About the Book:
In the spring of 1995, I met a soft spoken 88-year-old gentleman by the name of John Frederick Thomas, who was visiting relatives in the Twin Cities from his home on Lake Champlain in Vermont.
Professor Nurith Zmora of Hamline University was researching the history of interracial marriage in Minneapolis and John was a mixed-race child from the north side of the city, and she asked me to do her a favor by videotaping her interview with him. I had no real experience with a camera, but that day would change the course of my life.
John was fairly light skinned, but he immediately identified himself as African-American. I was so taken by the courage of his story, that I arranged a road trip to his home where I held the first of my own extended interviews with him. I was bitten by the documentary bug but I had no idea that it would lead to a long career in non-fiction filmmaking.
John and I soon discovered that we were both raised in North Minneapolis, and, although our neighborhoods were quite close, we had lived on two sides of a color line that ran through the heart of the North Side. I was fascinated, because, as a child, I was only vaguely aware of those on the other side of that line, and they were largely invisible to me and my white neighbors. I didn’t even see a person of color until I left home at 18 years old, and now, by getting to know John, I had the opportunity to learn more about that other side of my city.
At the dawn of the 20th century, when John’s parents arrived in Minneapolis, Reconstruction had been violently overthrown, the Ku Klux Klan was being reborn, Jim Crow was spreading like a deadly virus and lynchings continued unabated in the South.
John’s father was the son of a runaway slave and a Native American woman and his mother was a Swedish immigrant, who settled in a city that was 98% white with very few interracial couples, and even fewer children of mixed race.
John’s family was surrounded by covenants and restrictions barring them from housing and occupations, with a state government that would soon debate anti-miscegenation laws outlawing mixed marriage. So when, he was born in January of 1907, he entered a world where couples of mixed-race and their children were scorned and even considered criminals in many parts of the country.
A century later, we now see interracial couples
and their children in movies, TV and advertising, but in John’s early years it was a much different story. Children from mixed families had no place in society. They were stuck between two worlds – often accused of trying to “pass” as white by African- Americans, and derided by whites as misfits. They were adrift, often seen as “illegitimate” in a nation with fixed, binary categories of race , and burdened with derogatory names like mulatto and half-breed.
The future held very little promise for young John Thomas but he was brilliant and determined, and he somehow found his way to college. When he arrived at the University of Minnesota, in the fall of 1924, he wasn’t allowed to live on campus or enter some buildings or campus cafeterias. And even though he was an exceptional athlete he wasn’t allowed to participate in sports. He found himself again stuck in the middle, shunned by white students for being Black, and by Black students who accused him of trying to “pass”, pretending to be white. Yet in the spring of 1927, he was one of few students of color to graduate from the University.
John went on to serve in the Army during World War ll, and by the end, he was a First Lieutenant, encouraged by his superiors that he was on track to become one of the first Black generals. But his own raw experience had given him a deep empathy for those in the margins, so in June of 1945, with the blessing of the Army and an honorable discharge, he instead boarded a ship from New York to London and on to Ulm Germany, to help thousands left homeless in war-torn Europe. It was only the beginning of his long crusade to aid millions of displaced persons over the decades of the cold war, who’s descendants are now living throughout the U.S.
But, his heroic accomplishments aside, this book is also focused on the importance of John’s childhood in Minnesota, because his life must be understood within the context of the time and place in which he was born raised to fully appreciate what he accomplished.
John grew up in one tiny section of a rather remote northern city, in the midst of a world war, a flu pandemic and the Great Depression. He was isolated from the wider world, but the world instead came to him through the lives of newly arrived immigrants.
John’s neighborhood was filled with people of all colors, ethnicities, cultures and traditions. Italians, Jews, Irish, Native Americans and many others living and working together side by side, on streets filled with the sights and sounds of their businesses, schools, churches and synagogues. They needed each other to survive, and they forged a common bond against poverty and circumstance. And although they were forcefully isolated, they were at the same time insulated and protected by the fences of prejudice and discrimination that surrounded them on all sides.
John carried that childhood model with him throughout his life, from Minnesota to Germany, Hungary, Cuba, Vietnam and beyond. Wherever he went, he recreated the warmth and safety of his neighborhood, and used that unique experience to bring others together. His upbringing in Minneapolis shaped and inspired him, and gave him the quiet strength to overcome impossible challenges.
As a young boy with little opportunity, John could have easily become bitter and discouraged. Instead he turned it around, and broke the chains of prejudice and discrimination and left us with an open window into the rich history of American immigration in the early 20th century.
Writing this book has a very special and personal meaning for me, as John was a close friend of mine, But he was much more than that. I lost my dad when I was a young man, and he became a father figure for me.
We completed 13 hours of interviews with John over two years, and I was thrilled when he asked me to help him transform his words along with a 300-page diary into his autobiography. Sadly, he died in January 2002 at the age of 95, and it was never completed. So, this book is the fulfillment of his wish, and my tribute to this remarkable man.