Soldier

White grew up in Chicago where he befriended fellow Africa-American luminaries, including novelist Richard Wright, poet Gwendolyn Brooks, and photographer Gordon Parks. Shortly after being drafted in 1943, he found his all African-American troop assigned to brute labor on the home front - digging out mud caused by flooding of the Mississippi River, an experience that gave him tuberculosis with which he struggled for much of his life. Soldier reflects on his time in the Army; it almost certainly alludes to the humiliations of black soldiers, who, like White himself, were frequently denied the privilege of serving their nation in battle. White moved to California in 1956, taught at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1965 to 1979, and lived in nearby Altadena.