Black Jack

When he was young his family and friends called him Jackie. As an eighteen-year-old schoolteacher when one of his student’s fathers called him something less friendly, he took the father into the schoolyard and soundly thrashed him. Later, in military life, he commanded a Negro detachment in Nebraska and some of his cohorts referred to him as “Nigger Jack.” By the time he achieved his greatest fame, that had become “Black Jack.” The last name was Pershing – his full name was John Joseph Pershing, of Linn County, Missouri.

AOWM – September 13