June 27, 1997 is the day that will have changed my life forever and shaped me into my current self today. This is my story.
My name is Logan Smith and I was born on March 3rd, 1975. For the first twenty years of my life, I grew up in my parent’s trailer in a small town back in Texas. I had a group of friends that I would hang around during my down time that would make me feel accepted and like I was a part of a group. They were practically family to me at that point. One can even say that we were a rather reckless group of boys; Marching through the woods, throwing rocks at flying birds, and even trespassing into other people’s property just to get an adrenaline rush. Through it all, we all had one thing in common, neglect. All of us had families that did not pay much attention to us and did not care whether they were home before dark or not. This shared quality between us is what really bonded us together. Aside from this, all four of us came from white families that are supportive of the white power movement. This influenced our actions to be a bit more extreme, as we felt as if we were privileged in some ways. We would take the thoughts and ideas of our parents and intensify them in many ways.
For instance, I would always point out a smaller African American boy and the rest of my friends would make fun of him and even say racial slurs behind his back. The feeling that rushed my body whenever things like this happened was what kept me going. I felt dominant and in control. Overall, it just felt right to me that my race come out on top. We were the first to build up this country and fought for the land, right?
Times like these is what made me grow closer to my friends. They backed me up on everything and we all made each other feel powerful. These acts occurred so often that we decided to give ourselves a name: The White Enforcers. We had little meetings with each other about what we valued and what we should and should not protect. Sooner or later we gained the attention of neighboring schools and communities and got requests from other people wanting to join our group. I was about nineteen or twenty at the time and I was not quite sure what to think. Was I building my own arsenal? Am I going to become something big? All in all, I was making a name for myself within the community. We got matching shirts and some even went as far as to get tattoos of the group name on their bodies. Along with our growing population, our actions also grew. With the more land we covered, we began tagging old abandoned buildings with our name to let the community know that we believed in white power and wanted a white nationalist lifestyle. We all made an effort to maintain an all white demographic throughout the city and keep any other race away from the area. Even though we were only accepting of the white race and fended off any opposing race, we never grew strong enough to inflict pain or violence upon anyone else. We were in our vulnerable stages you could say.
Once I turned twenty one years old, my life felt like it had been hit by a truck. It was a cool cloudy Sunday afternoon when I had returned from an excursion with some of the group members. I open the front door and find a note on the kitchen table telling me to call my father once I got home. I carelessly walk over to the living room and pick up the house phone to dial my father’s phone number. It rings only once before my father picks up the phone and I immediately hear the shakiness in his voice. He says “Logan, your mother suffered a sever heart attack and passed away about an hour ago. I’m at the hospital and will not be back home until tomorrow.” I was speechless at that moment. My body felt cold. My skin felt spiny like a reptile. I could not believe what I have just been told.
Days pass by and nothing but darkness and silence filled my home. Even though I did not have the greatest connection to my parents, that does not stop me from remembering the precious moments that I had with my mother and prevent me from being flooded with sadness. My father on the other hand was a different story. He loved my mother dearly and would always tell her that he is working to help her achieve her dream. He called me into his room and mentioned that he wanted to move out of the house and buy a new home because he felt too attached to my mother here. I felt bad and decided to help him look around for houses a few hours away in another city.
I will not lie, I wondered what would happen to this community that I have brought together with our common beliefs. Will it live on? Or what about where we go: Can I start one in this new area? I could not help but to have these thoughts. However, I am making this sacrifice for the sake of my father’s suffering and for my mother’s sake. Slowly and slowly I begin attending less meetings of The White Enforcers and tell my closest friends what was happening in my life. They wished me well and wanted me to spread the awareness of white nationalism wherever I go. A few days go by and my father and I are now in our new home a few hours away from where we used to live. I notice my dad feeling a little better about what happened, but he is nowhere near happy either. I had a strong feeling that that his emotions will improve with time.
Finally, on June 27, 1997, I went out to inspect the little town within my city and maybe get some coffee. I spot a nearby coffee shop and decide to get me a nice dark roast. I enter the little mom and pop shop and I see something that gives me a roller coaster of thoughts and emotions. Should I be mad? Confused? I was not sure how to react. I saw a white man with his arm around a black woman. I first wiped my eyes to confirm what I was seeing. I was confused at first, then got a rush of disappointment within my own race. I could not help but speak up for what I believed in and try to talk some sense into this man. I tapped him on the shoulder and told him “Sir, how could you possibly have so little respect for yourself to date a woman of color, they do not deserve to be held up to the same standards as us whites.” The black woman immediately started crying and the man threatened to hurt me if I did not leave the coffee shop. I’m not one to spark a violent interaction so I proceeded to leave but shouted racial slurs at the woman as I left. Everyone that witnessed looked at me in the most disgusting way ever. One even called me a pig. On the drive home I thought more and more about the woman crying because of what I have done. It is basically as if I had harmed her physically. It was engraved in my head.
I get home and threw my car keys on the counter. I enter the living room and can hear deep breathing coming from the other room. I was slightly worried, but I assumed it was just my dad expressing his emotions over my mother again. I creep towards his room and crack his bedroom door open in an effort to comfort him. Little did I know, what was about to happen would change my perspective on life forever. I looked into his bedroom and see him sitting on his bed crying with a container of pills in his hand. My eyes instantly widened, and I ran for the bottle. I smacked it out of his hands, and he hugged me while yelling “I couldn’t do it!”
My father had tried to take his own life through overdose because of how bad his depression got. That’s when it all hit me; I had to stop. I, Logan Smith, had to take a step back and start loving, rather than hating. I did not want to lose both of my parents because of our distant relationship.
From that day on I spent more time with my father and we both went into counseling. I went in to help make me become a more accepting person and he wanted to better handle my mothers passing. This helped my father and I grow closer and create that family feeling that was never established. This is what I needed sixteen years ago.
Author's note
Writing this narrative (and I mean this in the most serious way possible) was one of the hardest pieces that I was required to write for several reasons. Pretty much everything that I made up for this narrative went against all of my morals as a human being and even though I didn't necessarily go too deep into the actions that were performed by this white nationalist group, I was disgusted by what I had to come up with. I'd say that this was the difficult portion of the piece because this character that I made up is completely different from the person that I am in real life and I have many friend and family members that can confirm that. Overall, I believe that this made up character can represent what the mindset of a white nationalist is like in the real world and some of the harsh things that they'll do in order to get their point across of what they're fighting for
Works Cited
Romo, Vanessa. “NPR News.” El Paso Walmart Shooting Suspect Pleads Not Guilty, 2019, www.npr.org/2019/10/10/769013051/el-paso-walmart-shooting-suspect-pleads-not-guilty.
“Facing History And Ourselves.” Explainer: White Nationalism, 2019, www.facinghistory.org/educator-resources/current-events/explainer/white-nationalism.
“Facing History And Ourselves.” Explainer: White Nationalism, 2019, www.facinghistory.org/educator-resources/current-events/explainer/white-nationalism.