Photo By Staff Sgt. Grace Lee | Ben Bruce, 56th Fighter Wing ground safety manager, is shown as a staff sergeant in...... read more read more
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Although he was 10 years old at the time, he remembers that day like it was yesterday.
“It was early in the morning around 9 a.m. when we rode yellow buses from a church in Wilmington, Delaware down to the Washington Monument in Washington D.C.,” said Ben Bruce, 56th Fighter Wing ground safety manager. “As a child, I was more interested in getting in the reflective pool and climbing up a tree than I was in all the activity. About 250,000 people were there along with CBS, NBC and ABC.”
It was a long time before Bruce realized it had been a historic moment.
“Around a quarter to noon, the crowd formed up parallel to the reflecting pool at the Lincoln Memorial without anyone saying anything,” he said. “As they marched they held hands and sang the Civil Rights anthem, ‘We Shall Overcome.’”
After listening to a series of speeches, A. Philip Randolph, leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, introduced the next speaker.
“I recall Randolph saying, ‘Now let me introduce the moral leader of our movement, the reverend Dr. King J R.’ All of a sudden the crowd went crazy. He started talking and eventually spoke about this dream, and I realized even though I was young, I was at an important event.”
While he didn’t know it back then, that speech would positively affect him and many Americans. It came to have meaning as he faced discrimination early in his Air Force career.
“When I came into the Air Force I had a really hard time at first working with people and being part of a team,” Bruce said. “During the first few years of my Air Force career, I saw a problem with race relations. We had riots at Travis Air Force Base in California. The riots took place in the dining facility, the barracks, and more.”
In the beginning of his career, there was a program called Social Actions, or what is known today as Military Equal Opportunity, which deals with race relations and equal opportunities.
With time, things got better even though to Bruce it seemed like a never-ending battle.
“Sometimes they put blacks and whites in a room together and tried to figure out why we didn’t like each other and what we could do to solve the problem,” he said. “Early on in my Air Force career there were a lot of growing pains with race relations and over time, as we continued to dialogue, it got better.”
Bruce’s memories have formed his current perspective on Black History Month and what it means to him.
“Black History Month means a lot to me because it gives black people an opportunity to share our history with others and allows them to understand the sacrifices and contributions we’ve made in building this country,” Bruce said. “So it’s not an opportunity for black people to celebrate but for everybody, including non-blacks, to learn about what has been done in the black community.”
In celebration of Black History Month, Luke Air Force Base is holding an African-American History Month luncheon in Club Five Six Feb. 25 at 11 a.m. Bruce will be the guest speaker for the event, during which he will elaborate more on his story and family history. For more information, call Tech. Sgt. David Beasley at 623-856-6361.
| Date Taken: | 02.16.2016 |
| Date Posted: | 12.08.2016 16:41 |
| Story ID: | 216587 |
| Location: | LUKE AIR FORCE BASE, AZ, US |
| Web Views: | 12 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Luke Airman lives through Civil Rights Movement, headlines event, by SSgt Grace Lee, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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