THE CONQUEST OF FEAR: SELF-LIBERATION

My mother was, and still is, the family peacemaker.  She also kept a regular bible study with us; it would be years before I found out how much work it took her to just attempt to keep the peace with my father and all of us.  And somehow through it all, she was a working mom too.

Reality!

James Cochran Sr., My father, 1975

My father worked long hours in the New Haven Foundry in the hottest part of the plant where he guided hot melted steal from out of the large pots with a long steel poll.  I feel he was a very frustrated man who was not making his living using one of the many skills he possessed as an extremely talented man in art, music, singing and writing.  He was a union organizer, mechanic, and a former professional football player.  He also played a little basketball and set high school track records that still stand to this day.  We all have gifts in those same areas.  My mother was more talented in academic pursuits in her younger years in school.  She was one of the smartest in a very large family, and she showed a strong desire not to give up, and showed as well as an extension of love and forgiveness that is rarely found.

Wake up, it’s time for school

Around the age of five I started school.  I remember talking with my brothers about what we wanted to do when we grew up.  I recall saying I wanted to be a psychologist.  At that time I felt they could read people’s minds.  I thought that was the greatest gift a person could possess and I always wondered what was on the mind of other folks. My first days of school were very tough but at the same time fun.  Learning was ok, drawing my specialty, singing the pits, and homework a time I didn’t look forward to.

While I was being introduced to public school, my family was falling apart.  My father was a drinking man and it got worse over time.  The frustrations of not using his talents began to destroy him.  He passed up an opportunity to be a lead on the famous Show Boat rolling along the Mississippi River.  He didn’t follow through on a recording deal.  Instead, he signed a contract, produced a record, and stopped the process.  Also a company out at Grosse Pointe, Michigan wanted to hire him to paint billboard signs along the I-94 freeway not long after it was built--a ground floor opportunity in billboard advertising.  Not long after that his doctor told him that some people just couldn’t hold alcohol and that he was one, his system just couldn’t handle it.  It’s ironic that when I was in my third year of college and taking my yearly physical for basketball my doctor told me the same thing.  He told me I was in the greatest shape of any player on the team, but that my type of body system couldn’t take alcohol.

Meanwhile my mother’s patience grew thinner, and my brothers and I got more frustrated and confused, and my sister wasn’t born yet. Personally I went into withdrawal, and I believe that’s when insecurity began to take hold of me.  I went into my first known phases of withdrawal, clinging ever more tightly to my inner thoughts--deeper and deeper I went.  In school I became a daydreamer, especially in classes that didn’t interest me.  If I could have had it my way, I would have sat in class all day and no one would of said a word to me.  I became more of problem to my teachers, as they tried to get me involved.  It was in the first grade that I started falling behind in my reading group, because I was shy.  But in my art class my teacher, Mr. Berlin, would always hold my artwork up and show it to the class and say, “This is how your drawing should look like!!” I appreciated his efforts to inspire other students, but I truly didn’t want the attention.

During that time I was about 5 years old, I didn’t know how to interact with my fellow students in school, and I never felt fully accepted.  When it came to girls, I was totally speechless— one reason was because at home at that time I had no sisters to interact with, I just had no idea how to act around girls.  I often thought about how pleasant it would be to talk to the girls like my friends did. It literally took many years to come up with some answers to the girl problem.

 I remember that around the same time my mother leaving my father and taking us with her.  We would leave and come back-- over and over again-- and by then that perfect dad I spoke of earlier became my nightmare. His drinking transformed him, and it got even worse.  Between drinking, loud talking, jumping on my mother and fighting my older brothers almost on a daily basis, life became unbearable.  It seemed as though his love for his family turned to hate overnight. And of course I was wondering what happened, why had the man we had looked forward to seeing when he came home from work changed?  Whatever happened to the father who took time out with us, invested in our development, the man who had laughed and played so creatively with us? I had come to the point where I didn’t want him to come home at all. That nightmare went on for about two or three years. My world was crushed--I felt betrayed--I just didn’t know what was going on with my family, and everyone was changing.  At the same time, my brothers and I began to lash out at one another. I definitely continued to try and figure things out with the mind of a 5 or 6 year old.  “Why” became the question of the day, in school and out.

Drawing and making things became more important to me, the only I felt I had any control.  Here, with a blank sheet of paper I could express and experience beautiful feelings.  I could make things the way I wanted them to be, and that I did. I could draw for hours at a time, taking flight into a world of creative thoughts and peace.

Another problem during those years was the moving from one school to another.  I ended up attending six different elementary schools. It seemed that just when I made friends it was time to move again, making the withdrawal into myself even more pronounced.  And all of this turmoil showed up in the classroom, especially when we had group projects or read aloud.

Me, my family and the nation in search of ourselves

All this was taking place in the middle 1960’s, when our nation as a whole was in transition.  I was in second grade and don’t remember much, but I do remember a vague feeling of unease, of a whole nation confusedly stumbling, and once again not understanding why this was taking place.  I soon found out about civil rights and struggles of my people, black folk. But what were civil rights?  By then the Detroit Riots of 1967 had started.  Meanwhile, we were back at home with my mother and father again, but things seemed to be getting worse.  The same time the National Guard was all over the city and the very same park I had played in was filled with soldiers walking around and policing the community.  Our familiar alleys were turned into transitional roads for tanks and army trucks in search of strategic positions from which, it seemed, they were poised to attack my community.  On Mack Avenue, army men were lying in the middle of the street with machine guns loaded and in hand, ready to fire at us.  I began putting some things together, watching blacks being attacked on TV, national guardsmen filling our alley, the issues of racism gradually emerging into the foreground of my consciousness.  Even schools organized walkouts with all the kids and most of the teachers walking out of school buildings, protesting the conditions we faced.

I was introduced to the Black Panther Organization one day when me and my brother Chris, and my friend Moogie were up on Mack Avenue.  We stopped at the Inner City Drop-In Center.  When we walked in, I heard loud voices singing songs about the police and the National Guard. “Off the pigs and whose blood, whose, blood the pigs’ blood, the pigs’ blood”. I felt so especially proud of all of us, shaking the place up with our voices, with everyone in the room holding their head high in the air with self-assurance, black power fists gripped tight and waving. I had never seen my people so emotional, angry, and full of pride. I really felt were on the move (“I’m fired up, can’t take no more…”)--it was awesome!  I was among the people who were willing to die for what they believed in.  It was so exciting to be in an environment like it—an experience that has never returned!  It’s true for oppressed people, that once they to get some pride; rage is not far away as the next reaction.   I can remember starting to cry and a big tall panther brother held my hand and said it would be all right.  Then my brother Chris took me out, and as we walked outside the police pulled up—I have no idea what happened after they came.  Oh, how my brother laughed at me for crying, calling me chicken. But I didn’t think of my reaction as all fear, I felt I was just overwhelmed at the whole experience I also remember when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral was on national television in 1968, and the nation was in tears, blacks and whites. It was a very sensitive time in my life, and even though I didn’t know much about Dr. King, I could tell by the actions of the community that we lost a great man.

A short time later, we were on the move again, fleeing from daddy. We moved to Mount Clemons for part the summer of 1969 to stay with my Uncle Son one of my mother’s brothers, while she was pregnant with my little sister Denise.  David, Chris, and me always traveled together in those days, sharing our nomadic lives, and trying to make the best of things.  These two always made sure I had plenty of fun.  We did a lot of things together and being the youngest brother meant that everything we did was a real challenge for me. With them it seemed every day was an adventure even though by then we already had our share of adventures. You had to have brothers like mine to understand them.  They gave me the hardest times over the years, but wouldn’t let anyone else harm me.  Wherever we went we made fun times of it.  Whatever we did we did it hard--played hard, ate hard, slept hard and fought even harder.  We played baseball, football; drew pictures, collected GI Joes with a passion, told scary stories, played monopoly, and had paper wad fights.  I remember learning how to ride a bike that summer, and when I thought I had the knack of it; I rode my bother David’s bike in the street. I was riding very fast and doing quite well until it came time for me to turn.  I was in the street riding on one side, and a car was coming on my side and my uncle’s truck was right in front of me.   I was afraid to make the turn between the car and my uncle’s truck and ran right into my uncle’s truck and everyone laughed at me. 

 We grew tired of Uncle Son’s house, he didn’t treat us very well most of the time, so one day we decided to ride David’s bike back to Detroit, 25 miles away.  The three of use got on David’s small bicycle.  Dave was riding me on the back seat and Chris on the handlebars.  Obviously, we only made it a few blocks-- it was a tough three blocks and we hadn’t eaten yet either. Neither of us ever had much problem trying anything back then.  None of us had a problem with at least trying to find a better way to do whatever we attempted.

A star shines in the dark

Around that time, my little sister came along, and, from the very start, she was a pretty new ray of light for our struggling family, a badly needed source of innocent love.  I was jealous of her for a while, me no longer being the baby of the family. For eight years that was my spot, but at the same time I welcomed her arrival to this world.  She was born August 1, 1969, three months before our next journey away from home.  I still remember how we had to wash our hands every time we touched her.  She was so precious and new to the family.  When I thought of her, she reminded me of the word clean because my mother made sure that everything around her was that way.  

So we came back home that summer to the same family problems with my father, his drinking starting to get even worse.  Little did I know we would be leaving again, but this time my mother said it was for good and by October 29,1969 we were gone. It seemed like one day I came home from school and everything had been moved, my house was empty. I got a chance to take a look around the house with no furniture –it a was puzzling site. And then we were out of there. My mother sent Chris, David, and I to Chicago, I was in third grade.  It was a rough place to be, on the Southside in the Projects with my Uncle Otha and his wife Aunt Mary and their children, but it was a lot better than my uncle Son’s house. It was also the longest time I remember being away from my mother as a child.

         Because we were from Detroit, my brothers Chris and David had to fight a lot at school and in the projects.  For my part, it seemed I never had any more problems making friends once I started talking.  Even in the projects, us three had fun.  I remember us getting eggs out of the house and going up on the top floor of the projects in the hall way and dropping them on people as they passed and ran.  We stayed a few months there, without our mother and newly born sister.  I remember one particular morning, which still stands in my mind as fresh as if it happened yesterday; when we woke up we heard mama’s voice in the front room.  All three of use jumped up out of bed and ran down the hall as fast as we could to greet her and hugged her as tightly as we could, hoping she will stay with us forever.  I think this was my first realization of the true power of a loving embrace.  My mother told us we had a new house of our own without daddy and we were so relieved.

Yet each time we moved it seemed like we got a little bitterer. Every move, every separation, carried a heavy price tag for us youngsters.  By this time I was a nervous wreck and my self-esteem dropped to an all time low.  The only weapon available to us was laughter.  It was clear that the only thing we knew how to do was laugh at it all just to keep from crying. We had our own place all right, but we were not yet home free, for my father was determined to see his daughter and make our lives and my mother’s as miserable as he could along the way.  He was upset because my mother left him 2 months after his only daughter was born. Also she left without notice and took all the kids and all the furniture from the old house on Seyburn.

Chapter 3: – No Pain, No Gain

Our new house was on Grandy Street, down in Black Bottom on Detroit’s eastside.  It brought us closer to solving some of our problems, but it wasn’t without pain.  My father stalked us just about every other night, so our nerves were shot.  It was a large old wood frame house with shiny floors and walls that leaned and squeaked when the wind blew too hard.  The nice thing about it was everybody had their own bedroom, and there were   rooms left to spare!  There was a large old style kitchen with about three doors leading outside, and a scary, unfinished basement.  Below the basement there was this dark room we called the sealer; I felt it was some kind of passage to the bottom of the earth.  We had an old huge garage.  Above the garage there was a separate apartment.  Mom told us to never go up there but we did anyway.  This apartment had no stairway so, to get there, we had to climb the walls and pull our selves up. It was so raggedy up there we had no desire to go back.   I had my own room for the first time and the first thing I set up was some type of desk or office to work and play on.  Even our best friend Moogie had his own room when he spent a night, which happened often.  We often played by ourselves in our own rooms, but we would usually end up in this center room where we all played together.  What wonderful times we had then!  We had so much space we didn’t know what to do with it all.

But nothing’s simple in life, and those extra rooms brought other problems to the family.  Daddy had found out where we lived and began hanging around the house.  At first, he was seen looking in the windows from time to time but then it got worse.  My older brothers Earl and Jimmy were having problems watching out for the family in that old huge house.    Then neighbors said there was a man they’d often see in the garage.  Fear began to rise and consume the household; those old squeaky noises from the wind now became Daddy.  As for the old apartment over the garage, with a child’s imagination, we started thinking Daddy was living up there.  By then we didn’t know exactly where dad was living but it was very obvious that he was hanging around our house a lot.  The family was a nervous wreck, and me about four times the wreck.  We had to find help.  My brothers’ two friends Sunny and Robert came to stay with us some nights to help keep watch.  It didn’t help much, so my uncle Erskine came to live with us for a while.  It wouldn’t be long before we found out he was just as scared of my father as we were, but he was a nice guy and it helped just having his presence around.  Then my Mother was working midnights at a restaurant called Joe Muir’s.  Things at home were only getting worse though.  We all began to play this game, “Did you hear that?” or, ”Did you see that?”  “That’s Daddy!” and then they’d laugh; I guess it was funny to them, but each time they did it they just scared the hell out of me. No one could sleep around their day or night. It was hard to distinguish between jokes and reality.  Often in those days in that old huge house I’d see Earl sitting by the front-room window with a hand gun, while Jimmy was sitting by an upstairs back window in the back of the house with another hand gun, and they would look at me and say everything’s going to be all right.  Yeah, right I thought, if everything’s going to be all right then why are you sitting there with a gun in hand watching out for my father?

Emotions working?

It was a very mixed up time in my younger years.   I was only nine years old, and just couldn’t make sense of my surroundings.  I still remember wanting badly to just see my father.  Boy, it was all very confusing and no one would explain what was really going on, so I had to somehow penetrate this wall of silence, and figure out things on my own.  Three things in particular stayed on my nine-year-old mind at the time--The fear factor about my father, the dream of us all being back together somehow, and the sheer unconditional love that a boy has for his father.  That love, in particular, and the desire to make us come together again, were particularly strong emotions.   But every word I heard about my father was bad, nobody said anything good about him anymore and there were all those nights watching out for him.  The only thing was said all day, every day was; who would be the one to catch him and shoot him like a wild animal, who would be the first to shoot down our private public enemy # one.  Nobody cleared these things up for me; no one tried to help me make sense of what was happening to us.  The whole family was in some state of denial; acting like things weren’t so bad.

Signs of a broken child

Thinking of all the things that took place as I grew up, it’s a miracle I made it to adulthood.  As I was saying, things only got worse.  The elementary school I attended then—my fifth—was the first school I went to where I didn’t care to make any new friends.  I felt there was no need because we would only move again.  But I recall one day walking to school with my brother Chris and another kid from the neighborhood.  As we walked, a man pulled up in an old red car, showed us some candy, and asked us to come get it.  We took off running and the car started chasing us.  Our friend kept going straight while Chris and I ran down a narrow alley looking for a place to hide.  Finally, we ran into a yard and hid behind some old pile of wood.  We could see the red car coming down the alley slowly, its driver searching for us, going past our hiding place.  I recall being so happy it wasn’t Daddy.  Chris and I stayed behind the woodpile for a few moments and then we took off running home.  We told everybody at home what had happened.  They thought it was Daddy but we told them it wasn’t.  Once they understood it wasn’t Daddy, it was over, no longer important.

Meanwhile, Daddy was lurking around the house more and more.  One sunny, hot Saturday afternoon while playing in front of the house with some friends, all at once Daddy was there and I heard him ask, “Where is your mother?” “At the Laundromat,” I replied, before I could even think.  Once he started walking there, I told David and he told me we had to find help.  I followed Daddy to the Laundromat and then David came out of the house; and it was a blessing that Jimmy was coming down the street. David told Jimmy what was happening.  Jimmy then went up to the Laundramat, my brother Chris was already there with mama. When I got there my father was standing in front of my mother fussing.  The man who worked there asked my father to cool down, so my father threatened the man and the man kept quiet.  While my father had words with the man, my mother told me to go get Niecy at home and take her to our cousin’s (we called her “chicken”) house.  Meanwhile, Jimmy told me that he told my mother to get all the clothing and get going.  Jimmy carried a pistol around with him and had it under his shirt.  And as Jimmy, Chris and Mama left the Laundromat, Jimmy showed daddy the gun under his shirt.  Daddy kept his distance as they walked home.

Denise (Niecy) Cochran, around 6 or 7 years old, 1977

I still vividly remember how terrified I was.  Off I ran back home. My brother Dave was in the kitchen with my little sister Niecy.  I told David that Mama told me to take Niecy down to Chicken’s house as soon as I could and then come back. David handed me Niecy and her bag and off I went running with her and the bag in my sweaty hands.  I was running to my cousin’s house, which was about three blocks away.  I was getting tired and breathing very hard but I didn’t stop at all.   I kept running and it seemed like the house was a mile away.  I finally arrived at their side door, banging on it as hard as I could.  Chicken opened the door and had a strange expression on her face.  I was breathing extremely hard, my heart beating a hundred times faster then normal.  She then asked what was wrong with me.  I was so tired and afraid that the only word I could get out was “Daddy”.   I then stuck my arms straight out with my sister and the bag in hand, dropped Niecy in Chicken’s arms and took off back running down the hot sunny street back to the house. 

When I got back the front door was knocked down. My brothers Jimmy, David, and Chris, along with my father and mother were inside.  After it was all over my brother Chris told me Daddy had mama on the couch with a knife to her throat threatening to kill her.  My brother Jimmy, who was seventeen at the time, said to my father to let her go three different times.  My father then got up and said, well I should have taken care of you first.  Jimmy told him to stop.

James Cochran, 1971, U.S. Marines

 Daddy then told Jimmy he wasn’t a man yet and kept coming at him.  Jimmy then said stop again, and then a third time.  Then fired four shots from a 22 pistol, hitting my dad once each in the chest, in the arm, the stomach, and   in his thigh.  I heard the four gunshots where I was, out in front of the house.  I ran to a side door trying to get in.  I opened the door and was shocked to see my father walking towards the kitchen with blood running from several spots.  I stopped at the doorway, and saw in his eyes a crossfire of emotions—a sense of peace, frustration, and embarrassment.  He had a look that I would only come to understand once I became a man myself and ran into life’s brick walls.  To me his look seemed to say:  “You won’t have to worry about me anymore.”  I recall thinking, what is this all about and when would it stop?  What am I doing in this rotten world anyway? 

He walked into the kitchen, leaned over the sink, and washed his wounds with a rag.  I stood at the kitchen door, quietly watching him. He never turned around to look me in the eyes the way I wanted him to, to just explain to me in his own words and for once, tell his youngest son, just what this was all about anyway.  What happened to our family?  What’s going to happen to our family? He never said a word to me!

By then the police came inside the house and took my father and brother Jimmy to jail.  My father gave them trouble; it took about five police just to get him in handcuffs to take him down.  I stood there and stepped back as he passed by me, still not returning my look.  We all walked to the front door of the old wood frame house and stood on the porch, with the whole neighborhood watching.  As they led my brother Jimmy out, he was mad and very upset about having to go to jail, and the police were calling him trigger-happy.  I remember feeling as though it was the end of this old world and a beginning of a new one, and feeling that at least I could get some sleep now.  At the time all this took place Jimmy was a senior at Northeastern High School right down the street.  He was in a high school architect co-op program funded by General Motors Co, and was staying on campus at Wayne State University awaiting a four-year scholarship after graduation.   But after all the problems he had with my father he wanted to just get out of town, so he joined the Marine Corps a few weeks later. 

While I write these lines, I decided to ask Jimmy what were his feelings at the time about having to shoot our father.  He put his head down and cried, 34 years later.  Still with tears in his eyes, he quietly said, “I he was tired of the whole thing.   All this fighting had been going on for years.  Steam was building and it all came up inside me that day, just when I was on my way to college and had found some direction to my life, doing the thing I always loved--art.  On my way to college I was!”  Then he shook his head.

Then I asked how him how he felt right after the shooting.  He told me he was at first angry with himself because he didn’t kill him.  “Then he felt happy, ‘cause I really didn’t want to kill my father and I got a good feeling deep inside that said this thing was all over.”

He told me that his cell was right next to daddy’s, and that Daddy started to apologize and crying about what happened.  “After all I had been through, now I had sit next to him and hear this all night.  After a few hours passed it got quiet and all at once this very sad feeling about shooting my father came crashing down on me like a tone of bricks.  As the years go, by I still feel a great remorse about that day.  It should have never happened that way.”

Better Days

That was the summer of 1970.  We were extremely happy, for it seemed our ordeal with Daddy was over. We started to play again in a somewhat normal way; our friend Moogie started spending more nights over at our house, and we spent more nights over at his.  I remember walking from our house to Moogie’s house. He lived on Seyburn right down the street from our old house.  Mama would give us bus fare, but we kept it and walked about three miles.  It took a while but Chris, Dave and I made it.

David was the leader, it seemed.  Chris never wanted to do anything Dave’s way, so they would often end up fighting along the way, with me being the mediator and sometimes joining in.  We also would stop at the stores on the way to eat cookies, chips, and soda pops.  As we walked we would sing songs, each taking his turn to sing the lead part of his chosen song, then we cracked jokes and teased each other.  I remember I always liked to walk in the middle.

Somehow we always came back to our old house on Seyburn St.  Over there we did it all in that neighborhood—played with our GI-Joe’s, made go carts, went swimming, played football, basketball, baseball, shuffle board, even hockey with the Parkers-- Moogie’s big brothers.  We also practiced climbing trees in preparation for fall when it was time to raid all the fruit trees in the area.  Another favorite was Parks and Recreation’s after-school programs, riding to Belle Isle and screaming as loud as we could while riding under the old tunnel (which isn’t there anymore), swinging in the park, climbing on top of the school building and jumping off when the police or neighbors came, sliding down the fire escape after school.  Thus, the ordeal with Jimmy and dad was followed by some of the best times in my life.  

Then my brother Jimmy joined the Marines while my brother Earl was moving around from job to job tying to find himself, joining the American workforce and its cruel propensity to make and break black men by the second.