Black History, Our History

February Black History Month. The school children have been
learning about educated and talented and brave African Americans
who, despite the barriers of racism and prejudice, shone brightly in
our past. They have been told about W.E.B. DuBois, Harriet Tubman,
Benjamin Banneker, and a host of others.

I wish it had always been so. My memory of the high school history
class is of an endless dull hour when farm boys in overalls stood in the
aisles between the desks, clutching their history books, stumbling
through their assigned reading with long, painful pauses when they
couldn't even guess at the next word.

Columbus discovered America. Washington crossed the Delaware.
Lincoln freed the slaves. White people settled the west, vanquished
the Indians, and made this country great.

Not only Black children, but all children were cheated by not being
taught the complete history of our country and its peoples. Not until I
was in my thirties did I begin to find and read what should have been
made available to me at a much earlier age: the writings of DuBois,
William Still's Underground Railroad, the "colored" troops in the Civil
War, the segregation of troops during WWII, the massacres and
lynchings of Black people.

We were also cheated of the history of workers' struggles for safe
working conditions and a living wage, the successful fight for an eight-
hour day. May Day, the workers' holiday which originated in the U.S.,
not only was not mentioned, but every attempt has been made to
obliterate it.

And, as union was a dirty word in a small Southern town, we were
not only not taught that part of history, we also never learned how,
after they won the right to organize, those who controlled the unions
used them to bar black people from access to jobs in many of the
trades.

However, I was made aware of one African American hero at an early
age. I had heard my mother and my aunt speak of a Dr. Astrapp when
they were reminiscing about the time when my aunt and her children
lived with us in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, during the depression. They
spoke admiringly of the doctor, saying that he was good, meaning by
"good" that he was knowledgeable and competent.

Then, when I was 12 or 13 and my aunt was visiting us in Menlo, she
apparently became angry with my father and, seeking to turn me against
him, drew me aside to tell me that when mother went into labor with me,
my father owed other doctors in the area and they would not come.

"He had to get a colored doctor," she said, "He had to bring in a
colored doctor to deliver you."

That Daddy owed people was old news, never mind the terrible
circumstances of the great depression. He still "drank up" his money
or "lost" it. The depression had never ended for us.

Her efforts to get me to take sides with her backfired. Forever after it
was a part of my own history of myself, the wonder of that doctor who
came when no one else would come, the one whose hands first held me
as I entered the world.

Recently I needed to find my birth certificate, and there was his
signature, Dr. W.J. Astrapp. On an impulse, I decided to search his
name on the internet. One reference, a photo on the South Pittsburg
Historical Society website. Just the photo, scroll down to see it, with
the caption: Doctor W. J. Astrapp worked and treated South
Pittsburg residents and those from outlying communities
for several decades at South Pittsburg, Tennessee. This
well respected African-American doctor .......

What must it have been like for him as a doctor in a small southern
town, population slightly over 4,000 in 1900, but slowly declining since
to 3,295 by the year 2000. Black or white, I'd wager that mine was not
the only family unable to pay. One can be certain he did not become
wealthy from his medical practice. Yet his face shows the character of
one who knows his own self-worth. I learn from the caption under his
photo that he died in 1945, just about the time that my aunt told me
about him.I wrote to the South Pittsburg Historical Society to ask if they
had any other information about him. Carolyn K. Millhiser, Secretary of
the Society, has sent copies of newspaper articles with some information
and referred me to the president of the National African American

Historic Association of Marion County. I will share from these sources
in the future.