Today I wept. Some context.
It took 10 years to write Myles Traveled: Stories of My American Journey, with and about my friend Bill Myles. Followers know it tells the life story of Coach Myles, grandson of a slave, who grew up in and overcame segregated times. It’s a Black History story – one of Bill being confined to segregated schools and hospitals, having to use the “colored bathrooms”, not being able to go to his own state university. When he traveled with his college football team, Bill sometimes could not stay at the team hotel or eat in the same section as the white players. Coach Myles overcome those odds to ascend to the pinnacle of college athletics at Ohio State and left a long and respected legacy. He was a remarkable person who left so much good in this world.
The story is also the role of Black Hero’s and Idols forming a young Black man’s coming of age. Heros that broke the barriers of Bill’s time. Bill hanging with Jackie Robinson and Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson and Willard Brown at the park in Kansas City with the Monarchs baseball team. Hilton Smith teaching him how to throw a curve ball. Eddie Robinson tutoring a young Coach Myles in the rafters of a KC gymnasium. Don Motley coaching Bill on the first Black American Legion Baseball team ever in America. Among others.
When I wrote the book, Bill said, “I don’t want people to feel I’m bitter, because I’m not. But I do want them to know what it was like.” So we did that, and I thought I was writing about the past.
But now…
We are fighting Bill’s battle all over again.
For me, the anger started in February. Black History Month. In the past I have given a presentation on Bill’s inspiring story at Black History Events at the Federal Agency where I worked. This year that would not have been allowed, when our President dictated we could no longer celebrate Black History, or any ethnic history that has been woven into the tapestry we call America. It was like Bill’s story never existed.
It got worse when our Secretary of Defense fired two respected and highly decorated Generals, one because he was black, and the other because she was a woman. Ironically the “unqualified” black general, who had flown thousands of hours, including hundreds of combat hours, in one of the most sophisticated fighter jets the Air force flies, was fired by a guy with minimal military experience. In an even pettier move, even their portraits were taken even down. As if they don’t exist.
It got even worse on March 14th when the Arlington Cemetery website scrubbed and removed existing links about Black and female veterans. Colin Powell history. Gone. Tuskegee Airmen. Gone. (I once had the great privilege of meeting some of those Tuskegee heroes at the Rose Bowl parade). Navaho Code Talkers. Gone. Members of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only all-Black, all-female Women’s Army Corps unit to serve overseas during World War II. Gone. A Civil War page that contained information about the United States Colored Troops, Black American regiments that served in the Union Army. Gone. As if those people or their accomplishments have no place in our story of our military. Read for yourselves:
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/arlington-cemetery-scrubs-website-dei/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/03/14/arlington-cemetery-website-dei-removals/
It continued. More recently the Department of Defense scrubbed a page of Pfc. Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian who was one of the six Marines photographed hoisting a U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in 1945. Think of that iconic photo. One of the 6 brave soldiers in the picture raising the American Flag doesn’t count as an American? Multiple articles about the Navajo code talkers, were the next to go, along with a profile of a Tonawanda Seneca officer who drafted the terms of the Confederacy’s surrender at Appomattox toward the end of the Civil War. People we should be holding up as heroes relegated to the trash bin.
Then Sunday, I saw the 60 Minutes segment on the cancellation of a band of young students of color who were scheduled to be mentored by and perform a concert with the Marine Band called “The Presidents Own”. Then the Marines were told the concert couldn’t happen (ironically, they were selected by national competitive auditions for their music excellence). I challenge anyone to watch the video and not be moved by what happened to those young people, to watch and tell me inclusiveness is not what we want America to be, that these young people are not worthy of “The Presidents Own”:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/marine-band-cancelled-concert-dei-trump-60-minutes-video-2025-03-16/
But last straw was this morning. I awoke to learn that Jackie Robinson had also been erased from the Department of Defense Website. Jackie Robinson! His story erased!
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/mar/19/jackie-robinson-article-removed-department-defense
I immediately thought of Bill and his hero worship of Jackie. I thought of him telling me all that Jackie went through. All that Jackie inspired him to be. I thought of the time when Bill saw a guy try to mess with Jackie Robinson in the Paseo YMCA, and Jackie told him to leave him alone or he “would turn his nose up so far it would rain in it!” Bill and his buddies thought “you had to be tough to turn someone’s nose up,” and soon they too were walking around with their noses in the air. Or Bill telling how “Jackie walked all pigeon toed, so my buddies and I walked pigeon toed”. But mostly I thought of when Bill was tapped to Coach under Tom Osborn at Nebraska, at a time when Blacks were just breaking the barrier into major college football coaching. It was a national story. It made Jet Magazine. Bill told me when it did, he thought, “I hope Jackie sees this. Not for me of course, but for him, for all that he carried on his shoulders to blaze our trail. I don’t know for sure, but I proudly suspect that he did. After all, Jackie was somebody, and any black who was somebody read Jet magazine. “
And that is what we are erasing? So I wept. I wept for a country I am starting not to recognize. I wept for the racism our President is returning us to. I wept that this is what our military is wasting time on, while our enemies plot to undo our American Democracy.
I wept for another reason too. You see Bill and I share something else. Maybe it is why fate brought us together for the book. My great great grandfather fought and gave his life to free the slaves in the Civil War. Corporal C.E. Davis is buried in grave number 2217 at Andersonville MIlitary Cemetery. He died a prisoner of war in that hell-hole, having fought to free among others, Bill’s grandmother! He is one of those soldiers, under those rows and rows of white crosses, that has been described as a “sucker and loser” by the guy erasing our history and perpetuating our return to our racist past.
So I wept. You too should weep at what we are becoming. We are better than this.
