Reflections of a South Dakota Farm Boy….Lifting the Veil of Ignorance On Racism

By Richard de Wilde

Richard's high school senior year photo...
before he became a hippie!

I grew up in a remote South Dakota community that was all white, immigrant family descendants.  There was no racism evident to me at the time, but then why would there be when everyone around me looked the same.  There were, however, plenty of “judgments” made by my father.  For example, “if you work hard and work smart, anyone can succeed in America.   If people are poor, it is because they are lazy.”  Also, in retrospect I wonder about the “Indians” from the Sisseton Reservation?  My father had a contact there and would make the one hour drive to the reservation on Monday to pick-up four or five guys to pick rock on our farm.  They stayed at our farm for the week and slept in the barn.  I am sure my mother fed them and Dad would return them to the “Res” on Friday or Saturday.  He would always tell us they would not be available to work again for at least a week, “until they drank up their week’s pay!”  I didn’t think much about it at the time, but in retrospect I understand my father’s attitude towards these people was such that they were a lesser group of people compared to us.  Prejudice?  Racism?  Only later, after I spent some time with a group of Native Americans in the Badlands of South Dakota during college, did I realize these “Indians” were wonderful people and I shared their love and connection with nature and “Mother Earth.”

I didn’t come face-to-face with full blown racism and discrimination until I spent the summer between my junior and senior year in college working in a coal mine in Bluefield, on the border of West Virginia and Virginia.  I was studying mining engineering and that summer I was assigned to a small electrical crew at the mine.  We traveled the underground passageways through the mines on a low electric “scooter” powered by a pole riding on an electric cable near the ceiling.  As I was the youngest and newest man on the crew, I was designated “Pole Man.”  The spring-loaded pole would frequently bounce off the wire and hit the ceiling.  As “Pole Man,” I would quickly and gracefully put the pole back on the electric wire in a matter of seconds.  One day I was in the scooter with several other guys including our crew leader and a black co-worker everyone called “Boots.”  Our scooter pole jumped off the cable and we were stalled.  Tiny flakes of shale started raining down on us.  In a matter of just a few seconds I saw Boots jump out of the scooter and run back in the direction we had come from.  I looked at the crew leader as he jammed his hand down putting the scooter on full throttle while looking at me with a look in his eyes that immediately told me I needed to get the pole back on the wire.  I did, and with the lightening speed and pride of a Midwest farm boy.  The scooter shot forward as the pole connected and just behind us a foot thick slab of shale roof fell onto the tracks we had just vacated.  Boots was on the other side of the roof fall, safe from the falling debris and thankfully, no one was hurt that day.  The next day we returned to this spot to clear the debris from the tracks.  My brother, Dennis, was also a mining engineering student and was working in the same mine that summer.  The white foreman looked at us, and with an air of contempt in his voice, said “What do you kids want?  Blood?”  This was the same time in history as the Kent State protests against the Vietnam War when protesters had just been shot by National Guard troops.  I had started to grow a beard and my hair was probably one inch over my ears.  The foreman looked at me and thought I was one of the “hippies” protesting the war.  When questioned about my appearance, I told them it was a college senior tradition.  This foreman informed me that he thought I might be OK, “but if he thought I was one of those X!#*!X damn hippies, I just might have myself an ‘accident’ and would not leave the mine alive.”  He went on to explain that there was a new young engineer on the mine staff and it was clear he despised this young, inexperienced “kid” telling him what to do.  Periodically the engineer would go down in the mine in an elevator to inspect the tunnels, etc.  During the winter ice sometimes formed at the top of the elevator shaft.  The foreman described his plan to cause a chunk of ice to fall on the elevator, which it was clear to me could be a fatal accident.  Well, this was quite a shocking revelation for this Midwest farm boy!  I had no idea a difference of opinions and points of view could cut so deep as to motivate someone to harm another person, let alone to create an “accident” that could cause fatal harm to another human.  I had never seen such hate before!

On my last day of work for that summer, I was sent to the bottom of the mine to shovel wet coal that had fallen off the conveyor belt.  My sole companion on that job was Boots.  We shoveled wet coal for a time and then Boots suggested we take a break.  We sat down and turned our headlamps off.  It was so dark that even two hours later you could not see your hand in front of your face!  Boots explained to me that this clean-up job was only done once per year and it was the worst job in the mine.  He was there because he was a black man who sometimes “spoke up.”  He told me I was there because I was suspected of being a hippie.  You know, if he hadn’t told me that I don’t think I ever would have realized that either of us were the subject of discrimination.  We spent the rest of that shift sitting and talking, becoming friends.  Boots pointed out that of all the black miners at the mine, not one held any position of leadership as a foreman.  I hadn’t thought about it, but it was true.  Boots also told me he felt very bad about the earlier “roof fall” event when he had seen the shale flakes, knew it was a sign that meant a roof fall was coming, and chose to save his own life knowing I did not know what was coming.  My quick action on the pole saved the scooter, my life and the lives of others with me that day, but it could’ve also been a fatal accident that may have killed us.  Boots felt really bad about what happened. 

In the ensuing hours sitting in total darkness, I came to feel that this was the first “older man” that I could totally respect.  The way he talked about his family, his children made me wish I could have had a warm, loving father like him.  Before I left to go back to school, Boots invited me to visit his family.  So I drove my ’55 Chevy Coup to his little town near Tazewell, Virginia.  I was greeted by a dozen barefoot children who obviously knew I was coming and they took me to Boots’ house, or maybe you would call it a shack.  It wasn’t much, but everyone was super warm and friendly and then the truth was told that I was the first “white boy” anyone could remember ever visiting their town.  Hmm, a separate town for blacks only?

While living in West Virginia that summer, my experiences in the mine were not the only life changing events that I experienced.  One night that summer my brother Dennis and I went to a disco club.  We were standing outside the entrance when three college-aged women approached.  Two of the women were white, one was black.  Dennis and I thought all three were attractive and seemed intelligent, so we couldn’t understand why they were denied entry and told it was because they didn’t have a “membership card.”  No one had asked us for a membership card when we entered.  I watched this happen and didn’t understand what was going on, so I approached the women as they were walking away and asked them what just happened.  They explained that they knew they would be denied entry because their friend was black!  What?!  Dennis and I decided to forego the disco club and hung out with these three girls instead.  We became friends over the course of the summer and never chose to return to “the private club.”  Dennis later married one of the girls, Carol Sue.  Needless to say, after that summer both of us declined good paying jobs in the underground coal industry.  I took a job with the Bureau of Mines at Fort Snelling, Minnesota and befriended the only black man on the staff there.  However, my tenure there was brief and I was soon looking for “more meaningful work.” 

I moved to a farm in Eagan, Minnesota and volunteered at the neighboring Dakota County Developmental Learning Center, a school for “special” children.  I came to learn that these children were in fact very special.  What these children lacked in intellect was more than made up for in their extreme loving nature.  The staff at that school were equally loving.  The school day was hard work, but fun and after the children left for the day, the staff stayed on to socialize and party!  This was a work environment like none I had ever known!  This was also the first time I had ever met gay people, who at that time were often considered outcasts.  As I got to know the staff members, some of which were gay, I realized they were all wonderful, accepting human beings.  Yet another stereo type to throw out the window! 

Ronnie, one of Richard's foster kids, playing in the bean field.

After working in special education for several years, including working with autistic children, I turned to farming with teenagers in foster care.  After multiple frustrations with the system returning them to abusive homes, when “my boys” turned 18 they were on their own, I left social work and turned to farming full-time. 

As a vegetable farmer in need of much manual labor, I have experienced a wide variety of people over the course of my career. High school and college kids on summer break do not work well for our longer season, so we have utilized Vernon County jail inmates on Huber program (day time work release), Laotian Hmong, workers from Mexico, both local year round residents and H2A visa seasonal workers.  This has given me a unique chance to experience several cultures, work with many individual personalities, and get to know many wonderful human beings.

An early crew picture from Richard's first farm,
Blue Gentian Farm in St. Paul, MN.

I feel blessed to have been exposed to a variety of people that have changed my narrow “Midwest farm Boy” perspective to a more worldwide view.  That is all human beings, worldwide, rich or poor, any color of skin, have certain unalienable rights such as being given basic respect as human beings, the right to healthy food, clean water, shelter, freedom from abuse, economic security, medical care and a safe environment free from chemical contaminants, corporate greed and monopolies.  The hatred, the racism, greed and militarism that has caused so much harm worldwide needs to be “reined in,” voted out.  Ok, it’s true I was and still am a “peace & love” hippie and proud of it!

We need a huge change in focus and redistribution of resources.  I still believe that if we all work together we can still save our planet, our human race and all the divine life that we depend on.  This pandemic and the events of this year have brought many long standing issues to the forefront.  Lets not just wish to get back to normal, but work to create stable, sustainable local food systems and just economies and communities.  This is a huge, but achievable, task if we all take the time to examine our own prejudices and misconceptions of others.  Change can happen when we do our best to show kindness and respect to our fellow human beings.  It is contagious and good things happen.  We change the world.