These are the words of my father Leonard Clarence Gayton, an African American man who had the good fortune of growing up in the Pacific Northwest. Leonard was born in Seattles Swedish Hospital in 1908, a virgo. He was the youngest of four children, two brothers and one sister, born to Washington State pioneers John Thomas (J.T.) Gayton of Yazoo, Mississippi and Magnolia Scott (Maggie) of Tennessee. Washington was a place in the world where a black man could achieve self respect and earn a living without the threat of lynching if he forgot his place of inferiority and submission to Jim Crows color bar. Leonards prose and poems reveal how unique he and his family are in American history. Thomas Leonard Gayton