The Great American Black Hero

Chapter One: Mom and Dad

"A Working Class Hero is something to be."

-John Lennon

Chapter One:

Mom & Dad

It was 1950 in mid-eastern America, Columbus, Ohio. The first major credit card was introduced to the buying public. America now had 'plastic money that extended their buying power.

The first organ transplant took place. Right on!

The Korean War started. Bummer!

Playboy Magazine came out, the first nude {tits only} magazine of its kind. Yeah, baby!

The famous Norma Jean {Marilynn Monroe} grace the first centerfold.

DNA was discovered.

Joseph Stalin, who was supposed as evil as Hitler was executed.

The average cost of a new house was $9.550.00.

Average wages per year were $4,000.00.

Cost of a gallon of gas .20 cents.

The average cost of a new car was $1,650.00.

And all of that was in the year I was born in.

My brother Bernie, who was born a year earlier, had the Polio vaccine discovery in his birth year and this was also the year that McCarthy started the Communist Witch Scare and Hunt. President Truman ordered the construction of the first hydrogen bomb. Man now had the power to blow himself to kingdom come and beyond.

Maybe the biggest relief in the 1950s was when "You're a good man, Charlie Brown" hit the newsstands as Shultz's {and the world's} number one comic "Peanuts! "

And in a nutshell: Segregation was banned illegally in the U.S. Disneyland opened its doors.

The color T.V. came into play along with the remote control later that decade. The first color television sets sold for $1,175, and transistor radios start to appear for sale.

James Dean died in a car accident and was nominated for an Oscar which he didn't win.

Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man which was a forerunner of The Civil Rights Movement.

The Soviet Union rushes into THE SPACE AGE with the launch of the satellite SPUTNIK, making Russia the first man into space.

The United States retaliated the following years and put the first man on the moon.

Queen Elizabeth II was crowned queen of England.

We will not be outdone.

Sir Edmund Hillary, an explorer from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese Sherpa, became the first people to successfully climb to the summit of Mount Everest in May.

The Corvette the all-American sports car goes on sale.

Cigarette Smoking is reported as causing Lung Cancer.

If the TV show "Good Times", which was about a small, fat, black lady named Florida, and a tall, ugly, black man named J.J. Walker, who grins and bears it, as they struggle day by day to make it in the world... Then this book can only be called: "BAD TIMES".

For it is about an affluent Black family in 1950's America, who lived in the better part of the Negro section of town in Columbus, Ohio, and is told by a nine-year-old black child, me,

Brewster.

"Well, I'm that Nigga. At least I wanna be..."

-Prince, 'Pussy-Control'.