Retired Airman remembers passage of Civil Rights Act

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Kyle Johnson
  • Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson Public Affairs
JOINT BASE ELMENDORF-RICHARDSON, Alaska (AFNS) --  Offended and angry Airmen brought Sgt. Raymond Harris to a vandalized inscription containing a racial epithet about the Civil Rights bill on a door at the Airman's Club in Vietnam, and were looking to him for a solution.

It was 1964 in a war zone, and the racist slur created a dangerous situation, with a large number of armed service members reeling at the sight of the discriminatory note.

"They picked me because they knew I was a level-headed kind of guy, and I was on the governor's board for the Airman's Club," said Harris, who eventually retired as a senior master sergeant. "I didn't really have any kind of pull, but something needed to be done."

As the guest speaker for the Black History month observance Feb. 20 at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Harris told his story.

The wrong bucket of paint

Harris joined the Air Force in 1953 as the youngest of four brothers who would eventually serve a combined total of 105 years in the military.

He was assigned to be an air operations specialist.

During technical training at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, he befriended people from many different cultures and was frequently invited to eat with them off base, he said. But there were some places it was just not wise to go as an African-American.

"I would always turn them down, because I knew I couldn't go to most of the restaurants off base and I didn't want to embarrass my friends," Harris said.

After technical school, Harris was assigned to Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, for his first permanent duty station. There, he said he came face-to-face with a level of racial persecution he'd never experienced before.

At the time, Harris lived with his brother and sister-in-law off base. He rode the bus to work each day - the same bus system Rosa Parks made history in by refusing to move to a small section in the back of the city bus that African-Americans were expected to limit themselves to.

To avoid this, Harris drove when he could, but the city bus proved to be a safer transportation option. He recalled being pulled over in uniform on his way to work.

The police officer put a .38 caliber pistol in Harris' face.

"I knew if I said the wrong thing, he would shoot me."

Harris said he also was frequently stopped for unsubstantiated reasons and given equally unsubstantiated tickets on his way to work. He said he didn't let those officers compromise his professionalism at work and his performance evaluations reflected it.

However, each time the promotion lists came down, Harris' name was nowhere to be found.

"My noncommissioned officer-in-charge didn't understand why I couldn't get promoted," said the man who would eventually earn a Bronze Star. "The simple fact was: I came out of the wrong bucket of paint -- according to some people.

"I knew I was going to have to work harder than the others," Harris said. "I knew that before I went in the military. But it didn't seem to make much difference."

After his enlistment was up, Harris spent some time with his family before deciding to re-enlist.

He found himself stationed back at Maxwell again in 1958.

"Some friends and I were playing basketball out near the Beal Street gate on base," Harris said. "While we were playing, some motorcycle cops came down the street just on the other side of the base fence, leading a Ku Klux Klan parade.

"Most of us out there were from the Midwest," Harris said. "We had read about things like that before, but never seen it. We all just fell silent and went back inside."

"I volunteered for everything I could to get away from that place," he said. "But it didn't seem to work."

Safer in Vietnam

Harris would continue to be re-stationed at Maxwell for nearly nine years before he would find relief in 1964 deployed to Vietnam.

"I suspect I could have avoided that deployment," Harris said. "But I didn't want to. I thought I'd be safer in Vietnam."

However, during his first tour, Harris saw the waves from the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 travel across the Pacific Ocean -- crashing on the bathroom door of the Airman's Club, just after lunch one afternoon.

He was headed back to work. But before he could go, he found himself surrounded by a circle of Airmen.

Nobody was speaking to him, nor would they let him out of the circle, as they carried on conversations amongst themselves.

They began to move toward the Airman's Club, taking Harris with them.

When they arrived, Harris only needed one look at the graffiti on the bathroom door to know why he was there, and why the group was acting strangely.

The painted sentiment was designed to offend.

"We're in Vietnam, fighting for our country, and all of a sudden we end up in (what could become) a race riot in a combat zone," Harris said. "None of us wanted it to get to that -- and we were almost there."

"I knew there was going to be a riot if something wasn't done," he said. "Remember, we all had weapons at the time."

When Harris came back with a higher-ranking officer, he said the tension in the air was so palpable; you could hit it with a brick.

The officer immediately grasped the severity of the situation. He looked to Harris and said, "Sir, what do we do now?"

"Do I have your permission to do whatever is necessary to calm the situation?" Harris asked.

The officer granted permission.

"I know music is calming to most people, so I grabbed some of the enlisted guys who had brought their instruments with them and told them to play," Harris said.

"We are already losing enough people over here," Harris told the heated crowd. "Can we keep calm and think about the consequences to any actions we might take? There are two ways of looking at this.”

"You can either stay down and whine, or you can get up. That's the difference between trying to be positive and being negative," he said.

Harris' response in a tense situation helped prevent violence that day, and he speaks now, in part, to continue awareness of the effects of bigotry.

"Everybody is involved in this foolishness," Harris said. "(Just) try to look at life from the other person's shoes."