Understanding Their Time: Unraveling the context of war and segregation to better understand my grandparents’ place in history
I feel quite strongly that my background in higher education is finally being put to use with this project of researching and writing about my grandparents. Or rather, that background is guiding my research in a direction I may not have otherwise taken. My bachelor’s degree comprised of five subjects (law, politics, history, sociology, and Spanish), although most people just respond to that with “so, humanities. Got it.” My master’s degree focused on war and peace, which really cannot be adequately or accurately studied without historical or political context. Through both, I learned not only how to research and verify sources, but to analyze the entire context of a situation beyond the few presented facts. The context is arguably just as important, for it provides the reasoning as to why things occurred the way they did beyond the motivations and actions of mere individuals.
In a story focused on two individuals, I feel like it is incredibly important to acknowledge the context in which this story exists. As I’ve never met either individual involved, the context also tells me quite a bit about them too. For example, my grandfather, Kay, was drafted into World War II. How did he feel about it? Was he excited and proud? Or did he dread the thought in the same way so many did when the draft was called many years later for the war in Vietnam? The context tells me that in 1940, nearly 80% of Americans were in favor of young men completing a mandatory year of military training and service. More than likely, he felt proud to be called. The thought of getting 80% of Americans to agree on anything today is nearly incomprehensible, but again, I feel like that’s still explained with context. Without internet or large scale communications beyond newspapers and propaganda films, everyone received the same selected information. News articles and movies were created specifically to boost morale at home and abroad, so there really was a large scale sense of patriotism that may not have existed so strongly with the added input and discord that came with the multiple viewpoints and opinions and sources that the internet brought along.
A testament to that large scale sense of patriotism, in my opinion, is that it was reflected within African American communities. In the 1940s, the United States was still segregated and racial discrimination was an unfortunate fact of everyday life. Even still, Black Americans enlisted in the segregated armed forces, motivated to fight a war on two fronts: one against the enemies of their country, and by doing so, fighting against the discrimination they faced at home. This sense of pride in being American, this willingness to defend the ideals of a nation that was built on the unwilling backs of their ancestors, is quite something to read about. While I as a reader (and as someone with any form of moral compass) am always disappointed to hear how little had changed for the incredibly accomplished Black service men and women that fought for our country upon their return, I am not willing to hide this fact. We don’t have to be proud of our history, but that gives us no right to change it and take away the opportunity for ourselves and others to learn and grow from it.
Knowing that this racial divide is a large part of the context in which this story exists, I have to ask how it affected my grandparents, my characters. Did they loathe the treatment they witnessed of Black Americans? Did they do something about it? Were they complicit? Or even worse, did they agree with it? Were they racists? To be completely honest, this last question really bothered me. I don’t think I would be as swept away in a love story if I knew that the protagonists were able to justify the mistreatment of others based on the color of their skin. I don’t have to be proud of that history, but I would still not feel morally wonderful if I chose to uplift the voices of people who agreed with such violent ideals. While the world they occupied was segregated, that doesn’t mean this aspect did not touch them at all. I learned yesterday that onboard the Dempo, the ship that took Kay from the US to England for his deployment, the barracks were occupied by his regiment as well as a Black regiment. For three weeks that space was shared. I’m trying to find more details and logistics, but it once again brought up my questions. How did he react? Were my grandparents racist, like so many of the people of their time?
So I got to work trying to answer this question. I reached out to my aunts and uncles, those raised by Veazey and Kay, and even a cousin raised by Veazey’s sister. All are old enough to remember when schools were integrated for the first time, and it felt incredibly important to know how that was explained. We have all surely seen the sickening images of the white adults protesting and harassing Ruby Bridges’ arrival at her elementary school, and we likely know that that harassment and violence reached such an extreme that she had to be escorted by a security team. Considering how open-minded most of my relatives turned out, I found it unlikely that my grandparents would have been among the violent, but that didn’t negate any possibility that prejudice was still held.
My cousin, Veazey’s niece, was the first person I talked to about this. She said her mother sat her down and explained that people were put in separate schools for a very silly reason, and that the year my cousin was seven or eight, they would be slightly mixed for the very first time. Only one or two kids would come to their school that year. Ruby Bridges may have been the first Black child to experience a trial integration, but she was not the only. The same thing was happening all over the country in the months and years that followed. One of the children joining my cousin’s school would be in her grade, and her mother made sure she knew that he would need a friend. My cousin didn’t know how her aunt and uncle, Veazey and Kay, explained this to their children, but given how Veazey’s sister handled things, I certainly had hope.
My uncle, Veazey and Kay’s oldest, said that for him, there was no conversation. The trial integrations began in his last year of high school, so if any conversation or explanation were to be had, it was with the younger children. My mother, being the youngest, was not yet at school age when all of this occurred, so I unfortunately cannot ask her. I’m in the process of gathering information about this from the remaining siblings, but until then, what I do have is the evidence my uncle gave. While there was no direct conversation about academic integration, he made it very clear that he never considered his parents to hold any kind of prejudice or ill will towards Black folks.
In his words, he remembers being a young kid in their small Florida town and leaving the bank with his mother and younger siblings (just two at that time) to come face to face with a parade and rally hosted by the Ku Klux Klan, right there on the main street. Veazey grabbed the kids by their hands, or shirt collars, whichever was closest, and promptly ushered them off in the other direction. It was easy to be racist in a town like that, but Veazey did her best to protect her kids from such hateful ideology. Kay fought a war built on hate, after all. The other example my uncle gave was from his early high school years, when he’d repeated something one of his friends from a wealthier part of town had said. That something contained a slur that began with the letter N, and today he swears he didn’t understand the full implication of that word. It was repeated at home, and he was adamant that both Veazey and Kay stopped what they were doing right then and there to curse him out for using such foul language while emphasizing the importance of never using it again.
Truthfully, I’m sure there are things about Veazey and Kay that would be considered racist by today’s standards. That doesn’t mean today’s standards are ridiculous, it means we as a society have better educated ourselves on what is and is not respectful. One thing that has stood out to me is the idea that we as white Americans absorb a lot of racist ideology just by being raised in a society built on racism. We should all truthfully be able to say we treat people equally regardless of skin color, but there are so many learned, unconscious traits and behaviors that we learn and emulate that absolutely contribute to the narrative that we don’t actually believe in treating people equally. I don’t know if we’ve gotten better at acknowledging this because we’re having a better conversation or because we’re finally listening, but I have a feeling it’s the latter. All that to say I don’t think my grandparents were prominent figures in the Civil Rights Movement, but from what I’ve gathered, they really cared about the Black folks that they worked with and that lived in their community. They tried really hard to instil those values in their kids. I doubt they were perfect, but I really want to believe that intention counts for something, especially after being raised in a segregated world that taught them otherwise.
As I continue this journey of uncovering my grandparents’ story, I find myself navigating both history and identity. Researching their experiences has meant confronting the complexities of the world they lived in — a world shaped by patriotism, segregation, and war. It’s not enough to romanticize their love story or their resilience. I want to know who they were in all their humanity, including the ways they may have absorbed or resisted the prejudices of their time.
What I’ve learned so far gives me hope. Veazey and Kay may not have been perfect, but they cared deeply about doing right by others and instilled those values in their children. They were shaped by a segregated society, but they didn’t succumb to the hate that surrounded them. Recognizing both the flaws and the goodness in their story is part of honoring them — not as mythical figures, but as real people trying to make sense of the world they inherited.
