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    Uncle Harry’S Stories: Looking Back Blackly and Proudly Growing up in America
    Uncle Harry’S Stories: Looking Back Blackly and Proudly Growing up in America
    Uncle Harry’S Stories: Looking Back Blackly and Proudly Growing up in America
    Ebook129 pages1 hour

    Uncle Harry’S Stories: Looking Back Blackly and Proudly Growing up in America

    By Dr. Harry R. Irving

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    About this ebook

    Dr. Harry Irving, an African American in his autobiography Uncle Harry's Stories, Looking Back Blackly And Proudly, Growing up in America tells about his great grandparents, who were slaves and his parents Louise and James Irving, his father was illiterate and his mother who only had a fifth grade education, raised nine children. Dr, Irving attended racially segregated public schools in the 1940s and the 1950s in his native state of West Virginia. He served honorably in the United States Air Force during the Korean War. Dr. Irving earned his AA degree (1959) Los Angeles City College, BA (1962) and MA (1972) California State University, Los Angeles, and his Doctorate degree (1990) Pepperdine University.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTrafford Publishing
    Release dateApr 2, 2012
    ISBN9781466921801
    Uncle Harry’S Stories: Looking Back Blackly and Proudly Growing up in America

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      Book preview

      Uncle Harry’S Stories - Dr. Harry R. Irving

      CHAPTER 1

      Blackly and proudly, let me delightfully begin by taking you on a journey back in time, remembering and reliving some of the experiences, good and bad, I have encountered in my life. I hope you enjoy them.

      First, let me begin with a verse from one of my favorite songs. It’s by John Denver, and goes like this, country roads, take me home to the place I belong, West Virginia. Starting with my birth, I was a belated Christmas present to my parents, James Edward Irving and Louise Irving. I was born on December 28, 1933 in the coal mining community of Laing, West Virginia.

      In 1933, the town of Laing had a population of about 1,000. It was located in a hollow, called Cabin Creek, 60 miles east of Charleston, the capital of West Virginia.

      Image22265.JPG

      Laing was accessible by a roadway and railroad. Cabin Creek Hollow consisted of about fifty different communities besides Laing. Laing was built around a coal mine and had about 200 coal company houses and a company grocery store. In the community, there was a black Baptist church and a white Baptist church. There were no police or fire stations or public library. Consolidated, separate white and black schools were school bus rides away.

      The miners who mined the coal one mile under the ground for the coal company rented their houses, shopped at and bought food, clothing and furniture from the coal company’s store. In other words, they owed their Souls to the Company Store (Loretta Lynn, 1980 movie Coal Miner’s Daughter). In my opinion, this form of exchange for goods for services was enslavement and could be theoretically compared to the type of sharecropping that African Americans were forced to engage in during and after slavery.

      Incidentally, the Laing coal mine played out in the late 1950s, mortally wounding the community. As she lay on her death bed, families moved away one by one. Unoccupied wooden houses (including the house I was born in), the company store and the churches were used for heating fuel.

      Today, Laing no longer exists. It is nothing but trees, bushes and weeds—it is gone with the wind. Officially, Laing has been eradicated from planet Earth, and she is no longer listed on current maps or on GPS.

      CHAPTER 2

      Now, let me turn my attention to my family. My dad was illiterate. I remember he would sign his paycheck with an X. My mom had only a fifth-grade education.

      My father had six brothers, my uncles Howard, Frank, Richard, Virgil, Wilbur and Ben, and one sister, Aunt Leila (Nanny).

      Image22271.JPGImage22277.JPG

      My mother Louise Irving

      My mother had two brothers, William and Raymond.

      Image22283.JPG

      My mother married to James Irving, my father, when she was 24. My father was 26. My parents had nine children, seven boys and two girls. Their children were neatly spaced, a baby arriving about every 2 1/2 years.

      Image22289.JPG

      I was their eighth child. My mother was 42 when I was born and 44 when my brother Kenneth was born.

      My mom said, along with my brothers and sisters, that I was born at home, a natural birth. According to records from the time, 95% of births occurred at home, not in the hospitals. It was a natural birth and fortunately not a breech birth, which could have endangered my mother’s life and mine also.

      In those days, most expecting mothers didn’t have prenatal visits with a doctor.

      My head emerged from my mother’s vaginal opening with the help of the community midwife, Ms. Carter. I can now picture myself singing the Diana Ross song, I’m Coming Out, I want the World To Know . . . I can hear myself saying that I’m sick and tired of that nine months of uterine confinement, and then repeating the stirring words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last!

      Image22295.JPG

      Diana Ross

      Oops. Thanks, Mom, for not aborting me (Pro-Choice vs. Right to Life) and choosing Right to Life and giving birth to me.

      Before Roe vs. Wade (1973), abortions were illegal in most states in the United States. Many illegal abortions, however, were performed, and many women died from such abortions.

      Family planning, Planned Parenthood, contraceptives such as birth control pills, spermicides, diaphragms and IUDs were not available. Only condoms were available. They were infrequently used because men claimed that it took the enjoyment out of sex. In addition, vasectomies and tubal ligations were not medically known.

      According to my mother, I was a healthy, breast-fed baby. When I was six months, however, I developed whooping cough. One evening, my whooping cough became so severe that I stopped breathing. My mother had given me up as dead. Fortunately, my oldest brother Robert performed artificial respiration on me and restored my breathing.

      CHAPTER 3

      The following below are the names, sex and year of birth of my parents’ offspring:

      34617.jpg34635.jpg

      Now, let’s have a little sense of humor. To rectify or regain our African heritage, I’m going to replace our European first names with African-American names, unlike Malcolm X, who replaced his last name Little with an X and became Malcolm X. Oops. My mother would wake up in her grave if she found out I changed her children’s English

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