A descendant of slaves who served in World War II gets his diploma – 77 years later
Just before California banned public gatherings to combat the spread of COVID-19, Willard Ingraham picked his high school diploma in front of a Sacramento ballroom audience of more than 500 people.
It was March 11, which seems like a long time ago considering that Californians began sheltering in place within days of Ingraham’s big moment. Working from home and avoiding social contact has scrambled our collective sense of time, making days and weeks seem much longer.
But Willard Ingraham could teach us all about enduring hardship that drags out over decade after decade with no end in sight. He could teach us about remaining positive and hopeful, as he had no promise or expectation that his wait for basic rights would ever end with justice.
Ingraham brought that March 11 audience to its feet at the Sheraton Grand Sacramento Hotel because he was so joyful when getting his high school diploma 77 years late.
Yes, it was 77 years late. He is the great grandson of a slave, a 94-year-old U.S. Army veteran of World War II and the survivor of Jim Crow laws in his native Louisiana that prevented him getting his diploma when he should have in 1943.
Ingraham moved that big crowd in Sacramento with his unconquerable spirit and story.
A resident of the Yolo County town of Dunnigan for 35 years, Ingraham opened up his heart that has never hardened despite growing up segregated, serving in the Army segregate, and experiencing post-war discrimination that never stopped him or embittered him.
“My grandmother used to say, ‘You may think you are rattled, but don’t ever give up,” Ingraham said on his big day.
“She said you have to learn to wake up. Get up. Stand up.”
Denied an education
And so Ingraham has, building a life of distinction by listening to the matriarchs in his family. They told him about his great grandfather, the slave who became a free man and started a family that always aspired to more than what fate had given them.
“My family started with two people,” Ingraham said. His great grandfather was named Sam and was a blacksmith who was taken by slavers to England before being sold at auction in North Carolina, Ingraham said. At the end of the Civil War, Sam settled near Kilbourne in northeastern Louisiana. With him was his wife, Elizer Williams, who Ingraham said was from Ethiopia.
They had 11 children. They settled on their own piece of land. They created a family ethic based on hard work, faith and joy. That’s how they lived, and that’s how Ingraham lives to this day.
“Our family were pioneers in that particular area,” Ingraham said. “In my family, you had to be determined to do something with your life.”
Ingraham was born with an intellectual curiosity that might have produced a scholar had he been a white youth in his times. But he was African American and no high schools for black kids were near where he lived.
He said he had to travel 80 miles away and he did for a time, living with a black family who took him in. “We used to pass eight schools (for whites) on the way to my school,” he said.
So going into the army – a segregated army – was Ingraham’s only way to get some form of education so he could better himself. He landed in the 24th Infantry Regiment, which fought in the Pacific Theater of the war.
Atomic flash of light, world of change
By August of 1945, the 24th was near Okinawa, Japan. On Aug. 5, Ingraham said he was in a chow line waiting to eat with other soldiers. A gigantic flash of light had them all ducking for cover.
Later Ingraham and fellow soldiers learned that the flash of light was an atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima by the U.S.
The world changed in that moment. It changed again when President Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces while Ingraham was still a G.I.
“We needed that to temper our hearts and souls,” Ingraham said. “We thought we were fighting Germany and Japan but God had another plan. God was bringing civil rights.”
He may have been, but civil rights came slowly. After the war, Ingraham followed some relatives to Richmond in California, where he worked as a civilian at a naval weapons base.
He fought for his country, but couldn’t buy a house. So he built one. He built his own family, worked at the base for more than 30 years.
“I was always a good worker and nobody had to stand over me,” he said.
He married Juanita after the war. They raised two kids. They have been married 63 years.
“I’ve had a hard life,” Ingraham said. “But a good life.”
World World II, civil rights and beyond
Ingraham is part of a dwindling number of World War II veterans still left to tell their stories and remind us of a generation that defeated tyranny and then came home and built the country we know now.
According to the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs, only 390,000 WW2 veterans remain from the 16 million Americans who served during the war years between 1941 and 1945. That’s a little more than 2 percent of a population that defined America for the latter half of the 20th century.
Ingraham might have never lived to get that high diploma denied him by circumstances had he not run into Jesse Oritz, a Vietnam-era veteran and a longtime education advocate and Yolo County elected official.
Ingraham had moved to Dunnigan in 1984, after building his own house there. Why Dunnigan? It reminded him of his native Kilbourne, he said.
Ortiz said he noticed Ingraham’s WWII veterans hat when he stood in line at his bank in Woodland. “Every time I see a World War II vet, I take the time to thank them for their service,” Ortiz said.
All Ortiz said was “thank you,“ and Ingraham took it from there. His story poured out of him with relish and pride. Ortiz contacted some education leaders he knew and then it was set.
On March 11, he would get his diploma from the California Association of African American Superintendents and Administrators.
“That was one of the great things of my life,” Ingraham said.
His whole family was with him with him that day. They all celebrated the acknowledgment of Ingraham getting a diploma to commemorate that he had bettered himself.
He had worked hard, learned a great deal and shared what he learned with others.
He had also outlived and outlasted those who had denied him.
“Sometimes stress can bring out the best in people,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of stress, but I never let it get me down.”
This story was originally published April 2, 2020 at 2:06 PM.
