Nathaniel Dew doesn't do much these days. His brown, lace-up shoes don't see the wear they used to when he could walk without pain. More often than not, it's to Kingdom Hall or Kaiser hospital that these shoes travel, rather than toil in the sharecropper's fields of Dew's youth. Back then it was the boss-man's hand-me-down shoes, two sizes too large, that Dew wore to school and to work. The same shoes that drew derisive taunts and ridicule from the kids at school when Dew's brother revealed their source.

"Everybody laughed," the 80-year-old Dew said. "It felt awful bad." Spurned by his classmates and driven by embarrassment, each morning Dew would hide his Sunday shoes under the nearby railroad truss and switch into them on his way to class. On his way home, he'd change back in to the boss man's shoes, then retrieve them later in the evening. These shoes were cheap, but at least they fit and he was no longer the target of his peers' derision. Having the money to buy one's own shoes, Dew reckoned, seemed to be an equalizing force. With a goal of financial freedom, Dew worked from his sharecropper roots to the military and later became an unofficial community leader. Though the military afforded him more freedom, it may have cost him his health. Today Dew suffers from prostate cancer and high blood pressure. Dew thinks his health problems may be related to his work on atomic ships at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard. According to a survey conducted by the Bayview Hunters Point Health and Environ-mental Assessment Task Force Community Survey, "nearly one in five respondents (19 percent) reported that one or more of the household members had health problems which they believed were related to pollution or environmental toxins," and that "one in five respondents reported that one or more of their household members had health problems that they believed were related to their jobs. More than half of these health problems were reported to be musculoskeletal."
	Photo by Jette Williams
	Nathaniel Dew came to the San Fran-cisco Bay Area in search of higher wages. He got the wages but he be-lieves his work at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard might have led to health problems.

Hard work took him far

From his sharecropper's roots to the liberal left coast, the strong work ethic of Dew remained constant. Throughout his life, he combated the unfair treatment blacks were subjected to by hard work and a drive to gain equality through those means available to him, mainly through earning money. While most sharecroppers were being pushed off the land, as historians have said, and migrating to Northern cities, the Dew family remained sharecroppers throughout the Great Migration of the 1920s. They plowed through the Great Depression and Dustbowl of the1930's and 40's, and remain in the south today.

"Sharecropping," Dew said, "was just like being a slave."

Dew left sharecropping behind at the age of 19, in 1941. Yet before his migration north and west, he spent a year in New Orleans, with his aunt. "It was bad, it was worse than living in the country," Dew said of this experience. His aunt, a domestic worker, had little money and food for Dew and his cousin.

Dew worked in restaurants and apprenticed with a welder on the side. Louisiana in 1941 was still a segregated state, and although Dew earned a 150-hour welding certificate, because he was black, he was unable to work as a welder. He moved to California. In California in 1943, Dew joined the Army. It came as no surprise to Dew that after being trained to drive Army tanks he was transferred to a non-combat unit where instead he hauled gas cans and drove trucks. Being, as he said, "raised up under those conditions," this demotion came as no surprise.

"See, sharecroppers were just like a slave," Dew said, "so we was used to it." Although racial tension was present in the army, the opportunity for travel, for education, and to create a better life than that of a sharecropper's outweighed the discrimination present in the military.

Europeans saw him differently

It was through military travel that Dew began to question those conditions he was raised in. European countries did not look at Blacks with disdain, a new experience for Dew.

"I started feeling different," Dew explained. "The only discrimination we would run in to was from the American soldiers."

In Germany, Dew said, some overzealous white soldiers picked a fight with the black American soldiers for being in the same park as the white ladies.

"Usually we was outnumbered, because they would only jump you if there was more of them than there was of you. You know, we was raised up under those conditions, but if there was the same amount of them as there was us, we would fight 'em."

Newly released from the Army, Dew fell into his first position at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1947. That was an optimistic time, when waves of African Americans migrated north and west in search of something better than the sharecropper's life they'd known. Many looked to the military for a better life. Liberal California wasn't as restrictive, and African Americans moved here to build a better life.

In the southeastern sector of San Francisco, low property prices and a newly formed naval shipyard and a bustling community offered Blacks a tantalizing opportunity to seize their slice of the American dream. In 1947, Dew joined a labor crew of three other black men and two Filipinos. Their job was to wash the radioactivity off of the USS Antidum, the USS Gasconade, and the USS Crittenden, all ships that had returned from atomic testing in the Bikini Atolls.

"They had six of us working on it, washing them down, I guess to wash the radioactive stuff off," Dew said. "We had to put on a suit and be checked," Dew said. "We had to take a shower before we put on our street clothes, and then put on special gear that they gave that you worked in...some kind of plastic, white suit."

Effects unknown

If any information was known about the effects of atomic radiation in the years leading up to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it wasn't shared with Dew and his coworkers. For a poor southern sharecropper, working on a fully-stocked, abandoned ship was like working in a treasure trove.

"They left everything on it," Dew said. "The guys would roam all over the ship. They was looking for things. I know one guy, he got some penicillin...penicillin pills...he took them home. I got a jacket, a new jacket off the ship I wore for about eighteen years."

At that time working on a radioactive ship didn't bother Dew. Fifty years later, however, he feels a bit differently. "They had four blacks, two Filipinos," Dew said of the people cleaning the ships. "All the blacks are dead but me."

When the shipyard closed after WWII, prosperity left the area. Businesses were closed, and those that chose to remain in the area were left to fend for themselves. Today, a drive down Third Street reflects the shattered dreams. Dilapidated buildings are interspersed with liquor stores. Litter tumbles between street solicitors. There is one grocery store.

"I used to do all my shopping on Third Street. I didn't have a car when I first moved down here, I used to walk down Third Street and do all my shopping," Dew said of the more prosperous era.

Yet despite the inherent poverty in this area, 60 percent of African Americans in this area own their own homes, according this survey. That's second only to the 88 percent of white people in the area who own their own homes. Dew has purchased three houses in Hunters Point, two of which he currently owns.

"I got a job and I got money, bought a home, accumulated money in the bank, and I can buy the things that I want. That makes me feel equal."

While Dew would like to see the homeless and drug pushers removed from Third Street, he isn't sure how to do so.

"At one time, I believed in getting involved in politics, and voting and all that stuff you could change things, but see, they corrupt people," Dew said. "They got to do things for the people who put up the money to put them in power," Dew said. "They don't care about the poor people." What he does know is how to help those he feels the government ignores.

Helping when he can

He helped a lady with some plumbing work after a professional quoted her $5000. She didn't have the money. Dew did the job for $125, and accepted incremental payments.

"Dew is a pretty good plumber, electrician," friend Curtis Norman said. "My sewage gets stopped up, he'll come out and help me,. My car, anything. Anything I ask him to do, he tried to help me."

And when Dew couldn't help himself, others jumped in. While confined to his bed before and after each consequent hip surgery, people he knew and had helped make sure he was OK.

"The guy across the street, I helped him fix a lot of stuff," Dew said. "So when I was sick and couldn't get out of bed, he came over and stayed all day with me," Dew said. "Then another lady, I did a plumbing job for her...it was supposed to cost $300, and I did it for $100. She brought me food, four or five times."

After his third hip replacement in September, he had to stop helping people with their plumbing and electrical woes, the work being too taxing for his body. Yet Dew, 80, still finds ways to help people. A girl who visited Dew's place of worship, Kingdom Hall, wearing oversized shoes quickly came to know his generosity. Dew saw her, and told her mother that he would buy her a new pair.

"You feel sorry for those people, you feel compassion for them, because you've been in that situation before and know how you felt," Dew said.