I Was Born into a Den of Wolves

By Clifton Davis

Many Americans express their desires to obtain a
piece of what is called the American dream. They
also said that the fundamentals of that dream
contain the basic essentials of a foundation
established by immigrants who are said to be
the founders of this country.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465363848

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Copyright © 2011 by Clifton Davis.

Library of Congress Control Number:          2011916417

ISBN:                      Hardcover                      978-1-4653-6383-1

                                 Softcover                      978-1-4653-6382-4

                                 Ebook                            978-1-4653-6384-8

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Content

Preface

To my four daughters:

Petra

Ingeburg

Janette

and

Martine

Preface

From the moment of conception to the day of my birth, there was no way I could have known that I would be born into the den of wolves, which I have encountered and witnessed up to this moment of my life. They are wolves of all descriptions. Not the wolves of the forest that were created by God. But these are men and women that were created by God who became obsessed by material possessions, violence, greed, racism, hatred, and deceit. There are more than I have yet to hear or speak of that fall in categories I have not yet named.

My inspiration to write I Was Born into a Den of Wolves became clearer as I grew older and became knowledgeable in the ideology of hatred and racism that exist in American society. Living amid people whom I will spend the rest of my life. America, where hatred for people of color is like an epidemic or plague. Those who say even today that race relations are better today than it was years ago. This is true to some degree, but the hidden deceit of hatred that still exists in our society leaves no doubt that racism is still alive in America. It is like a fiery emblem under a bed of smoldering ash that rekindles itself from day to day and year to year. Racism in America is not limited to a particular race, nor is racism or violence. Racism and violence are just as prevalent among the black race toward each other as racism and violence are among the white race toward the black race.

I have waited much too long to begin writing the memoirs of my life. But it is never too late to say what is truly in your heart. The characteristics and personalities of some people in America have proven that within their family bloodline, there are continuous traits of violence. These traits have contributed to the high percentage of crimes in America today. From the very beginning, this country became besieged by an epidemic of the following: violence, hatred, racism, greed, and the quest for individual power. It was not the natives that were besieged by these epidemics for which there seems to be no cure. They were not the savages or barbarians that the invaders had claimed them to be. They were people who looked and lived differently and merely stood in defense of what was theirs: this land we call America.

When a child is born, they know no hatred. Hatred is that sickness that is taught to a child within his individual home by the parents. It is passed on from generation to generation as it was since the taking of this land more than five hundred years ago. Many Americans talk about family values and their ideas of what the next generation should try to accomplish. These same Americans have hearts filled with the five things that keep the next generation from fulfilling these values: violence, hatred, racism, greed, and the quest for individual power. They pass on hypocritical values as I see in my daily living. They poison the minds of the children for the remainder of their lives. This is still passed on from one generation to another. To a child, hatred is a monstrous thing, especially to a black child who is born, and eventually dies, living in a society of hatred. Especially when he comes to the understanding and the realization why.

This den of wolves into which I was born began as life began for me in the year 1932. At this time, I had no inclination what life would be like for me as I found it to be as I grew into the age of understanding in America. I cannot remember just how old I was when I reached the age of understanding, what life was like insofar as racial relations were in the small mining camp in Dogwood, Alabama. As an adolescent, my feeling was that every place in America was the same as what it was in Alabama. As I grew older toward adulthood, I realized that what I felt as an adolescent was far from the truth. I will not say that this country, America, which I love, is infested with bad people. But I will say that it has many more than its share of people that have done and are continuing to do bad things.

As we grew up, we—my siblings and I—had very few associations with any other race of people other than black people. Our associations with white people were when my father would permit us to do work in the fields of a white farmer or help them with a particular chore for profit. My parents did not teach us to dislike any person who looked, spoke, or acted different due to their cultural differences. Merely because of the love, compassion, and care that our family had for us, we were taught to beware of those people who do bad things to people because they looked different from them as it is so often done in America.

In the 1930s and 1940s during my adolescent years, I remember Mrs. Dotson, a teacher who taught in our all-black school. Her advice to us students was that our ancestors were slaves and that we would never make any contribution of meaningful value to this country ever. She advised us in her teachings of the fact that we were in school was to advance ourselves academically, and we would never advance in this society beyond the status of servitude for those who she said would be always superior to us. We black students were taught that the only values of any meaning came from those who first came upon this continent. Mrs. Dotson was an example of a fruit that came from a poison tree.

I believe that the fruits of a poison tree are no better than the tree from which they came. There are many in this society who are living symbols of the fruits of the poison tree from which their ancestors were before them. Some of those that are called forefathers or Founding Fathers were the roots that subsequently produced the poison trees that exist in America’s society today. They came to this land with false intentions of friendship, indicating to the natives it was their desire to coexist among them in peace.

They found that the land possessed the ultimate qualities for human survival. It was beautiful in its virgin state. It was rich and fertile, not yet contaminated by the evils of its invaders. The streams were crystal clear. The forest and all vegetations were safe refuge for all animals. These invaders took from this land all they could, at times not for their personal needs but just for their deceitful means to take control of the land and the natural resources that it produced. The results from those acts of acquisitive selfishness and greed are the same results that continue to affect our society today. They are without due consideration for human lives with their lust to acquire the almighty dollar. It leaves our society vulnerable and open to mishaps, resulting in destructions and contaminations as we encounter today. Oil spills that affect the sea and its mammals, radiation deposits that affect the earth’s soil, water, and the air that we breathe, coal ash that is utilized in the production of many products that we use daily has been known to cause cancer and other illnesses, and deforestation without sufficiently replenishing the earth are a few examples of the destructions and contaminations that we encounter. These examples leave no doubt that we as a nation—because of our greed, in many ways are our own worst enemy—are materialistically lost in this den of wolves.

History failed to record their real intentions; therefore, it failed to teach us the true intentions. The natives had preserved and only taken for their needs, replenishing as they lived from the land.

Public education history teachers have taught us just the opposite of what really took place. It is a recorded fact that is known as the New Amsterdam Massacre of 1643. The settlers or Pilgrims waited until the Indians were asleep and attacked them, running bayonets through the stomachs of little babies and flinging them into the river. They cut off the hands of men and opened the bodies of women and children with their swords, killing more than 120 native men, women, and children. Then these invaders went among the homes or wigwams of the natives and torched them with fire until there was nothing left. This was the coming of the wolves who would eventually possess this land through violence, then pass it down to generations within their bloodline, from one predecessor to another. They first befriended the natives deceptively and then conspired to exterminate them completely or as much as possible, conquering their land and pushing the remainder of the native population into reservations. History has glorified these people and their generations as the builders and cornerstones of this country in which we live today.

Racism is so common in this American society today and is accepted by so many people who sincerely believe that this land is only for the white race. It has only been a very few years that blacks were considered so-called first-class citizens. But in the quest of trying to become a recognizable citizen, they paid the ultimate price, mostly their lives.

When history was written, it only highlighted what the writer apparently found important for the teachers to teach. The contributions of black inventors to American society were not mentioned. There are unlimited inventions that were introduced to American society by black inventors. A few of these black inventors are George Alcorn, Benjamin Banneker, Dr. Patricia Bath, Otis Boykin, Marie Van Brittan Brown, George Washington Carver, George Crum, Dr. Mark Dean, Dr. Charles Drew, Kenneth J. Dunkley, Dr. Philip Emeagwali, Dr. Betty Harris, Dr. Shirley Jackson, Lonnie G. Johnson, Frederick McKinley Jones, Garrett Morgan, Valerie Thomas, John Henry Thompson, and James E. West. They never received the notoriety and full value of their inventions. For generations, many black inventors lived under a state of oppression and without sufficient capital to promote their inventions. Therefore, they had to reveal their ideas to the very wolf who would advance it for his own personal greed.

I was born in the state of Alabama in the year 1932 in a small town known as Dogwood. Geographically, Dogwood was a beautiful coal mining town. There were hills and valleys surrounded by an assortment of trees and underbrush. This gave the air a sweet fragrance that would help suppress the smell of engine oil that is prevalent in a mining town, especially during the spring and summer seasons. My father worked in the coal mine five days a week. And with the grace of God, my mother and father dedicated their lives toward the support of their five children—my oldest