energy and soulful singing always made you want to dance. Historically, dance leads to trance, and trance leads to God, and that experience can be achieved in church or a dance hall.
Be-ins, outdoor concerts—Woodstock being the most infamous—were happening all over the US and Europe. The Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco, the Fillmore East in New York, the Kaleidoscope in Los Angeles, concert halls, bars and homes across the country became temples of music and dance. There was no turning back; a critical mass had been reached.
America had changed. The insistence that Afro-Americans be a part of the American experiment was spearheading that change.
This is the backdrop for Ozay Broussard’s journey.
New Order
The Carnation Milk Company logo was branded into the oak wood crate. Its metal frame made it almost indestructible. Ozay had used it to cart books and magazines every time he moved. Sometimes these books never found a permanent shelf and stayed in boxes. He was organizing his belongings—preparing to move from Berkeley to Marin County that morning—trying to get rid of mold smell from the magazines in the crate. Sandwiched between pages of old Mechanics Illustrated were even older pictures of his mother, who died of leukemia the day after Ozay graduated from high school. One picture showed her blowing out the candles on her thirtieth birthday cake. He still couldn’t understand why his mother kept her visits to the doctor a secret for years. Finally she had to be hospitalized; she died soon after. On one of his rare visits, his father attended the funeral. Thoughts of his mother brought tears, and he noticed them dripping on other items—postcards, travel brochures, street maps. He pulled out a National Geographic magazine, and a letter fell to the floor. It was addressed to himself from Danny Johnson, an old friend from high school who had signed up for the navy in ’59. Like most guys, brought up on John Wayne movies, he wanted to be a ‘frog-man,’ a ‘Navy Seal,’ or a Marine. The letter was from Vietnam. Despite the assurances by the US Government that there were only advisers there, Danny was in the thick of the fighting against the ‘Viet-Cong.’ The letter was dated Aug. 13, 1961, fifteen years earlier. Ozay reread the letter:
What’s happening, old buddy? Had to go to some tricky shit just to get this letter out. I’d like to let you and my family know what’s been going down here in hell. Ha! But regulations don’t allow. Not what I thought it would be. Surprise! The shit going down here is heavy, man. I hate to admit it, but I’ve never been so scared in my life. Funny how I find myself relying on and backing up white dudes who called me nigger in boot camp. Our job as Navy Seals is to back up the Green Berets and run supplies up the Mekong. Just trying to stay alive. The jungles are both beautiful and deadly. I’m sitting under palm trees now writing you, thinking of the time you and I built our fort out of date palm leaves on the empty lot behind my house—no girls allowed. Funny thing, if one of the cute girls had come by, we would have let her in—no questions asked. If I get out of this, I’m going to study Biology or Botany. They say these jungles are the lungs of the planet, and that the cure for most diseases can be found in jungle plants. I believe that I’ve lost my God-given innocence here. It seems as though I’ve been on a long journey and at the end I’ll be a man. I really didn’t know how high the cost would be. Since I volunteered, I’ve got to complete my 4yr duty. Pray for me.
Danny
Ozay’s reflections upon the letter were ambivalent. Pray for Danny? On the one hand, Ozay had stopped praying by the time his friend had sent the letter. On the other hand, Danny was an old friend whom he didn’t want to see hurt. Ozay remembered that when he first read the letter, he already suspected that if there was a God, his friend Danny wouldn’t be there in Vietnam risking his life and possibly taking the lives of others. He folded the letter and put it back in its envelope, thinking that Danny did survive the war and that he hadn’t called him, or his own brother, Ernest, in ages. Ozay and Ernest had gone to Mexico to avoid the Vietnam draft. Both had returned and submitted to the draft, only to be rejected with 4F classifications: deemed unfit for service.
The war had been long over and Ozay still found it hard to deal with Nam vets, especially if they had been in combat. Most of the time when he met vets, they would identify themselves by reciting their rank, squadron, where and when they fought, and then there would be an uncomfortable silence that confirmed Ozay hadn’t been in Nam. Would he admit to not only opposing the war, but fleeing the country, and risk a heated exchange? Usually the subject would be dropped.
Ozay’s thoughts took him back to when he fled to Mexico, fearing induction. Many expatriates fled to places like San Miguel de Allende—political refugees and artists of various sorts could live there more cheaply than in the US.
Ozay had gotten a temporary 1-Y classification while he was in Jr. College for not signing the loyalty oath and for an arrest record from a civil rights protest. Even though the US declared it was not officially involved in Vietnam, Ozay knew he had to stay in Mexico to avoid induction. There, he could seek conscientious objection counseling from the Quaker Friends in Mexico City. They provided the service for those against war—pacifists. Ozay hadn’t determined if he really was a pacifist. Yet, one and a half years later, somewhat homesick and feeling that his life had been on hold, he decided to return. As soon as he established an address he received an induction notice to appear again.
He remembered debating the numerous ways to make himself undraftable: getting high on what ever drug he could get hold of, or pretending to be gay or crazy. It turned out that he could have stayed sober. His refusal to sign the loyalty oath got him sent to the ‘Moral Waiver’ room, where they sent the misfits: gays, criminals, crazies and political activists. There a psychiatrist would declare you in or out.
“We’ve got enough problems already with black activists in the Army,” the psychiatrist said, “and I suspect that you really don’t want to go in, do you, Mr. Broussard?”
“You’re quite correct,” Ozay saw the psychiatrist’s name tag on his lapel, “Dr. Gambel. Because I could never see myself pledging allegiance to a country that’s screwed me for 400 years, or go blindly to some other country to kill for corporate…”
“Mr. Broussard,” the doctor cut him off, “I’m convinced.” Ozay found himself walking out of the building with a 4-F classification. His rejection was an unexpected blessing. Getting a BS degree in electronic engineering became his focus.
Los Angeles’s Burroughs Corporation, at that time, had openings for grads with a two-year degree as electronic technicians; he could start immediately. Ozay had eased through a two year tech school; hired by Burroughs, scored high on their test and started out testing components on an assembly line; he then moved into computer repairs. It was supposedly a good entry- level job for those with two-year degrees. Ozay soon switched to computer repair and design.
As with many of his past jobs, his politics eventually caught up with him. It wasn’t like Ozay to keep his political views to himself. After working with the same people every day for months, they would eventually piece together who he was—a politically left-wing former activist who had avoided the draft.
Ozay saw the writing on the wall at Burroughs and took a job at IBM’s San Jose facility as a systems installer and troubleshooter. IBM was impressed with his high test scores, and was looking for qualified blacks. Inevitably, the break and lunchtime conversations would, again, expose another part of Ozay’s political past. And eventually a sexist or even soft-core racist remark about other ethnic groups would trigger a compromising remark from Ozay that he knew would further separate him from the other workers.
If it wasn’t the ‘war on poverty’ it was the Vietnam War, or the arms race. When the subject of weed or homosexuality came up, there would always be insipid jokes where Ozay would feign a laugh, and then he would be in their good graces until the next headline about date rape. Finally, Ozay made the mistake of accusing the Nixon administration of war atrocities, and Ozay’s Nixon-Republican supervisor made his stay at IBM short. As soon as he got his electronic engineering degree, he got a job at the Milpitas TEVEX Corp. in ’69.
TEVEX became pivotal in turning Ozay’s life around. It was the beginning of a brief