. We were told you dont put it on automatic fire because it will jam. And it did jam. So to me, any time i had these nightmares, there are four or five north vietnamese soldiers coming at me and i make the mistake of putting it on automatic fire and the first time the weapon jams. Now i have to run off or use the gun as a club to fight off the soldiers and one night i was hitting my wife. And thats just scared the devil out of me. And it happened a couple nights before so she knows any time im moving or shaking, she wakes me up. It is not as frequent but those are the kinds of things that bother me and also the fact that im treating somebody and im running out of bandages, and i cant stop the bleeding. Those are the recurring nightmares that i have as well. When i first went to the wall and saw soldiers breaking down, i thought, thats not going to happen to me. So i probably didnt go to the wall about five years after it was there. And surely enough when you see the names of those three medics of mine who were killed and one who very, very close to me, alfred jackson, and something about seeing those names, putting your hand on it and taking your piece of paper that graphite that they give you, it gets to you. Youve seen many War Memorials but not many with the names there. Because then you, you know, you call out that persons name and you look for the name of your buddy when you two to that wall. And so that still gets to me sometimes. So your sister, your step sister, i dweguess, came to vis with you an your wife. Do you have children . Yes, we have a total of two grown children and total of five grands and well, four grands and one great grand. And my sister, of course, has sons and grandchildren. And she has a daughter who was in the marines. Did two tours in vietnam and has sense retired from the marine corps. My family is a military family. Even today we have several members still in the military and who have retired. And this type thing. So we went through that period but i never did go back to school. I got started in business when i moved to atlanta. And for my mother, she always wanted me to be a school teacher. And so from ive add good life. Im living the American Dream and american story. I started off operating a dairy queen restaurant. From a dairy queen restaurant i bought a burger king restaurant. From burger king, i bought my first mcdonalds in 1982. And before i retired, i wound up owning a total of nine mcdonald restaurants. And four mariott hotels. So life has been good for me. And im shall we say, living the american story and American Dream. So when you came back from vietnam, were you did you rejoin the movement . On a different level. Im in business now and i have family. So i do things differently. I was a member of sclc. And of course, growing up on demonstrations and going to jail, no, i didnt do that. I would tell some of my colleagues, when we get together and some of them kind of razz me a little bit by saying, oh, hank is going over to the enemy, going into business, he has become a capitalist. I say im still a revolutionary because the idea of a black man being in business is a revolutionary idea. So im still fighting the fight. And bake successful in business. The thing that my wife and i have done, we give back. Providing scholarships and supporting worthy cause. And i used to say to folks, and some of my business colleagues, i says, when i was growing up, any time we needed something in the black community, and for the good of the community, we had to go to white folks for it. We had to go to the man. And i reminded them, those who were in business and doing well, i says, we are the man now. I am the man. And so i want black kids when they need scholarships, when the schools need somebody to step up to the plate, to finance various things, thats one of the things that i do. What about your father . He was an individual that never learned thousand read or right but he fixed practically anything. He could wire a house. He could have been a mechanical engineer or electrical engineer. In georgia there was this saw mill there. He kept all of that machinery going. Any time that machinery broke down, lg, was the man who would fix it and of course wouldnt call him a man that time. He was boit wthe boy who would. One reason he always got him out of jail on saturday night so he could be at work on monday morning, never mind that he has drank up all of his earnings and we made it not have any food in the house, but they got him to work so that he can fix whatever went wrong in this type of thing. He would say things like, when he got druchnk, when i die i wod rather go to hell than be treated the way i was treated. I never knew what he was talking about. But later, i understood what he was talking about, is the way he was treated. Here he was a very intelligent man in terms of his skills and he was probably being paid just enough to keep his family from starving. So what did he do . He drank. And even though the county we lived in was a dry county, the sheriff owned all of the shot houses. And the shot houses was where the liquor was sold. Homemade moon shine or whatever. And so he was never treated like a man. And so what he did was, and you take that hurt that you feel and you transfer it to the people who are closest to you, so here was a black man who didnt know how to show love to his family. So many years later, while i couldnt forgive him for what he had done to me and his family, years later, i understood. The one regret that i had, i said that i never got the clans chance to tell him that i forgave him. I didnt forget. But i forgave him for what he did to me and to my mother and the rest of his family. Today in a court of law they would say he was temporarily insane. And he was. When you understood what happened both during slavery and duing the jim crowe era, it is an absolute wonder that every black man wasnt crazy because of the way they were treated and the family suffered. So how did your mother deal with it . In a stowic way, the way all black women dealt with it. She thought that it was gods will. Didnt like it. But it was gods way of punishing her. And that eventually, my mothers a very, very religious woman to this day. Always her conversation with me is, are you going to church . She knows im not. So rather than to lie to her, i said, maybe next week, mom, next week. But thats the way she dealt with it. She just said that it was the lords will. And thats the way she still feels about it today. What was your first job . Picking cotton. I think i must have been either seven or eight. My mother made the cotton sack for me. In that area of the country, blacks did not good to school until generally november. And thats after all of the crops were in. White kids went to school. Late august, september, we had to get the crops in. And it was cotton and that portion of georgia. And some other area it was potatoes or picking beans. But education took a back seat to what the farmers needed at that particular time. So i didnt go. And of course all of the money i made, which may have been 1 or 1. 25 a day, i brought it home and put it on the table and that was the money that was used to buy groceries. Especially when lg had drank up all of the money. So i did have one more question. Sure. So reading your biography, as a young man, one thing emerges, because the discipline that you learn during the freedom rides helped prepare you for what was needed in the army and combat. I dont necessarily think so. One other thing im grateful for, i always had a sense of what was right and what was wrong at a very early age. I always knew where i was in my life as a kid living in poverty. That was not where i was supposed to be and that was not where i was going to be. And i knew that education was the key my mother taught me that. I learned how to read before i went to school. She only add sixth grade education. But i was reading by the time that i was four. So i had this inner sense of discipline that i now attribute to the genes that i inherited from tobiatha washington. This woman, right after slavery, the emancipation proclamation, with two, three other people, organized a church of freed slaves and the grounds that that church sits, is the original plot of ground that they bought. And this woman had this kind of discipline and sense of knowing what things are supposed to be. So i just credited that to the genes that i received from her. Thank you very much. Youre very welcome. Good evening, maam. Today is the 1st of october, 2016. And were in the west point center for oral history. And im here with