1933-2006: Unqualified then and unqualified now
The African-American Community Forum

I can top the Editor's note of April 27; 2006 with an anecdote revelation and inspirational message of personal experiences with relegation. I was born in the City of Washington in 1933 and became a motherless baby at the age of 6 months and my mother died 18 months later. I lived and grew up under the parenting care, love, discipline and spiritual values of my father's parents who lived in Danburg, Wilkes County. For 18 years, I worked on all of the various kinds of jobs that sharecropping had to offer as well as outside jobs on a dairy farm and at a sawmill. I was never allowed to get on a bus let alone to be relegated to the back because I had a 'hereditary skin disease' that was diagnosed as 'black pigmentation'. Because of that 'black plague,' I was quarantined and separated by Georgia law that forced me to walk to school for eleven years as that half empty school bus passed my direction to and from school, every year for 11 years. I would often wonder on rainy, muddy, icy and snow days why that White bus driver did not show some mercy and let me aboard and I would have, with joy, relegate myself to the back of his bus to sit of stand on those bad weather days. I would have been extremely grateful. Instead, I had to jump off the road when that White bus operator droved pass me on those dreadful days because I would have been a victim of splashed rain, mud, ice and snow. Of course, those eventful days were fun and laughter for the White and dry clothes students in the bus. To added insults to injuries, they would yell out of the bus windows the 'N' word with emphasis! I know now that after 73 years, I am expected to and do interact every day without any signal of irrational behaviors toward the White American adults who were among the students on that bus and other school buses at that time between 1939 and 1951.

I graduated from the Wilkes County Rosenwald High School at Tignall, Georgia as valedictorian in 1951. The University of Georgia, Athen did not allow me to apply for admission not because of my academics but sole because of my 'skin disease.' While I was matriculating at Clark College in Atlanta, Georgia, the all white Wilkes County Draft Board interrupted my black studies by ordering me back to Washington and drafted me into the Korea War to fight communism in South Korea. After I was honorable discharge from the U.S Army fighting to keep communism from spreading to America and Wilkes County and being a veteran, my patriotism did not qualify me for a second chance at admission to the University Georgia because I had not gotten ride of my 'skin disease'. Now, I am paying federal taxes from my retirement funds that I have earned with my 'skin diseased' hands to help pay for fighting the war on terrorism. Retrospectively, on July 17, 1957, I went to the Wilkes County Courthouse to secure a copy of my birth certificate and was told that there was no record of my ever being born. Therefore, at the age 24, I was required to get affidavit evidence from 3 persons who would verify that I was born in the City of Washington, Georgia. Any way, upon my reenrolling in college, the State of Georgia paid me a veteran stipend to stay out of the University of Georgia system because I had not got ride of that 'skin disease', So. I had to continue my attendance at a black college of choice. I earned the B.A Degree from Clark College and the MBA Degree from Atlanta University. I spent 35 years as a Chief Financial Officer of several Colleges and Universities throughout this nation.

My last employer was The University of the District of Columbia

in Washington, D.C. I was the Vice President for Finance & Budget/ Chief Financial Officer responsible for the Division of Financial Operation, an annual budget of $ 85 million and I supervised an administrative staff of 25 employees; African and White Americans. During the 47 years of employment, my IRS 1040 filing records reflect over half-million dollars paid in local, state, and federal taxes in all jurisdictions of employment.

In 1997, I retired from my professional career and decided to return to my roots in Wilkes County. I consider my self to be spiritual, educated, learned, experienced, selfassured and wealthy. Most importantly, I do not allow anyone, repeat, anyone to define who I am and what I am.

I love my hometown roots and its people for they are my foundation. I love this place in spite of its wrongdoers and evildoers. I am the father of 7 biological children and 3 three adopted children; 7 children are well educated with professional jobs and are middle-class tax paying Americans and they have given birth to 9 grandchildren and grandchildren have given birth to 3 great-great grandchildren so far; 3 teenagers are enrolled in their mother's Home School program. In addition, I continue to provide financial support to two happy upper-class ex-wives, with boyfriends and they still won't give back my name. Will some women out there tell me why? I can imagine by now that everyone is wondering who's 'psychiatrist couch' I am laying on to let it all hangout.

Here are some current relegation references. I am on the recorded minutes of the City Council of Washington as being unemployable because there are no budgeted funds for the position that I am qualified to fill. Secondly, a former president of a local bank wondered out loud in a public City Council meeting some time in the past: why is that outsider involved in our city business? In order to close out my 'couch' session, thirdly, during the month of November, 2005, I was sponsored by two local White Americans to become a member of [a local civic club]. But I was informed by my sponsors in a two hours long interview session that two members of the application committee objected to my being a member of [the club]. Why in 2005? I was told by my sponsors that one was an African American and the other was a White American; an equal opportunity rejection. Why both ethnic groups in my hometown don't like me?

Therefore, it is obvious to me in retrospect and now days that I am unqualified in Wilkes County to hold public office or even have social status because of my 'skin disease'. Based on my credentials, I am qualified to be the Economic Development Director of the Downtown Development Authority, if it was not for my 'hereditary skin disease'. Finally, as a substitute teacher for Lincoln County Schools, I got my first chance to ride on a yellow school bus at the age of 69. I was among some fourth graders going to lunch on the bus and I was the chaperon. I was so proud of being chosen to lead the students through the cafeteria lunch for food and sit among them on a fourth grader's stool with a buttock spread of 280 lbs. You can't imagine how much fun we kids, ages 4 and 69, had on that day.

The slothful African American community in Wilkes County needs to got off the pity-pots of 'I can't do this, I can't do that because somebody is standing or has stood in my way of achievement or they don't like me or my ancestors were slaves and the world owes; Excuses, excuses.

The so-called affluent African Americans that have come into some degree of education, economic and political power during the last 35 years are now young adults, parents and grandparents of students whom we are allowing to grow up in Wilkes County to inherit our dependencies on the White American institutions for everything we need, except for our religion institutions. We have plush air condition church buildings, carpet on the floors, extended kitchens with dining facilities. Our church facilities, collectively, worth a few million of dollars and, oh yes, we have invested million and million of dollars in our cemeteries resting places of our beloved deceased, rightfully so. [But the actual money stays in the hands of African American business owners. We payout over $3million per decade to two African American businesses and neither have made any capital investment in the community whose "hands feed the mouths" and made them multi-millionaires in Wilkes in Wilkes County. There are no capital investment reasons why there could not be a [family-named] Shopping Center serving the residents in the Whitehall community and the county at-large; consisting of credit union, supermarket, clothing outlets , car service center, barber/beauty shops, so and so forth.]

Every dollar we spend at White American institutions, we pay 100 percent of the cost of the products and services we buy for cash or on credit at the cash registers. We walk away from the White Americans who served so pleasingly with a smile on our faces acknowledging being treated nice by the White American employees. They were courtesy because we left behind enough money to pay their monthly mortgage, car notes, vacation and, most importantly, their children education that African Americans in Wilkes County contribute through their hard earned lottery tickets money. We African Americans in Wilkes County pay for more White American students to go to college free on Hope Scholarships than our own children because we do not inmobile

sist on our children graduating from high school with a college prep degree. We prefer to see most of their time spent in school bouncing or passing balls for 14 year while we cheer and brag from the sidelines. But come graduation time, 60 percents of African American student in the Wilkes County School System are not able to graduate from high school with enough learned knowledge to pursue more study and knowledge in order to make a descent lifetime living.

Don't fuss, let's discuss. Talk to me anybody, please no complaints or making excuses The question is: just what we are going to do about moving from dependency on White American institutions and create our own economic system. It won't cost any more than what you're already paying out. It only takes us to change the way we have been conditioned to think and our thinking attitudes.

docdanner@nu-z.net, 1-706-3597388

(Text contained in brackets was edited to protect the innocent. It is otherwise printed as submitted. The length of this column, 1748 words, prevented publication in its usual location on page 5A due to space limitations. As a matter of reference, the editor's note referred to at the beginning of this column had to do with voting practices and read as follows:

"Just as we would no longer relegate a man to sit at the back of a bus because of his color, neither must we vote for a man because of his color. We must therefore assume that Mr. Danner, in his comments above, is encouraging Black Americans to vote for Black candidates when all (or at least most) other qualifying factors are equal. Surely he would not suggest that voters elect an unqualified person to public office just because of his color.")