- Chapter XII
-
- Harvest of Disorder
-
- When adequate corrective
measures for the low morale of Negro troops were not taken, when
adequate leadership was not available, when post-community
co-operation could not be secured, and when "incidents"
without a positive indication of concern on the part of commanders
and higher headquarters continued to occur, the chances for open
disturbances involving troops remained many and varied. Despite the
large number of racial clashes involving soldiers that did occur,
when the opportunities for disturbances are considered the actual
rate of serious, generalized outbreaks of racial violence involving
Negro troops in World War II was small. Nevertheless, cases of
physical racial friction, ranging from minor brawls to serious
disturbances, ran into the hundreds. They were a continuing cause
for concern within the War Department and in the Army's higher
commands. They continued to be a threat to discipline, to relations
between Negro and white troops, to relations between the Army and
civilians, and to unity in the war effort on the home front. As fodder
for propaganda against the Army and, in the hands of the enemy,
against the nation, they were unsurpassed.
-
- The concern of the War
Department in the area of racial disturbances was constant. Local
patterns of violence
- which strengthened and
confirmed its anxiety were set early. The pattern of reactions of
troops, commands, and the public was set equally early. Racial
friction of one sort or another continued through the war, with the
early summer of 1943 marking the high point both of incidents of
violence and of official concern. Relatively few disturbances involved mass violence between white and Negro troops, although a
number had their root causes in individual incidents between officers
and men of the two races. Sometimes erupting disorder had city, state,
or military law enforcement agents as its main protagonists;
sometimes it involved civilians; sometimes there was no violence at
all, but mass demonstrations and "acts to the prejudice of order
and discipline," some of them approaching mutiny. Sometimes the
"violence" was only that common to the semi-underworld and
tenderloin districts of all big cities, the street brawls or Saturday
night party fights given additional significance because one and
sometimes all participants were in uniform.
-
- No matter what the nature of
the disturbance the reaction was much the same. To higher
headquarters, in receipt of numerous reports, complaints, and
warnings from the distant field, the fact that Negro troops were
located on a given post was enough to indicate the
- [348]
- possibility of racial disorder
there or in nearby communities. To security agencies each disturbance
stressed again the need for constant vigilance, both to head off
possible repercussions in the civilian society and to stem subversive
influences, either of which might interfere seriously with the war
effort. To Negro troops, the threat of disorder that might involve
them was omnipresent; at times it was thought of as just one more of
the inevitables of military service, or, at the least, of passes into
certain nearby towns. Early in the war, the Negro public was convinced
that the life of the Negro soldier was one of constant fear and
danger while his unit was still in training. The white public,
especially in the towns near heavy troop concentrations, was often
certain that the threat of town or post race riots was constant.
Enough "incidents" occurred during the war years to lend
support to each of these views and to each of their infinite variants.
-
- The major significance of
disturbances was seldom in the events themselves but in their
potentialities. Overt racial friction, military or civilian, affected, in turn, units and stations
elsewhere. The more serious
disturbances were carried by the news services into the columns of the
nation's press. There they affected civilian attitudes, white and
Negro, toward the Army and the prosecution of the war. The cumulative effect of racial disturbances on the War Department was
to add another item to the growing list of matters to be considered in
planning for the employment of increasing numbers of Negro troops,
both in training at home and in deployment overseas. It was generally considered a most important
addition to this list.1
-
-
- In April 1941, shortly after
the first Negro selectees began to enter the Army, the first major
symbolic event in the long chain of racial violence occurred. In a
wooded section of Fort Benning, Georgia, the body of a Negro soldier,
Pvt. Felix Hall, his hands tied behind him, was found hanging from a
tree. How he got there was uncertain. Negroes concluded that he had
been lynched. Post authorities suggested that it might have been
suicide, but surrounding circumstances were against this solution. The
ensuing investigation did not solve the mystery of Hall's death.
Speculation continued, but in the absence of proof of foul play, no
considerable agitation took place. A queasy uneasiness among Negro
troops and the public lingered.2
-
- Later in the same month
another kind of incident occurred. On Sunday afternoon, 20 April
1941, white Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees and Negro
troops of the 48th Quartermaster Regiment became involved in an
altercation over the use of a diving platform at the YMCA Lake area
at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Already, in the nearby city of
Columbia, ill feeling among troops, Negro civilians, and mili-
- [349]
- tary police had developed.
Between afternoon and evening,
stories of the clash spread through Fort Jackson. That night,
considerable tension was present in the area of the 48th Quartermaster Regiment. At about 9:30 P.M., the Fort Jackson
Military Police Company learned that a disturbance was underway.
White soldiers from the 30th Division, some in civilian clothes and
some in uniform, were assembling in groups, planning to rush the Negro
area. There shots were fired as "unknown individual
members" incited the men with "greatly exaggerated versions
of incidents occurring during the afternoon." Officers of the
post, the field officer of the day, the 8th Division officer of the
day, members of the main guard of the 30th Division, and the provost
marshal halted the movement and dispersed the groups.3
-
- Thereafter, difficulties
between Fort Jackson's military police and Negro soldiers and
civilians in Columbia continued until well into 1942. Beginning in
June 1941, fracases involving military policemen, city policemen,
soldiers, and civilians occurred frequently in the Negro business
area of the city. The Colored Citizens' Committee of Columbia
protested in letters, petitions, and visits to post authorities.
"Something must be done," the Citizens' Committee declared
in January 1942, "as our Colored Citizens are growing restless,
suspicious, and what occurred in Alexandria, La., and Fayetteville,
N.C., thus far has been averted, because of our vigilance, and talking
to our people, but we cannot always hope to hold them down with so much disregard to `Citizenship
rights.'4
-
- The Alexandria and Fayetteville
affairs mentioned by Columbia's committee were two of the major similar
disturbances that occurred during 1941-42. These were basically conflicts
between troops and military police, involving as well town police, Negro
and white citizens, and, at times, all five groups. Arguments, rough handling,
fights, and near riots were common in these disturbances. A street brawl
in Tampa, Florida, on 15 July 1941, was typical of these fracases. At about
II:2o p.m., a Negro soldier, after an argument with a white military policeman
in the presence of other Negro soldiers and civilians, was arrested and
sent to the military police headquarters in Tampa. The military policeman
and a second MP remained in the area. A second Negro soldier, a sergeant
who later admitted that he had been drinking, approached the military policeman
who had made the arrest and engaged him in conversation. The sergeant, ostensibly
trimming his fingernails with a knife, whispered, according to the MP, that
he would cut the policeman's throat. The policeman struck the Negro sergeant
with his club and drew his pistol; the sergeant knocked the pistol from
his hand and threw the policeman to the ground. The second military policeman
and a nearby city policeman came to the aid of the MP; the city policeman
shot the Negro sergeant while he was on the ground. A third Negro
- [350]
- soldier was shot while
attempting to disarm the city policeman. Though the setting was there
for a full-scale free-for-all with potentially fatal results, no
further violence followed.5 But trouble between Negro soldiers and
military policemen on the streets of Tampa went on through the
summer.
-
- The pattern of disturbances,
all potentially productive of serious riots, continued to develop.
The Fayetteville disturbance, on the night of 5-6 August 1941, was the
first of a series of serious bus incidents involving military police
and Negro soldiers. A large group of Negro soldiers, following pay-day
passes, gathered at a bus stop to await transportation back to Fort
Bragg. A number had been drinking. As the waiting crowd grew larger,
disorder at the bus stop increased. When a bus arrived, disorderly
soldiers threatened unarmed Negro military policemen, whose duty it
was to ride the buses, and prevented them from coming aboard. The
driver refused to move without police protection. This delay in
departure increased the confusion and disorder, while the crowd
outside awaiting the next bus continued to grow. A detachment of white
military police reinforcements, attempting to quiet the passengers,
boarded the halted bus. They succeeded in stirring up further disorder
among the jostling, cursing, busload of men. Attempting to arrest the
chief troublemakers, military policemen began to use their night
sticks. One soldier on the crowded bus grabbed a military policeman's service
revolver from its holster. He discharged its full six shots in the
direction of the disarmed MP. Another military policeman shot toward
the soldier, and other shots from outside the bus followed. When the
confusion subsided, one white military policeman and one Negro soldier
were dead, two other white military policemen and three Negro
soldiers were wounded. The gun fight in Fayetteville was bad enough,
but the aftermath at Fort Bragg, especially as reported in the
nation's press, was a serious portent of future difficulties. The
post's provost marshal ordered all Negro soldiers, except those
already in barracks, collected and brought to the stockade adjacent to the guardhouse, where they were held until morning. Men
arriving on later buses were searched and threatened by military
policemen. No explanation of what had happened or of the purpose of
this roundup was given to the men herded into the stockade. Military
policemen, angry and resentful over the death of their comrade, and
Negro soldiers, equally resentful of the death of the Negro soldier
and the methods used to round them up, created a new tension on the
post. For days accounts of the brutality used in the forced checking
of men who could not have been involved in the bus disturbance reached
the public through the press and through soldiers' letters. The
revolvers and ammunition of the military police who had been at the
scene were not collected on the spot, confounding the possibility of a
definite determination of responsibility for the shooting on the bus
and thus lending color to the rumors current that military police
activities at the post
- [351]
- were based not on good police
work, but on elemental anger.6
-
- The outbreaks of violence
during the summer of 1941 reached a climax during the Second Army
maneuvers. These maneuvers were marked by incidents between
townsfolk and white as well as Negro troops, and were occasioned both
by the lack of military discipline and the resentful attitudes of
citizens dwelling within maneuver areas toward the presence of large
bodies of troops. Before the maneuvers, Lt. Gen. Ben Lear, commanding
the Second Army, cautioned the commanders of both the 5th Division, to
which the 94th Engineer Battalion was attached, and of the 2d Cavalry
Division, to conduct conditioning lectures for their Negro troops
before departing for maneuvers.7 At Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and at
Gurdon, Arkansas, Negro troops on maneuvers ran into armed resistance
from citizens and state police. The second incident was the more
spectacular, and, in the shadow of Fayetteville, came to national
attention through the wire services.
- Troops of the 94th Engineer
Battalion from Fort Custer, Michigan, became embroiled in a series
of incidents in the vicinity of Gurdon. Some of the soldiers felt
that their difficulties began at Little Rock, Arkansas, where
individuals of the unit and white city police engaged in an
altercation in a night club. Others, pointing out that neighboring Negro troops from Camp
Shelby, Mississippi, had not been molested, felt that the trouble
arose because they were Northern troops with Northern white officers.
Only in their persistence and intensity were the incidents at Gurdon
different from those occurring in many another Southern small town
area.8
-
- On 11 August 1941, some two or
three hundred soldiers of the Negro engineer battalion visited the
town of Gurdon in search of recreation. The town had neither
recreation to offer nor the desire to offer it. The appearance of so
large a body of Negro soldiers from the Chicago-Detroit area excited
adverse comments from the white residents of the small town, but
nothing untoward happened except that the soldiers congregated in
small groups while white military police attempted to keep them
moving. In the meantime a rumor, later proved false, spread among the
soldiers that one of their number had been arrested and severely
beaten by military police. Excitement and resentment mounted when
military police instructions were circulated that the town was to be
cleared by 10 o'clock. With no transportation available, the soldiers
gathered in groups and, in a crude and noisy formation liberally
spiced with profanity and uncompli-
- [352]
- mentary remarks about the South,
proceeded along the main street of the town toward their bivouac area. Many,
apparently fearing interference, had armed themselves with clubs and missiles.
Though no difficulties between them and civilian authorities of the town
of Gurdon occurred that evening, the noisy movement of the group of apparently
unorganized soldiers through the town, coupled with seeming insubordination
toward the few of their officers who were attempting to control the situation
during the four-mile trek from the town to their bivouac, intensified the
fears of local citizens. Town authorities and the town marshal, who freely
declared his intention to use force of arms in the event of trouble, proceeded
to swear in new deputies to augment the town police force. Through the night
sensational rumors spread, both among members of the battalion and among
citizens of the town. The Commanding General, Seventh Corps Area, declared
the town of Gurdon off limits and directed that the battalion move its bivouac
several miles distant. These decisions were communicated to town and police
authorities on 12 August during the working day.
-
- Nevertheless, on the evening of
the 12th at about 10 p.m., Arkansas state police with drawn firearms approached
the 94th's bivouac area and ordered the camp guard- armed with rifles but
without ammunition- off the highway at the entrance to the camp, striking
several of the sentries in the process. Troops visiting Prescott, another
nearby town, were harassed by state police who followed their trucks into
town, threatening the men upon arrival. On 14
August elements of the battalion, its men demoralized and its officers uncertain,
began to move to their new bivouac area. State police, through misrepresentation,
excitement, or misunderstanding, notified the provost marshal of the Second
Army that a group of unsupervised and disorderly Negro soldiers was proceeding
down the highway. The provost marshal, accepting the report as fact, requested
the state authorities to take charge until military police arrived. Fully
armed state police and deputies started for the reported scene of disorder.
In the meantime, the provost marshal, with an assistant, proceeded to the
scene and, upon observing the troops moving along in good order, assumed
that the area of difficulty must be farther along the road toward Gurdon.
He dropped his assistant and set out toward the town. Following his departure,
a sergeant of state police arrived with state troopers and a deputized force.
State troopers, using insulting epithets to both the troops and their officers,
ordered the marching unit off the road and into a ditch lately filled with
rain and into nearby woods, while armed deputies, in civilian clothes and
therefore civilians as far as the troops could see, stood by. When one of
the officers protested the police actions and epithets, a state policeman
removed his glasses and struck the "Yankee nigger lover" in the
face. Military police had by now arrived at the scene but, until the white
lieutenant was struck, their commander, the provost marshal's assistant
left at the scene earlier, made no move to interfere. Some of the Negro
soldiers, observing that neither they nor their white officers apparently
had police protection in
- [353]
- Arkansas, left their battalion
and, hitch-hiking or by public transportation, made their way back
to Fort Custer. At least one soldier, without money and feeling that
moving north or east through the Gurdon area was too dangerous, went
southwest through Texas into California. He picked cotton in Arizona
and picked figs and cut grapes in Fresno for money for food; he then
hopped trains to Fort Warren, Wyoming, where he intended to give
himself up, hoping for transportation back to Fort Custer. On learning
through rumor that "fugitives" from Arkansas were to be
returned there, he left on a wine tank car for Omaha, rode other
trains into Michigan, and eventually reached Detroit on 5 September.
-
- The bewilderment and fear of
the troops in the face of the Gurdon incident and its implications
for morale and discipline among Negro troops in general were
probably of greater import than the incident itself. A soldier's
letter on the affair reveals to some extent the disorganization and
demoralization it caused:
-
- We are scared almost to death.
Yesterday we went on a 10 mile hike alongside of the highway off the
concrete. All of a sudden six truck loads of mobsters came sizzling
down the highway in the other direction. They jumped out with guns and
sub-machine guns and [revolvers] drawn, cursing, slapping and saying
unheard of things. Sis it was awful. They took us off the highway into
the woods. Daring anyone to say a word, they hit two of our white
officers who try to say something back. But the bad part of it all,
the military police were among them and against us. The State police
passed out ammunition to the civilians. We are now about five miles
down in the woods hoping that they don't come down here. No one has
pitched a single tent today, nor
yesterday, we are afraid to, half of our company
has left for Michigan already, hoboing. Few have train fare, others went deeper into
the woods.
-
- We had a detail down here in a
little town called Guidon [sic] working at the depot, when some of the
officers went down there they had been stopped by a mob, threatened
their lives if they did not leave town in five minutes-yet they could
not go down the highway, the only way they know to go. Our officers
are nearly all as afraid as we are. They call them
"Yankee Nigger lovers," us black "Yankees."
-
- We have guards, guarding a
place and the State police deliberately came off the highway, took his
gun (rifle) which was empty and beat Yankee Doodle
on his head. These people are crazy, stone crazy. Or I am. Yesterday one of our
trucks went to get some eats and they wouldn't let us get any. The
officers asked that we all be sent back to Fort Custer. None of us can
show our faces except in these woods, we can't be seen on or even near
the highway. We are undecided now, we all want to know what we are
going to do? 9
-
- Many troops became certain
that there was no protection available for them in the South and
little understanding from the Army, especially after six of their
number were tried by courts-martial and several of their officers whom
the men considered to have aided them were relieved.10 Despite
Hastie's recommendation that, to dispel the notion that the Army had
viewed the disturbance with complacency, the War Department should
issue a statement summarizing the facts in the case, announce the
punitive steps taken toward
- [354]
- the military police officers as
well as toward members of the battalion, and announce the referral of the
record to the Department of Justice for such action as might be proper under
federal statutes, it was decided that no useful purpose "so far as
the best interests of the Army are concerned" would be served by so
doing.11
Both informal and, later, formal requests for the opinion of the Attorney
General in the matter resulted in the decision that, since state troopers
interceded at the request of military police, there was no suitable basis
for federal action.12
-
- Months later the battalion had
not regained normal morale and discipline, as evidenced by excessively
high rates of company punishment, confinements, and arrests; excessive
hospital, sick in quarters, and venereal rates; lax military
courtesy; and general deficiencies in appearance and posture.13
-
- Other incidents, all
indicative of a more or less serious state of affairs, continued to
occur during that last peacetime summer: in Galveston, a disturbance
between Negro troops from Camp Wallace and Negro city policemen, at
Camp Livingston, Louisiana, a disturbance following newspaper
publication of photographs of a staff sergeant beaten during an arrest;
rumors and reports of murders at Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, and Camp
Shelby, Mississippi; brawls between soldiers and military police
at Camp Davis, North Carolina; and reports of unrest and a
"difficult situation" at Camp Stewart, Georgia.14
-
- Through all of these ran the
common thread of friction between Negro soldiers and both city and
military policemen. Where Negro military policemen were used,
generally on a temporary basis in the Negro sections of towns, they
were usually unarmed, increasing their difficulties in the control of
troops. Most of the disturbances were followed by newspaper publicity,
not always accurate-the papers could not always get facts from local
or other public relations officers and took what they could find to
support what became, in the Negro press, a campaign for armed Negro
military police and, at times, in the local white press, a campaign
for the removal of Negro military police embracing, in some instances,
the removal of all Negro soldiers. Widely publicized incidents were
followed by what amounted to avalanches of letters and petitions of
protest or suggestions to the War Department, most of them coming
from sincere persons and organizations but some of them from
anti-preparedness, isolationist, far left, anti-Negro, and anti-Army
sources.15
- [355]
- The War Department dispatched
investigators to the scenes of most of these disturbances, while
local authorities made their own inquiries. Investigations and
resulting recommendations, running into the hundreds, sometimes took
months and seldom applied to more than the specific case at hand. They
had general corrective application only insofar as they served as
precedents for later cases. Nevertheless, it was obvious by 1942
that the relations between Negro soldiers and both military and
civilian police had reached so unhealthy a point in many parts of the
country that future disorders could be expected unless steps were
taken to prevent them.16
-
- As yet no major disturbances
in which Negro troops were the mass aggressors had occurred. But the
events of early 1942 left doubts that Negro troops, with access to
ammunition and with increasing tensions growing out of their relations with town and military police, would long remain
quiescent. The first of a new series of disturbances occurred on to
January 1942 in Alexandria, Louisiana, the crowded camp town for
Camps Polk, Livingston, Beauregard, and Claiborne and for three
airfields: Alexandria, Pollock, and Esler. Alexandria, sometimes used
by as many as 30,000 soldiers at the height of the war, was the scene
of numerous tension-born incidents. The 1942 trouble reached riot
proportions, involving hundreds of soldiers and civilians, after the
clubbing of a Negro soldier by a military policeman in front of a
theater in the heart of the Negro
district. In March, large crowds gathered in Little Rock while
military police attempted to arrest a Negro soldier. The soldier was
finally shot by a civilian policeman. "I would not be surprised
if this is not the Alexandria situation repeated, reason and methods
both," the editor of the Kansas City Call wired to judge
Hastie.17 On
1 April, at Tuskegee, Alabama, friction between armed
Negro military police from the nearby airfield and townsfolk, brewing
since January, came to a head. A Negro military policeman took a
soldier from the custody of a white city policeman at gunpoint. City
police, reinforced by a deputy sheriff, two Alabama state policemen,
and about fifteen white civilians armed with shotguns, took the
soldier back from military police in a scuffle, during which a
military policeman who had drawn his pistol was beaten and the
remainder of the military patrol disarmed. A large group of soldiers
and civilians gathered. White officers from the post residing in the
town rounded up most of the soldiers and returned them to camp, but
not before soldiers on the post had become alarmed at the prospect
that armed townsfolk might attack the airfield. At Fort Dix, New
Jersey, on 2 April, a gun battle between white military police and
Negro soldiers, developing out of an argument over the use of a
telephone booth, resulted in the deaths of one white MP and two Negro
soldiers. In May, a fight between two Negro soldiers from Mitchel
Field developed into a free-for-all between civilian
- [356]
- police and colored civilians
in Hempstead, New York.18 Moreover, inspectors and observers were
reporting that smoldering resentments lay just under the surface in
many other places, ready to burst forth on provocation.
-
-
- After the disturbances of the
summer of 1941, the first steps toward needed correctives were taken.
Following the Fort Jackson incident, directions to adhere more
closely to regulations on the protection of ammunition were issued.19
After Fort Bragg, closer attention to the selection and training of
military policemen and provost marshals was recommended. The
organization of temporary detachments of untrained military policemen,
the failure to use Negro military policemen in camps and towns with
large numbers of Negro soldiers, and the close liaison between
civilian and military police in many towns, a condition tending to
indoctrinate soldier police with the methods and points of view of
local civilians, were all severely criticized. The improper training
and conduct of military police as revealed during the summer of 1941
and the lack of a central agency to establish
- doctrine, provide training,
and supervise organization and procurement of personnel for military
police units were remedied by the establishment of the Corps of
Military Police under the Provost Marshal General on 26 September
1941. With the urging of judge Hastie and upon the recommendation of
Maj. Gen. Allen W. Gullion, the new Provost Marshal General, the use
of Negro military policemen by camps with sizable bodies of Negro
troops was directed .20 Some local commanders and the Provost Marshal
General resisted certain of the recommendations, especially those
which directed that, for psychological reasons, town military police
headquarters be divorced from city police stations.21 Townsfolk
sometimes resisted the use of Negro military police, especially in
cities where local Negroes had been exerting pressures for appointment
of Negro civilian police.22 The seriousness of the situation was
impressed upon local commanders not only by communications from the
War Department and service commands but also by recurring incidents
of friction.
-
- A continuing problem was the
quality of military policemen available for duty. Although personnel
officers and the Corps of Military Police tried to obtain
- [357]
- high caliber men, the number
of poorly qualified men
gravitating to it remained large. "I am fully conscious of the
importance of the primary war effort and the need for first-class
fighting troops and I am willing that the military police units shall
have their share of those who are morally and physically
crippled," General Gullion protested in March 1942, "but I
think I ought not to be required to take them all." 23
-
- Between station complement and
tactical units on the same post tense feelings were often common.
With military police detachments a part of station complements
this feeling was often heightened when tactical units were Negro. It
was sometimes necessary for commanders to make strong remonstrances
about the treatment of Negro soldiers by police under post control. In
one instance, where a post reported that, since "the force
employed by the Military Policeman was not excessive or
unwarranted" no disciplinary action for beating a soldier need
be taken, the division commander of the soldier involved sharply
replied:
-
- 1. I do not concur with the
conclusions reached by your investigating officer. The use of
unwarranted force by members of your Military Police Detachment is
becoming altogether too prevalent and I feel that some of your
Military Police are going out of their way to look for instances.
- 2. In this particular case it
seems to me that the Military Policeman went out of his way to find
fault with a soldier who was complying with his orders. He was told to
return to the Post and upon turning away to comply with the order he
located the tie and put it on. It appears to me that the Military
Policeman was beyond his rights in following the soldier and accusing him
of lying.
- 3. I do not understand why it
is necessary for two Military Policemen to use their clubs to subdue
one man. The use of clubs should be rare indeed, and I feel that too
many instances are being reported to this headquarters which are
entirely unwarranted and which reveal a tendency on the part of your
people to assume a bullying attitude unnecessarily.24
-
- Ill feeling between troops and
military police, founded on experiences of this type, was not uncommon
nor was it confined to Negro troops and white police. At Fort
Huachuca, where Negro police were used, it existed to some extent; a
Thanksgiving Day 1942 disturbance in Phoenix, Arizona, was between
members of a Negro infantry unit and Negro military police.25 But
where both troops and police were of different colors, where both
brought their civilian attitudes into the Army with them-the one a
distrust of police conditioned by long experience and the other a
disregard for Negroes conditioned by an equally long
apprenticeship-special care in training, discipline, and
supervision was necessary to prevent recurring irritations of old,
still unhealed wounds.
-
- In the average command, action
designed to prevent physical friction consisted of more or less
elaborate precautionary directives on the handling and use of
ammunition in Negro units. To officers, the receipt of such
precautionary directives often produced a new
- [358]
- burden to be added to the many
others already required in duty with Negro units. One commander found
his headquarters' precautionary orders somewhat baffling:
-
- Colonel H--- stated that these
secret orders grew out of the great concern of the higher command over
the possibility of a negro riot or outbreak. He mentioned an incident
with which I was unfamiliar purported to have taken place in 1940 in
Brownsville, Texas. He mentioned a 1917 episode at Houston, Texas, and
also a quite recent incident near Beaumont, Texas, where a negro
soldier was shot by a civilian police officer. This action indicating
concern of the higher command was somewhat surprising to me because
my observation of my own battalion gave me no indication of the
faintest possibility of such an occurrence. In fact those familiar
with the newness of this organization and the inexperience of the
personnel of this organization have complimented the battalion
numerous times on the many different phases of its administration and
training.26
-
- Thereafter this battalion
commander was visited by the executive officer of his training group
and the incoming post commander, who personally repeated the
instructions. Yet no indications of a tendency on the part of his
men, either openly or surreptitiously, to collect ammunition had been
noted. The commander explained the excessive caution of his check
methods to his men by pointing out the necessity of saving their short
supply of ammunition and by the necessity of guaranteeing individual
safety.27
-
- In many another unit no
satisfactory explanation was possible. The detailed searches of barracks areas
conducted on some posts, including the use of mine detectors to aid in
the location of ammunition presumably buried under barracks,
increased the apprehension of soldiers and bulwarked their distrust
of headquarters' attitudes toward them. In some areas the unrelieved
tenseness of units itself was responsible for incidents which might
not have occurred otherwise. Normal precautions in the safeguarding of
weapons, where followed in all units, could be productive of good
results, but abnormal methods, especially when obviously centered on
Negro units, often heightened rather than lessened the possibility of
disturbances.
-
-
- Judge Hastie, attempting to
find a positive solution to racial friction such as that at Fort
Bragg, suggested to the Morale Branch of The Adjutant General's
Office shortly after that disturbance that informal discussion
groups among representative Negro and white soldiers on the same post
might cause them to arrive at a "better understanding and more
wholesome relationships. It is apparent, I believe," Hastie
continued, "that we do not solve such problems by trying to
keep colored and white soldiers away from each other." Brig. Gen.
James A. Ulio, then chief of the Morale Branch, replied that any
discussion of such a proposal would have to await the result of the
investigation in progress at Fort Bragg.28 Hastie, citing the
experience of the Sixth Corps Area
- [359]
- at its Savanna, Illinois,
ordnance depot, had already suggested that camps with large Negro
populations could make good use of Negro morale officers. At the same
time that his soldier discussion proposal was returned, he was
reminded that the assignment of morale officers, like morale itself,
was a function of command and that the War Department would endeavor
to supply morale officers only upon indication that they were not
available within commands.29
-
- The establishment in late 1941
of an autonomous War Department Special Service Branch, with General
Osborn as director, provided a new vehicle for considering the
general problem of military and civilian disorders and tensions
affecting Negro-white relations. When inviting Dr. Donald Young,
University of Pennsylvania and Social Science Research Council
authority on minority problems, to attend a meeting of morale officers
on 26-27 January 1942, General Osborn expressed himself
"increasingly concerned" about the influence of the Negro
press and intelligentsia on the Negro soldier. He was thinking, he
wrote Young, of obtaining a Negro for his Planning Division.30 No War
Department headquarters planning office, at this time, had a Negro,
civilian or military, on its staff, and General Osborn wanted advice
on this as well as on broader problems.
-
- In February, Young and the
chief of General Osborn's Planning Division discussed the
contributions which the new branch and related agencies
might make toward reducing tensions arising out of the increased use
of Negro troops. Young suggested that two or three Negro officers be
assigned to the Special Service Branch for general duties and to act
as sources of information and liaison with the press, civilian groups,
and individuals. Civilian consultants, as for example Negro
physicians, might be used on special projects. The Negro press, Young
cautioned, had limited circulation and an overestimated influence;
if special information was sent to Negro papers, their approach might
change. Neither the press nor Negroes in general expected major
changes in policy, Young believed, but their news stories had to
follow racial interests. To make Negro civilians feel that their
interests were not being ignored, as was currently the case,
unfavorable incidents could be countered by accounts of positive
action taken on related matters. Both the Bureau of Public Relations
and the Special Service Branch should provide more publicity-posters,
movies, and news about Negro soldiers. Moreover, Young counseled,
Negro troops should be used in a routine, matter-of-fact way wherever
possible, at home and abroad, and news about them should be handled
accordingly.31 No similar set of positive ameliorative
recommendations was to reach the War Department during the war. Though
each recommendation was eventually adopted in some form, in the winter
of 1941-42 no one was ready to take action on any one of these
measures. General Osborn inclined to the belief that too much
discussion and
- [360]
- emotional emphasis on the
problem had already proved harmful .32
- In the meantime, Hastie
continued his efforts to lessen growing tensions between white and
Negro troops. After a visit to Fort Dix in the spring of 1942, he
suggested two more ameliorative steps, the first of which, in
different forms, was to be suggested many times from many sources
before it was adopted: that the Bureau of Public Relations and the
Special Service Branch co-operate on an educational program designed
to influence the racial attitudes of both white and colored soldiers,33 and that the General Staff be urged to adopt a policy of
assigning Negro special service officers to units whose tables of
organization called for such an officer. The Negro officer, Hastie
felt, would generally be more aware of the educational needs of Negro
soldiers and would find such soldiers more responsive to him than to a
white officer.34 Later in the month, the NAACP suggested to General
Osborn that a series of lectures be prepared for troops by a
committee consisting of persons like Mark Ethridge, Frank P. Graham, Hastie, Herbert Agar,
and Charles Houston. General Osborn thought this proposal a good one.35 Under Secretary Patterson and his assistant, Howard C.
Petersen, agreed that the Hastie proposals had "real merit."
36
Special Service was willing to undertake the job, but, it reminded
the Under Secretary, assigning officers to field units was outside its
powers. Nevertheless, it would encourage the selection of Negro
officers for special service duties.37 In its educational film
program, Special Service had already taken the first steps toward the
preparation of a film on Negro soldiers "including a history of
colored soldiers since Attucks of the Revolutionary War fame." 38
But neither this, the larger educational program, nor the program
on the use of Negro morale officers in the field was to come to
fruition for more than a year.
-
- Surveying the situation in
June 1942, the War Department's Intelligence Division emphasized the
possibility of German and Japanese plus Communist and Negro press
agitation as sources of disturbances. But, at the same time, the
division reported that, after surveying investigations of previous
disorders, no known subversive influences among Negro troops could
be connected with dis-
- [361]
- orders that had occurred.
"The investigators have been aware of the several types of
subversive groups at work among the Negro population," G-2
reported, "but have been unable to discover evidence of action
by these groups in the Armed forces, by actual agents." G-2
concluded that the location of troops, the lack of discipline,
police-especially military police-methods, and lack of recreational facilities were all factors leading to disturbances
among Negro troops. The division recommended that military police be
more highly trained and more thoroughly supervised in localities with
Negro troops; that more attention be paid to disciplinary training
among Negro troops; that movement and stationing of Negro troops
in areas differing from their home environments be kept at a minimum;
that racial tolerance and respect for the uniform "irrespective
of the race, color, or previous condition of servitude of the
wearer" be increasingly emphasized in the initial training of all
inductees and that it be insisted upon throughout the services; and
that "all possible steps should be taken to reduce and control
the publication of inflammatory and vituperative articles in the
colored press." 39
-
- While the G-2 paper was a
comprehensive summary of the situation as it existed and of the
types of correctives frequently proposed up to then, the other staff
divisions and the major command headquarters to which it was
circulated for comment were not too strongly impressed. G-3 informed
G-2 that it was sending the study to other offices and "also that
the recommendations were already covered by War
Department policy.40 "It appears to contribute nothing
very tangible," General McNair of Army Ground Forces noted when
his G-3 suggested that the report be distributed to army and corps
commanders.41 General Peterson, The Inspector General, who received
the same survey later,42 replied by citing the findings and
recommendations made by Col. Elliot D. Cooke on his special mission
for the Chief of Staff completed in the late spring of 1942.43 Colonel
Cooke had concluded that "Bi-racial incidents in the Army are not
premeditated and most of them could have been avoided through proper
education, leadership and discipline"; that "the colored
soldier is loyal, but an increasing amount of propaganda is being
promulgated by outside agencies in an effort to foster demands for
post-war privileges in payment for present military services";
and that "racial prejudice exists to some extent in the Army
itself. Many officers and men find it difficult to alter hereditary
feelings and emotions." He had felt that his mission had focused
the attention of commanders on the necessity of furnishing "all
troops with equal facilities, of treating them justly, and enforcing
like discipline." The Inspec-
- [362]
- tor General agreed then and
later with these observations. But he felt in September 1942 that
too little time had passed to permit a general judgment on progress
achieved in adjusting racial relations. Reports of inspection,
"particularly those of The Inspector General and Brigadier
General B. O. Davis," showed satisfactory progress in the matter, General Peterson
observed.44
-
- Though there were no further
large disturbances in the summer of 1942, signs of possible outbreaks
continued. Developing "signs of growing tension and deliberate
stimulation of racial antagonisms in the South," were worthy of
closer attention, judge Hastie informed Under Secretary Patterson in
August. The situation was serious enough, Hastie suggested, for the
President to mention in a radio speech the importance of race
relations at home and abroad as they affected global conflict.
Secretary Stimson, he continued, might issue a statement
concerning the seriousness of the military situation, pointing out
that "Military authorities must and do rely upon public officials
and private citizens to cooperate in the maintenance of amicable
relationships between the military and civilian communities."
Citing the experience of Houston, Texas, where military and civilian
leaders had established a successful interracial citizens' committee
to work on local tensions, Hastie suggested that local commanders and
public relations officers "be enjoined to increase their
efforts" to win local civilian co-operation in handling local
problems. Military intelligence might be asked to channel information
about organized efforts to stir up violence against Negro soldiers and
defense workers so that the Department of justice might co-operate
where advisable. Hastie again recommended that soldiers be
indoctrinated with the necessity for inter racial co-operation:
-
- Such a campaign might
effectively be launched by a special order to be read simultaneously
throughout the armed forces (as was done recently in tribute to our
Chinese allies) pointing out the important role and essential service
of Negro, Filipino, American Indian, foreign born, and other
minorities in our Army, and calling for close cooperation based upon
the mutual respect of men whose lives are dedicated to victory in a
common cause. Of course, much of the effectiveness of such a
proclamation would depend upon the follow-up of local commanders
within their respective units.45
-
- Under Secretary Patterson,
after a discussion with Maj. Gen. Alexander D. Surles of the Bureau
of Public Relations and Judge Hastie on the matter, suggested in the
War Council that the problem had grown too large to be handled by
the War Department alone and that perhaps Secretary Stimson should
take it to the President or send "some discreet officer to talk
with mayors and chiefs of police in the Southern States in the hope of
obtaining cooperation." 46
-
-
- The War Department, answering
most citizens' inquiries and complaints about racial violence
involving soldiers, at first relied on precedent letters similar in
tone to those of 1939-40, while continuing to deny that much was
wrong.
- [363]
- The Negro press and
organizations were indirectly accused of helping foment disturbances
and of using them as leverage for greater demands. "It appears to
the War Department," Under Secretary Patterson wrote to
Fiorello La Guardia, the Director of Civilian Defense, "that,
with respect to the isolated cases referred to, certain organizations
and certain sections of the press are utilizing them to promote, in
the Army, social gains which have not been attained in the country as
a whole and [are] using the Army as a means of promoting such gains
among the civilian population. I believe that you will agree with the
War Department that such activities are most unfortunate, because they
materially impede the War Department in its present desire to build
promptly and efficiently an Army capable of defending the nation in
the existing crisis and organized so that it will fit into the
accepted social order of this country." He emphasized further
that the vast majority of Negro men and units had been involved in no
difficulties and that the press had ignored those "commendable
conditions and the excellent relationship between a large part of
our negro units and our white units and between negro soldiers and
civilians." 47
-
- Magazines and newspapers of
varying points of view began to show concern over disorders as they
grew more widespread. After the Alexandria riot, the magazine Common
Sense, which had shown an interest in the military handling of
racial matters before, suggested that the Army's difficulties
were a part of a larger whole:
-
- The incident, regardless of who
was in the right, is a symptom. The leaders of the most responsible Negro
organizations have said that the 13,000,000 Negroes in America are not "wholeheartedly
and unreservedly" behind this war. It is not Hitler's fault that they
are not. It is our fault. Negroes are discriminated against in our armed
forces. They are discriminated against in defense industries. They are even
discriminated against by many unions . . . .48
-
- Commenting on the same disturbances,
the Catholic journal, The Commonweal, observed that "The natural reaction
of the colored population is to wonder just how much it is worth their while
to join in a fight which is generally advertised as a fight for 'democracy'
when their own share of democracy is at present so small and gives no promise
of being much greater in the future." 49
After Fort Dix, Douglas Southall Freeman's Richmond News Leader editorialized:
-
- If Negro soldiers are to be
drafted into the army or are to be accepted as volunteers, they must
be treated as fellow-soldiers and not as vassals or as racial
inferiors. Those white Americans who prefer to put racial
discrimination above national defense must justify their creed by their
conduct. If they insist on having Negroes in the Army, they must
themselves do more. As the decision has been to employ Negro troops of
every type, those troops must not be the victim of any sort of
discrimination. They are entitled to the same uniform, the same
food, the same facilities that other soldiers enjoy. As the South well
knows upon longer and closer experience than the North has had, this
does not mean that either whites or Negroes are at their best in the
same com-
- [364]
- pany, the same branch, the
same mess. They are not . . . [but] boys can be brought to see that
they must fight-together and not against each other.50
-
- The New York Negro paper, the
Amsterdam Star-News, like most other Negro journals, took a more
trenchant view of matters:
-
- They [Negro soldiers] cherish
a deep resentment against the vicious race persecution which they
and their forbears have long endured. They feel that they are soon to
go overseas to fight for freedom over there. When their comparative
new-found freedom is challenged by Southern military police and
prejudiced superiors, they fight for freedom over here.51
-
- Emergency agencies of the
government, especially those whose job it was to deal with aspects
of civilian morale and mobilization for the full wartime use of
national human resources, began to show their own interest in the
Army's racial problems. Archibald MacLeish's Office of Facts and
Figures had found that from among the many grievances standing between
full psychological support of the war by the Negro public in the
first months after Pearl Harbor, the "fact of discrimination in
the armed services of the United States is perhaps the most
bitter."52 Fiorello La Guardia's Office of Civilian Defense
was finding similar barriers to its work with civilian groups.53 From
the point of view of their civilian interests, both
offices wished to know what, in addition to its already announced
policies, the War Department was planning to do to reduce existing
tensions.
-
- In the late summer of 1942,
the Office of War Information, successor agency to the Office of Facts
and Figures, and the Research Branch of Special Service began to
plan joint surveys of camps and communities. The military agency was
to study camps and quasi-military institutions, such as USO clubs,
while the civilian agency worked with civilian communities on civilian
attitudes, contents of local newspapers, and civilian institutions
such as stores and dance halls. Their aim was to develop "a
procedure which would enable us to deploy representatives of our
branch and the Office of War Information to any tension area on a few
days' notice, such that we can come back in a couple of weeks or less
with a quick and reliable report."54 While such quickly
deployable teams were not developed, both agencies subsequently
directed general surveys with similar aims.
-
- From civilian communities,
renewed agitation for the immediate removal of Negro troops from
certain locations and qualms about placing them in others followed in
the wake of concern over disturbances. The reiterated order to keep
northern Negroes North and southern Negroes South, found primarily
impractical, was a product of this period.55 The difficulty in
finding a camp location for the 92d Division was partially the result
of this concern. When the "ex-
- [365]
- plosive" situation at
Little Rock was advanced as a reason for not placing a combat team
there, Army Ground Forces, citing Secretary Stimson's strictures
against the exclusion of Negroes from maneuvers scheduled for
Arkansas, and stating that disturbances had occurred in a number of
other places, resignedly observed that "It is believed that
racial difficulties will occur in almost all sections of the United
States, and that some means of dealing with the problem, other than
removing Negro troops from otherwise desirable stations will have to
be found." 56
-
-
- In the spring of 1943 serious
disorders began again. In the preceding months, though isolated
skirmishes and incidents occurred at individual posts, becoming a
common occurrence at some, no significant event which could be
considered a general outbreak of racial friction had transpired.
During these months the slow process of building toward an open
flare-up had been aided by a steady downward drop of morale in many
Negro units. By early summer, the harvest of racial antagonism was
beginning to assume bumper proportions. Serious disorders occurred at
Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi; Camp Stewart, Georgia; Lake Charles,
Louisiana; March Field and Camp San Luis Obispo, California; Fort
Bliss, Texas; Camp Phillips, Kansas; Camp Breckinriidge, Kentucky;
and Camp Shenango, Pennsylvania. Other camps had lesser disorders and
rumors of unrest.
-
- The disorders of 1943 differed
from those of preceding years. They involved, for the most part, a
larger number of troops. They occurred more frequently in the
camps themselves where the possibility of mass conflict between men of
Negro and white units was greater. Negro troops were as likely to be
the immediate aggressors as white troops and civilians. Two of the
disorders, those at Camps Van Dorn and Stewart, were especially
serious, both for their potentialities and for their effects on the
revision of plans for the general employment of Negro troops. Both
incidents involved combat troops of particular units, rather than
anonymous groups of soldiers from several units, aided and abetted
or provoked by civilians and police in the crowded centers of towns
on pay nights. Often disorders symbolized the breaking point both of
the patience of the troops involved and of the tolerance of the War
Department and its higher commands.
-
- Trouble at Camp Van Dorn in
May, involving the 364th Infantry, had its beginnings months before.
It was intimately entwined with the previous career of the
regiment. The 364th had been activated as the '367th Infantry, one of
the new Regular Army units, on 25 March 1941. Much of its training
took place at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, during the period of the
Columbia friction. Despite the usual low range of AGCT scores and lack
of wide civilian experience among its men, it became, in its first
year, a relatively well-trained unit. The 367th, less its first
battalion, was selected to furnish the 24th Infantry with personnel
qualified for foreign service when that regiment became the first
Negro infantry unit to move overseas in
- [366]
- April 1942. Its 1st Battalion was
alerted for duty with the Liberia Task Force in March 1942, separating from
the regiment and proceeding to the Charleston port the following month.
Not until January 1943 did it sail from New York. In the meantime, the remainder
of the regiment, not knowing that its 1st Battalion had been re-designated
the 367th Infantry Battalion (Separate) , waited either to refill or to
rejoin its 1st Battalion. Necessarily, because of the secrecy of wartime
movements, it could not be informed of the destination of its 1st Battalion
nor of its future relations with it. Requests on the part of the regiment
to be allowed to refill its 1st Battalion could not be met, for there was
no provision in the troop basis for an additional battalion in a regiment
all of whose battalions were already active. Because the 1st Battalion had
been shipped, with all equipment marked as belonging to the 367th Infantry,
the regiment, minus its 1st Battalion, was finally redesignated the 364th
Infantry. A new 1st Battalion was formed, for by now it was clear that the
remainder of the regiment would not join the detached battalion.57
The regiment, by now refilled with a considerable proportion of new men
and faced with retraining, was assigned to the Western Defense Command's
Southern Land Frontier Sector for protective guard duty.
-
- While stationed in Phoenix,
Arizona, the regiment became involved in two serious disturbances.
In the first of these about 500 men of the unit refused to disperse
when ordered to do so by the regimental commander. In the second,
occurring on Thanksgiving
night of 1942, approximately 100 men of the regiment engaged in a
shooting affray with a detachment of Negro military police in Phoenix,
with the result that one officer, one enlisted man, and one civilian
were killed and twelve enlisted men were seriously wounded. As a
result of this disturbance, sixteen members of the regiment were
tried by general court-martial, each receiving a sentence of fifty
years. The regiment received a new commander and executive officer.
These officers tried to eliminate individuals who might be a source
of future difficulties. About fifty men were transferred from the
regiment during this process. To overcome some of the basic causes of
friction within the regiment, a new camp with improved recreational
facilities was provided. The new commander was certain that the
regiment had returned to a normal state of discipline. The men of
the unit, according to intelligence operatives, were equally certain
that they had profited from the changes following the clashes.
-
- The Western Defense Command
now began to recommend that the regiment be put to other use, and,
specifically, that it be considered for employment overseas since
"its long retention at this station is likely to produce a
deterioration in its present efficiency." 58
In May 1943 the
regiment was ordered to Camp Van Dorn, Mississippi, for retraining by
Army Ground Forces, a procedure generally followed for units from
the defense commands before shipment overseas.
-
- Camp Van Dorn was not only in
Mississippi, a fact which members of the
- [367]
- regiment, arriving from Phoenix,
viewed as a change distinctly for the worse; it was also one of the more
isolated of the larger camps located in that state. The nearest town, Centreville,
had a normal population of less than 1,200. The nearest sizable towns, McComb,
Baton Rouge, and Natchez, were from forty to fifty miles away. Centreville
had little to offer any troops in the way of recreation or entertainment,
and the prevailing segregation laws and absence of compensating facilities
on the post made the men of the 364th especially resentful. Some viewed
the change in location as punishment for their continuing difficulties in
Phoenix, which had grown distinctly cooler toward their presence as the
months passed.59
-
- The 364th arrived at Van Dorn
in two groups, the first on 26 May and the second on 28 May. The first
group, bragging that they were going to "take over" the
camp, the town of Centreville, and, if necessary, the state of
Mississippi, began to show their resentment to the area to which they
had been transferred the day after their arrival. A number of 364th
men, visiting the Negro area service club, refused to obey the rules
of the club. They arrived in various states of partial uniform,
refused to doff caps, used indecent language to the hostesses, and
brought beer into the club from a post exchange in violation of camp
rules. An hour after the regular closing time, the hostess and the
noncommissioned officers in charge were still attempting to clear men
of the unit from the building. The following night, after the arrival of the second contingent
of the regiment, an exchange manager closed his building because of
the threatening conduct of men who insisted that exchange employees
had been rude and uncivil to them. Later, several hundred men, most of
them from the 364th, broke into the exchange, rifling the stock and
damaging equipment. On the next night, a Saturday, a group of about
75 men from the unit visited Centreville and roamed about the town,
reportedly using indecent and profane language. The group was accosted
by the town chief of police and a number of deputized townsfolk
armed with shotguns. Upon arrival of a military police officer, the
group dispersed and returned to camp.
-
- On Sunday evening, 30 May, the
incident occurred which, considering the rising temper of the
regiment, the town, and the remainder of the camp, could have caused a
general outbreak. A private from the regiment was accosted outside
the reservation by a military policeman and questioned about his
improper uniform and lack of a pass. During a fight which
followed, the county sheriff arrived. The soldier, attempting to
flee, was shot and killed by the sheriff. The commanding officer of
the regiment, informed of his soldier's death, dispatched all officers
to their respective units and proceeded, with the regimental staff,
to the barracks area of the company to which the soldier belonged.
There he found the entire company milling around in an uproar,
threatening to break into the supply room for rifles and ammunition.
He ordered firing pins removed from all rifles and placed an officer
guard over the supply room. While this company was being quieted, men
of another company
- [368]
- stormed their supply room and
obtained a number of rifles. Shortly thereafter a crowd of several
hundred soldiers gathered near the regimental exchange. A riot
squad, made up of Negro military policemen, fired into the crowd when
it attempted to rush them. One soldier was wounded by this volley. The
regimental commander and his chaplain arrived at this point. After
talking and pleading with the men, the commander quieted the group,
assembled his battalions, and marched the regiment to its barracks
area where the entire unit was confined. It took several days of
constant searching, which itself served to keep tension high, to
locate and recover all missing rifles. Citizens of the nearby town and
county began to arm themselves and to call for an immediate transfer of the regiment.
-
- When apprised of the situation
the commander of Army Ground Forces, General McNair, whose command in
the past had been faced frequently with demands for the removal of
Negro troops from specific communities, determined that to transfer
the 364th Infantry to another station would be the worst possible
solution, since it was not only what the local citizens wanted but
also a possible motive for the unit's actions. He proposed that the
regiment be confined to its own area until it disclosed "its real
troublemakers" and that it be deprived of all its privileges
until it "demonstrated its worthiness." He proposed
further that the citizens of Centreville and other nearby communities
be assured that no member of the unit would be permitted to enter
these towns until the citizens themselves asked that the ban be
lifted. In the meantime, using extra officers if necessary, a training
program would be provided which
would keep the regiment too busy to allow time for any further
demonstrations.60
-
- The Inspector General agreed
that the proposed action, though "drastic and yet untried,"
might be valuable under the circumstances. Citizens of the area would
probably protest the retention of the regiment at its station, and
Negroes would probably protest the disciplinary action taken, but,
nevertheless, except for giving the local citizenry control of the
future policy of permitting troops to visit surrounding towns-military
authorities should be left to determine, on the basis of future
developments, when the regiment should return to a normal
status-General Peterson recommended that the action proposed be tried.
The War Department approved.61
-
- Though restrictive
disciplinary measures, plus command efforts, brought an outward calm
to the regiment, the resentment and disturbed morale of the unit did
not alter significantly. Men of the regiment were now aware that they
were to be retained at Camp Van Dorn and that over their unit lay the
stigma of unusual punishment. A month after the initial Van Dorn
disturbances, the unit became embroiled again in an on-post
demonstration of near-riot proportions. On the evening of 3 July
1943, a large number of girls had been brought in from neighboring
towns for a dance. To help pay their transportation costs, tickets to
the dance were sold to soldiers at fifty cents each. Before the dance
could start, soldiers, most of them from
- [369]
- the 364th Infantry, 62
began
pouring into the service club where the dance was to be held. Coming
through side doors and windows as well as through the main entrance,
they overran the club. The club assistants, with the help of a number of first sergeants of the regiment, tried to get the building
cleared, but the crowd refused to leave. As fast as a few departed
through doors, others poured in through windows. The regimental
guard and a detachment of Negro military police were called. The
field officer of the day, a lieutenant colonel, arrived and, using
the public address system set up for the dance, explained the rules
for the dance and directed all soldiers to leave the building. The
crowd remained. The officer of the day then called for assistance from
an alerted white unit, a battalion of the 99th Infantry Division. This
battalion arrived, cleared the hall, and dispersed the crowd, now
grown to about 2,000.63
-
- With the approach of the
departure date of the alerted 99th Division, the retention of the
364th Infantry at Van Dorn as the largest single infantry unit on the
post took on new significance. Although no ammunition had been issued the unit and the bolts of all rifles had been removed, The
Inspector General felt that, "due to the attitude of civilians
in this locality relative to racial matters and to the presence of
large numbers of northern Negroes, there exists considerable danger
of racial disturbances in the general
vicinity of this camp." The inspecting officer recommended that
the unit be transferred overseas.64
-
- The Third Army, however, was
now convinced that the unit would not be ready until 7 March 1944.65
No active theater required a separate infantry regiment. The
Operations Division, requested to prevent further deferment of the
regiment beyond 7 March, finally arranged for it to replace a white
separate regiment in the Aleutians. There it performed garrison
duties for the rest of the war.
-
- Decision on the 364th Infantry
was complicated by events of the few days following its initial
difficulties at Camp Van Dorn. At Camp Stewart, Georgia, near
Savannah, in the first week of June, another and larger disturbance
involving units of the Antiaircraft Training Command occurred.
-
- The disturbance at Camp
Stewart had been brewing for some time. Adverse conditions on this
post and in Savannah had been brought to the attention of the War
Department as early as 1941.66 Savannah was a war-crowded town. In
addition to its normal population of about 95,000, there were two
shipyards close to the city employing about 75,000 people. Camp
Stewart had a normal strength of between forty and fifty thousand
men. The Savannah Army Air Base at Hunter Field had approximately
9,000 men. In addition, Marine Corps men from Parris Island and Navy
and Coast Guard men on liberty used Savan-
- [370]
- nah for recreation. On Saturday
nights, shipyard workers, marines, sailors, airmen, and soldiers all came
to town. Camp Stewart sent weekly into the city a convoy of about 100 trucks,
carrying between 1,200 and 1,500 men, sometimes 75 percent of them Negroes.
Neither city nor military police, neither civilians nor volunteer organizations
were able to do a great deal to provide adequately for such an influx.67
Negro troops had been complaining for months about the treatment they received
from white civilians and military personnel in Savannah and at Camp Stewart.
In the spring of 1943 the situation grew rapidly worse.
-
- At this time there were
fourteen Negro antiaircraft units at Camp Stewart.68 Some of these
were old battalions, recently reorganized from regiments being
re-formed as groups; others were newly organized battalions, three of
them formed with cadres from the 369th AAA Regiment returned from
Hawaii. Another of the units was the tooth AAA Gun Battalion, which
had been tactically deployed at Fort Brady, Michigan, as part of the
defenses of the Sault Ste. Marie area. Just before the outbreak at
Camp Stewart, General Davis and Lt. Col. Davis G. Arnold had completed
an investigation arising out of the receipt in the War Department of
anonymous letters, petitions from civilian organizations, and others
concerning conditions at the camp.69
-
- General Davis found that
dissatisfaction in the 100th Battalion and in the cadre from the
369th was general. These men, mainly from the North, many of them well
educated, and fresh from service in areas where civilian customs
were more favorable to them, were joined by other units in objections
to the designation of latrines and other facilities by race in
violation of War Department orders. They reported the usual
difficulties with white military police in entering and leaving camp
on pass, dissatisfaction with recreational facilities on post, with
bus transportation, with treatment by military and civilian police,
and with the lack of overnight lodging and meals at reasonable prices
in Savannah in comparison with those available for white soldiers. The
enlisted cadremen were considered quite capable-the commanding
officer at the training center said, "They have the snappiest gun
crews that I have ever seen in this whole place, and I go out
everyday." But, in presenting their grievances to General Davis,
including complaints that their officers, whom they unabashedly
referred to as ninety-day wonders, did not have sufficient experience and training, they spoke so
rebelliously and so
recklessly that General Davis had to caution them on the demeanor
expected from disciplined soldiers.
-
- On the basis of the
Davis-Arnold report, General Peterson recommended that attempts be
made to improve the recreational situation in Savannah, that pass
privileges be staggered to prevent overcrowding of both buses and the
available facilities, that more Negro military police be employed at
entrucking points, and that closer co-ordination be
- [371]
- developed among the proper
staff and command agencies to prevent serious consequences from the
existing unrest.70
-
- Before General Peterson's
recommendations could start on their way, violence flared at Camp
Stewart. The central unit involved was neither the tooth Battalion
nor any of the units with returnee cadres, but a unit which,
approaching the end of its training, was alerted for overseas
movement.
-
- On the evening of 9 June the
rumor spread through the Negro area at Camp Stewart-four of the
battalion areas were empty, save for guards, because their units were
on a field exercise-that a Negro woman had been raped and murdered
by white soldiers after they had killed her husband. One version
included military policemen among the murderers. The rumor, which
was later determined to have been false, was heightened in effect by
actual occurrences of the preceding few days: military policemen
in vehicles with machine guns had been used to disperse a crowd
gathered outside a service club during a dance, and a Negro soldier,
asking for a drink of water at an ice plant in nearby Hinesville, had
received a blow on the head with ice tongs instead. At about 8:3o
nearly a hundred soldiers, some armed with rifles, gathered in the
Negro area. Officers sought to halt the growing mob. A wild shot was
fired. Military police and vehicles were ordered to the area. The
first crowd moved back and broke up but a second mob, tense with
excitement and anger, formed later. Gun racks and supply rooms of
several Negro battalions were broken into and ammunition, rifles, and
submachine guns
- were removed. Some troops,
bent on revenge, joined the mob; some went into the nearby woods in
fear; others remained to "fight it out" and to defend
their areas. To add to the confusion of the evening, gas alarms rang
out in nearly every battalion area.
-
- At about ten o'clock an
approaching military police vehicle was fired on from the area of the
458th Battalion. General firing then started from this and several
other battalion areas, continuing for the next two hours. Four
military policemen were wounded, one seriously; a civilian bus driver,
fired on as he approached the area, was slightly wounded. Shortly
before midnight, a military police detail crossing a small parade
ground on foot was fired on; one military policeman was killed. At
12:30 members of two white battalions moved into the area in
half-tracks. The firing ceased shortly thereafter.
-
- In the aftermath of the riot,
which had not involved actual fighting between Negro and white troops,
a board of officers appointed at Camp Stewart to investigate
determined that the disturbance was essentially an outgrowth of long
pent-up emotions and resentments. The majority of the Negro soldiers
were convinced that justice and fair treatment were not to be had by
them in neighboring communities and that the influence of these
communities was strongly reflected in the racial policies of the
command at Camp Stewart. Many Negro troops feared for their personal
safety. Others, gripped by a feeling of desperation, had determined
to fight back against existing abuses without regard to consequences.
While frequent rumors circulated rapidly throughout the Negro units,
no evidence of an organized cam-
- [372]
- paign fostering discontent was
uncovered. The arrival of the men and officers from the tooth
Battalion and 369th Regiment may have aroused "latent resentment" existing in the minds of
soldiers already
stationed at the camp, but the board found no evidence that the men of
these units were responsible for the dissatisfaction leading to the
disturbances. The one unit with all Negro officers, commanded by
Lt. Col. DeMaurice Moses, was called into formation by its commander
and his staff after the start of the disturbance and remained calm
throughout the period. The board, despite its own findings,
nevertheless fell back on older formulas, ascribing the difficulties
to the stationing of Northern Negroes in the South and to the
"average negro soldier's meager education, superstition,
imagination and excitability" which, coupled with regimentation, made him "easily misled" and developed a
"mass state of mind." It therefore recommended that charges
be placed against any individuals involved against whom concrete
evidence of criminal activities existed; that better machinery for
getting rid of "deliberate agitators" be supplied; that
special training for military police in "handling Negro
soldiers" be devised; that an educational program be planned for
Negro troops to "teach dangers of rumor mongering, acceptance
of rumors as truth, avoidance of `chip on shoulders' attitude,"
and attempting to take the law into their own hands; and that the
458th Battalion be disbanded, with its enlisted men distributed to
other organizations.71
-
- These recommendations did not
reach to the heart of the board's
own findings. The commanding general of the Antiaircraft Command
therefore did not concur with the recommendation that the chief
offending unit be disbanded. Any guilty noncommissioned officers could
be reduced and punished in due course; new men could be transferred
into the unit. Army Ground Forces agreed with the command, saying that
"This unit appears to have had an excellent record of
accomplishment prior to the riot" and the time, money, and
effort invested in it could still be utilized. 72
All necessary
disciplinary action was already provided for in Army Regulations; the
matter of indoctrinating troops was a local problem that required no
sanction from higher headquarters.
-
- In the early summer of 1943
events of a similar nature continued to come to the attention of
higher headquarters. Before Camp Stewart, there were disturbances
at the Fort Bliss, Texas, Antiaircraft Training Center, followed by
another later in June on the local celebration of Texas' Emancipation
Day (19 June, "Juneteenth"), both of which were accompanied
by "isolated incidents of beating of negro troops, rock throwing, and chasing of negroes (by white troops) ."
73
At
Lake Charles, Louisiana, in May a pre-embarkation disturbance
arose from "last fling" activities of soldiers on pass, the
arrest of a Negro soldier by a white military policeman despite the
local ground rule that only Negro MP's would arrest Negro soldiers,
- [375]
- and a failure of other
military police, including officers, to function properly.74 Angered
by rough treatment of their fellows in Starkville on the Fourth of
July, about fifteen Negro soldiers from Camp McCain, Mississippi, set
out with arms and ammunition on the next night, heading for
Starkville, seventy miles away. At nearby Duck Hill, along the
Illinois Central tracks, they stopped and fired into the nearer town
in retaliation. At Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, where there were
approximately 8,500 Negro and 40,000 white troops, a chain of
disturbances indicating low morale and poor discipline occurred during
the late spring and summer, including mass raids on exchanges,
involving loss of merchandise and damage to equipment; attempts by
soldiers to overturn buses; and a near riot in a service club when an
angry crowd, protesting the mistreatment of a soldier by a white
officer, dispersed only after a tear gas candle was used.75
At the
Shenango (Pennsylvania) Replacement Depot, on the evening of 14
July 1943, an altercation between Negro and white soldiers in a post
exchange expanded until it involved large numbers of troops in the
exchange area. This first disturbance, brought under control by white
and Negro military police, was followed by another when two new
prisoners, picked up for a pass violation, spread news of the earlier fracas to men in the
guardhouse. Negro prisoners broke out of the guardhouse and, joined
by other soldiers, seized firearms and ammunition from supply rooms.
Military police, again white and Negro, killed one and wounded five
other soldiers in quelling the second disturbance.76
-
-
- Not all of the violence and
disorder in which Negro troops became involved resulted from racial
friction or mass grievances. Much of it was of a purely indigenous
nature, sometimes growing out of cultural traits and patterns of
behavior brought into the Army from civilian life and sometimes
growing out of contacts between soldiers and civilians whose lives
were enmeshed in the semi underworld of the honky-tonk sections of
many camp towns. Throughout the war these provided backdrop and
counterpoint to racial violence sometimes difficult to distinguish
from the main action and theme. In the prevailing atmosphere of
alertness and sensitivity to potential racial disorders, many a street
squabble or local fight, normal in war-crowded towns and camps,
received attention out of proportion to its importance, for none
could draw the line between a minor disorder and one that might
portend a major outbreak of violence.
-
- Sometimes civilian crowds,
opposed to law enforcement in any form or conditioned to suspect
that Negro soldiers
- [374]
- would receive less than fair
treatment from police officers, came close to precipitating mass
violence. In Louisville, Kentucky, in June 1943, street crowds became
disorderly when white and Negro military police arrested Negro
soldiers. The crowd, seeing soldiers bleeding-they had been
fighting among themselves-and concluding that they had been beaten by
arresting police, heaped imprecations upon the military police,
calling the Negro MP's "mouthpieces for the white people." 77
When an arrested soldier refused to enter a police car in
Tampa, Florida, a crowd of civilians gathered, urging other soldiers
to take him away from military police. Not until an armored car
arrived did the crowd disperse. Persons in the upper stories of
houses continued to hurl bottles, flowerpots, and other objects into
the street and upon the armored car below.78 In another type of
disorder not involving racial friction, a feud between two units
over the success of one soldier in dating "a much-sought-after
colored girl," erupted into disorder in the Quartermaster service
area at Camp Rucker, Alabama, following a beer party in one of the
units.79 General disorder at a USO dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey,
resulted in the death of one soldier, the wounding of two others, and the beating of one military
policeman after Negro military police
were called.80
-
- In some units, where a high
state of discipline had never been
achieved, acts of violence were a
commonplace. Soldiers of one battalion, while
on a recreation trip to Las Vegas,
Nevada, became involved in an altercation
with civilian and military police, colored
and white, in a bar just a short distance
from the truck park where their
accompanying officers were asleep. One
soldier was killed and three others were
injured in the ensuing fight. Within the
organization itself, during the
training period, several men were shot
accidentally or by guards while "kidding
around." Shortly before the unit moved
to a port of embarkation one of its mess
sergeants was hacked to death in his
kitchen with a cleaver by a technician
fifth grade and two accomplices bent on
robbing him.81 In 1944, after three years of
dispersed duty in and around New York
City, the 372d Infantry was removed to
Camp Breckinridge, Kentucky, for
retraining. There, in process of
reorganization and swollen to nearly twice
its normal size by new
men-"infantry volunteers" who were often
culls from other units-it became the victim of
rapidly deteriorating discipline
accompanied by continuing breeches of decorum
and by acts of violence. The camp commander, as support for a
request for additional military police,
listed one . general and twenty-five specific examples of disorder and breeches of discipline
occurring on the post between 24
- [375]
- May and 16 August 1944. Most
of these he attributed to this unit.82 These were purely disciplinary
cases, to be handled as other violations of law and order. But the
line between them and racially based violence was often vague,
especially in the minds of those involved as participants or as
immediately responsible commanders.
-
-
- Complementing and complicating
the tenseness and disorder within the military establishment were
civilian racial disorders. During the summer of 1943 serious
disturbances occurred in Los Angeles, Detroit, Beaumont, and New
York. Rumors of riots in the offing appeared in other cities: In
Houston for "Juneteenth," in Charleston for the last week in
June, in Richmond over the Fourth of July weekend, in Washington on
the evening chosen for a mass meeting of Negroes protesting the
refusal of the local street car company to employ Negro operators, in
Pittsburgh over the weekend of 10 July when 300 Negroes stormed a
police station to protest the arrest of two men who refused to
"move on" when ordered to do so by the police.83 That civilian
and military disorders had connecting links could not be overlooked.
Soldiers and sailors were involved in the Detroit and Los Angeles
riots. In the Harlem riot of 1943, the precipitating event involved a
Negro soldier and a white city policeman, with the policeman accusing
the soldier of attempting to interfere with the arrest of a disorderly
Negro woman. The rumor spread quickly that the soldier had been
killed by the policeman. Rioting, most of it against property rather
than against whites themselves, followed, resulting in at least five
deaths and several hundred injured. 84
The possibility of further
repercussions from these disturbances within the Army was viewed as
a real danger.85 In Harlem, Negro and white soldiers sent into the
area to clear the streets and restore order were greeted with cheers.
In Detroit, however, the action of the service command in using 2,000 white soldiers only for riot duty brought immediate
repercussions in Negro units. Eighty Negro soldiers at nearby Oscoda
Army Air Base, mainly members of the 332d Fighter Group and the 96th
Service Group, protested to the President that they, too, should have
been called for this duty, charging that white soldiers helped white
rioters against Negroes and saying that the
- [376]
- handling of the riot brought
out in bold relief the helpless physical position of Negro soldiers
and civilians.86 The greater fear arising from these continuing
disturbances in both the civilian and military spheres was that, with
all their interacting potentialities, they would interfere seriously
not only with training but also with war production, handing at the
same time free copy to enemy propagandists. With the political
campaigns of 1944 approaching, attempts to make political capital of
the increasingly serious problem were on the horizon. It would
therefore behoove the Army, its legislative experts felt, to
"keep its skirts clean in the matter" and avoid involvement
in the coming campaign.87
-
- Army Service Forces, which had
primary responsibility for service commands and, through them, for
posts, acquired after the middle of 1943 direct responsibility for
increasing percentages of Negro troops. ASF began to place prevention
of racial friction high on its list of problems toward the end of
1943. There was still a tendency to place the major blame for
disturbances upon inadequate recreational facilities, inadequate
command, and outside agitation. A representative of The
Inspector General, addressing a conference of commanding generals
of service commands in midsummer 1943, summed up the situation and the
War Department's view of both its origin and its importance
-
- In my opinion the toughest
problem confronting service commanders today is the one of
preventing disturbances involving colored troops, since it involves
some matters which are not under your control. The number of such
disturbances has materially increased in the last few months. High
officials of the War Department are not so much concerned as to how
commanders functioned in quelling the disturbances, but rather what
had they done to learn that a riot or disturbance was probable and
what action had they taken to prevent it.
-
- General Peterson's information
indicates that in too many instances commanding officers are too far
removed from their colored troops; they are not sufficiently
interested in their day-to-day welfare in providing them with
reasonable recreational facilities within the post and in seeing that
reasonable transportation is provided to and from recreational areas
off the post; they are not enough concerned about the discrimination
that may be practiced against Negroes in the surrounding country and in the lack of
recreational facilities therein; they permit on their own posts
discriminations which are contrary to the War Department policies
and instructions; they fail to maintain appropriate standards of
discipline in Negro units; they grudgingly accept Negro officers
assigned to their commands and thereafter spend a good deal of time
griping about the unfitness of a Negro to be an officer, rather than
requiring him to meet officer standards.
-
- In stations where conditions exist
as I have just described, there grows up the feeling of unrest and resentment,
which is flamed by troublemakers within the organization until it gets to
the point that only a spark, which is ordinarily a false rumor,
- [377]
- converts an organization into
a riotous mob. Some officials in Washington believe that some of the
disturbances that have occurred could have been prevented had the
commanders concerned functioned appropriately. I do not want to
give the impression that disturbances are the fault of the commanders, but by failing to act appropriately, they facilitate the
work of groups or individuals who are attempting to create unrest
and later riots among Negro troops.88
-
- As more and more Negro troops
came under its direct control, Army Service Forces and its agencies
explored ways and means of improving the control of racial tensions
within camps and stations. Early in 1944, the continuing examination
of policy concerning Negro troops was placed at the top of Army
Service Forces' Classified Checklist of Current Policies, with the
director of its Military Personnel Division made responsible for
close observation of matters arising under these policies.89 The
Inspector General, from mid-summer 1943 to the end of the year, made
a series of comprehensive surveys of conditions in several camps and
groups of camps. Nine specific recommendations were forwarded by him
for War Department consideration. Many of these had been covered
before, but from the findings of inspectors they were considered to be
in need of further attention. Moreover, The Inspector General, from
past reports and observations, viewed the situation as a complex
of many strands which, singly or in combination, led to unrest and
eventual disorder. The corrective recommendations included: (1)
directives "by appropriate authority" to commanders
concerned for the purpose of stressing, in the training programs of
Negro troops, the necessity of "their accepting and striving to
attain the proper standards of military discipline"; (2)
utilization of additional Negro military police to provide more
adequate and centralized control; (3) the establishment of an
"active, attractive, interesting and fully coordinated
recreational and entertainment program, including additional
facilities therefor;" (4) the necessity of affording Negro
officers "the same privileges and opportunities for advancement
as those granted white officers" with the requirement that they
"be held to the same high degree of leadership, efficiency,
performance of duty and discipline"; (5) a clear statement of
War Department policy to correct "an unwillingness of
commanding officers to bring offenders to trial when the seriousness
of the offense manifestly indicated the need therefor"; (6)
attainment of closer co-operation of federal and state authorities
toward control of venereal diseases; ('7) directives to local public
relations officers requiring them to gather information on Negro
personnel at posts, camps, and stations, to furnish releases to
Negro papers and encouragement to the papers to use such releases
"with a view to elimination from their publications of erroneous,
distorted or inflammatory articles," failing which, "drastic
steps" should be taken by appropriate government authorities
"in cases of publication of articles which adversely affect the
War effort;" (8) recommendations to commanding officers that
"when there is reason to believe or suspect that there is racial
unrest or that
- [378]
- racial disturbance is imminent
within their commands, they should exercise, in such situations as may
warrant it, the military censorship of postal matter authorized by the
provisions of paragraph 3d, War Department Training Circular 15,
dated 16 February 1943, using the utmost care and secrecy in so
doing;" and (9) bringing to the attention of appropriate
agencies, with a view to correction "where practicable," the
lack of established eating and lodging facilities for Negro personnel
traveling in the South.90
-
- All of the matters in this
portmanteau recommendation had previously come to the attention of one or
another of the agencies concerned. Many of them had reminiscent
overtones of the recommendations made by judge Hastie in his pre-Pearl Harbor
survey.91 Much had been done to carry out certain of
them. That they were still unfinished business midway of the war was
an indication of the difficulty which the War Department had had with
them. The degree of relationship which the areas of recommended
action bore to the problem of violence and discipline differed
considerably; that all were contributing to the general problem of
the employment of Negro troops could not be denied.
- [379]
Endnotes
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