“YOU FIGHT SO MANY

BATTLES.”

My younger brother joined the military at 15 by altering his birth certificate. When I saw that, I said, I’m going in, and I made a copy of mine and blurred the date. They looked at it and told me to come back when I was old enough. By the time they called me, I had forgotten all about it. I was 17 and that was June of 1949.

Then the Korean War started, and I was sent to the Philippines. I drove semis, worked mechanics, a little bit of everything. When I got back to Omaha, I was 21 and wanted to finish high school and—listen, I will not forget this—the superintendent, who was white, did everything he could to discourage me. He told me I had to pay $300 up front. That was a lie. He thought it would stop me; he thought I’d walk out of that meeting with my head down. No way. I went and I graduated. When I got out, I tried to get trucking jobs. All of them told me I was too young. But I’d already been driving semis in the navy. I wasn’t too young; I was too black. This kind of crap happened all the time. You fight so many battles.

My older brother had a barbershop, so I decided to take advantage of that and I wound up going to barber school. That was November 1, 1953. I’ll be honest, when I first started barber school, I was thinking about a different line of work. But pretty quick I started making a comfortable living, and I never looked back. After a year, I leased a shop, and then I bought this building. That was 50 years ago. With my makeup and my standards, I feel like I could have worked any job, but things being so unfair and so unequal, owning my own business turned out to be a very good thing. This certificate represents my livelihood, how I’ve taken care of my family, my independence. I didn’t have to kowtow to anyone.

~ Daniel Goodwin, barber, Goodwin’s Spencer Street Barbershop, Omaha, NE