Chapter Two

Continuing on the paths… my grandfather, Steven A. Peters, Sr., had passed away fourteen years before I was born, and it was tales and stories from family and non-related elders that gave me a sense of what a complex character he was. One person’s statesman is another person’s opportunist; one person’s visionary is another person’s mad-man; and one person’s bon vivant is another person’s reprobate. If I believe all of the tales that I’ve heard about my grandfather, he was all of these things.

One of the tales involves his being inducted into the army in World War I. The regiments were segregated, and one of the privileges afforded Native American inductees was the option of going into a white unit. My grandfather saw this as divisive, stating, “In this country if you’re not white, you’re Black.” As a man of color in Massachusetts, he knew the general attitudes of white people towards Wampanoags was not much different than their attitudes towards Blacks and saw that this ‘privilege’ was just another way for the powers-that-be to deepen the divisions between Blacks and Indians. He chose to go into a Black unit as did several other Wampanoag inductees who decided to follow his example. Likewise, his choice to join the Prince Hall branch of Freemasonry was influenced by the historically white lodges refusal to recognize them as masons.

Along Route 6, between the cape and New Bedford there are a few bars and taverns. It’s my understanding that there were once even more of these establishments, and my grandfather was familiar with and to them all. He was known as a likeable and humorous sort of person; very easy to get into a conversation with. According to legend, when my grandfather decided to enter politics and run for a seat as Selectman in Mashpee in the late 1920’s, he was introduced to a man in a New Bedford watering hole who was doing grassroots organizing for the Democratic Party. At that time, Wampanoags, like most people of color in the post-Lincoln era, were mostly Republicans. A major part of the Roosevelt campaign for president involved organizing traditionally disenfranchised groups to switch to the Democratic Party in the years before he would run. Subsequently, my grandfather became the first Wampanoag candidate to run as a Democrat in Mashpee and won by a land-slide. Using these connections he was also able to access a myriad of resources for the folks in the Mashpee community, including electricity. He also saw a need for the Mashpee community to establish a relationship with the NAACP.

My grandfather’s ways were, at times, a little too metropolitan for the (then) very remote and rural Mashpee community. For some, the explanation was his going to high school and college in the big cities (New Bedford and Boston) that led to his coming home with a taste for tailor-made suits and grand ideas. His awareness of race relations was shaped by his days and experiences as a teenager in New Bedford, a major seaport and hub of social, political, and economic exchange. The Native, African American, West Indian, and Cape Verdean communities in particular were interconnected by the bounds of segregation and it was these experiences, that I’m sure began to shape my grandfather’s views.

My van reached the parking lot of the lodge on that hot morning. I could see all of the windows in the lodge’s ritual room were open and I sat in the lot waiting to be called in. Yet another path of my father was about to be traveled.