Читать книгу Colored girls and boys' inspiring United States history and a heart to heart talk about white folks - William Henry Harrison - Страница 26

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On U. S. Ships, Colored men deserve

More than to cook or meals to serve;

And some are worthy of better fates

Than be only stewards and gunners’ mates.

Miss “Annapolis-Stevens” should never forget

Foreign nations are looking in shocking regret

At her vamping white boys, for caresses to get

In this School where one Colored has studied but yet.

—Harrison.

In regard to the Colored men who took part in Naval strifes on the high seas, it has been estimated that at least ten thousand of them served in the Navy during the World War. While they were not allowed to advance in the Navy in proportion to their advancement in the Army, nevertheless, Colored college graduates and students, fully knowing such facts, put aside for the time being their educational ambitions and careers, entered the Navy and patriotically as well as unselfishly served in the menial positions of stewards, cooks and mess boys. And judging from the sleek full cheeks and plump round bodies of the officers and sailors aboard the vessels, those Colored boys, who were broad-minded and big-hearted enough to put down college pride and take up in its place national patriotism, went into galley and mess rooms and used the same kind of brain power in wrestling with pots and pans, foods and dishes as they had so brilliantly used in tussling with slippery mathematical, historical and linguistic problems when in their college class-rooms.

And who but God has an accurate record of the noble deeds humbly performed by many of those entrapped and unrescued Colored firemen and stokers who to the very last possible moment kept up the motor powers of their vessels in trying to outspeed and outdodge the death dealing submarine torpedoes? Those swift snakelike missives were always aimed and usually struck at either the life-giving lungs (fire rooms) or the pulsating hearts (engine rooms) of their objects. And it was in those vital organs of several great sea-ploughing vessels where many feverishly working, loyally dying and unsung Colored heroes went down to forever sleep in the dark deep chambers of “Father Neptune.”