Click here to subscribe today or Login.
By TOM OBRZUT JR.; Times Leader Staff Writer
Sunday, November 13, 1994 Page: 3A
WILKES-BARRE — Arthur Rux served in World War II, but you wouldn’t have
known it when he returned to Wilkes-Barre.
There were no parades, no jobs and no accolades because he is
African-American, Rux said.
“As far as I’m concerned, we were forgotten,” he said. “Like we never went
to war.”
On Saturday, the Wilkes-Barre chapter of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People, held its annual dinner-dance. This year’s
dinner honored minority veterans, said chapter president Constance E. Wynn.
About 25 local minority veterans attended Saturday’s dinner at the Ramada
Hotel on Public Square.
She said that many minority veterans came home and went “right back into
life.”
“You don’t see them at parades,” Wynn said. “This is our way of pulling
them out of hiding and saying thank you.”
Because World Wars I and II were segregated wars, many minority veterans
were left out of celebrations involving veterans of those wars, she said.
Rux said there was a local dinner shortly after the end of World War II to
honor minority veterans, but nothing since.
He was a member of the 93rd Division, one of two all-black divisions that
fought during World War II. His division captured the highest-ranking Japanese
official during the war, he said.
Despite that, when he returned home, he couldn’t get a job except in the
mines.
Kenneth Burnett said racism abounded in the United States during World War
II, but not overseas during the war.
“When bullets are flying, there is no racism in a foxhole,” he said.
Burnett urged those in attendance to make a contribution to society.
“You are the community and the community is you,” he said. “We all can make
a difference.”
Guest speaker Howard Jones spoke of two types of responsibility.
He said they are the responsibility of minority veterans to take care of
their own, whether at home or in a veterans’ hospital and the responsibility
of the black community to provide a positive role models for black youth.
Wynn cited several areas of achievement during the past year for the local
NAACP chapter:
The petitioning to change the name of the Wilkes-Barre Boulevard to Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Sponsoring a Native American Inter-tribal Powwow to educate area residents
what the “roots of this area are about.”
Sponsoring a food and clothing drive with the Vietnam Veterans Post 66,
Pittston. Commander Joe Tavaglione said enough food has been collected to feed
more than 100 families and enough coats to clothe more than 125 children. The
drive ends next week.
TIMES LEADER/FRED ADAMS
Robert Harris, right, of Wilkes-Barre, a former Marine corporal, chats with
NAACP member Joe Oxford, of Wilkes-Barre, at the organization’s annual
dinner-dance on Saturday at the Ramada Inn on Public Square.