Marriage and Army Service
Hendricks married North Vernon, Ind., native Mae Etta Bean, a classmate studying to become an elementary school teacher. After spending a year in Maryland, Bean returned to Indiana. They divorced in the 1940s. Bean died in the early 1960s.
Though these were considered plum jobs reserved for white people, Hendricks, with the help of relative William Fauntleroy, was able to secure a job as a postal carrier. On postal records, however, he is recorded as being white. At the height of The Great Depression, Hendricks earned nearly triple the national average income.
In 1942, Hendricks was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving in a medical unit. He was stationed in New York, Arizona and Hawaii. A Jet magazine of the 1980s shows him accompanying popular songstress Lena Horne. Legend has it he also was photographed in a national magazine kissing American soil upon return from Hawaii.
After the war, Hendricks returned to Indiana to care for his aging parents. During this period, he co-hosted "Toast and Coffee," one of the first interracial radio programs in the United States, though most listeners were unaware he was Black. He often went home between the morning radio program to cook, clean and run errands for his parents before working gigs at local nightclubs.
During this period, he became acquainted with Emma Clinton, a native of Texas, who worked for Jane Blaffer Owens, heir to the Humble Oil fortune. Humble now is known as Exxon-Mobil. The Owens family helped resettle the utopian community of New Harmony, Ind., north of Evansville, which fell into disrepair.
Read more about this topic: Belford Hendricks
Famous quotes containing the words marriage, army and/or service:
“Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“In one notable instance, where the United States Army and a hundred years of persuasion failed, a highway has succeeded. The Seminole Indians surrendered to the Tamiami Trail. From the Everglades the remnants of this race emerged, soon after the trail was built, to set up their palm-thatched villages along the road and to hoist tribal flags as a lure to passing motorists.”
—For the State of Florida, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“In the early forties and fifties almost everybody “had about enough to live on,” and young ladies dressed well on a hundred dollars a year. The daughters of the richest man in Boston were dressed with scrupulous plainness, and the wife and mother owned one brocade, which did service for several years. Display was considered vulgar. Now, alas! only Queen Victoria dares to go shabby.”
—M. E. W. Sherwood (1826–1903)