Let Us Fight As Free Men

    The service of African Americans in WWII was a major catalyst for the Civil Rights movement. Men who’d risked their lives fighting for the USA in Europe and Asia were no longer willing to be treated as second class citizens back home. They were coming back to a country that lauded the troops as heroes, but thanks to racism, they were getting shorted on the benefits. Unlike the veterans of WWI, however, they would not take it in good humor.

    This book uses great case studies to show how racial incidents in and after the war drove the movement for change. Truman’s forcible integration of the armed forces, for instance, was not simply a spur of the moment. A. Philip Randolph, the famous African American labor leader, denounced communism and backed the invasion of Korea. Randolph disliked communism, but he also wanted to get Truman to integrate the army further. He wanted to see an end to discrimination that was there despite the 1949 integration; he didn’t want non-white sailors being relegated to the kitchens, or the airmen being denied promotions.

   The blinding of Isaac Woodward is another example of a racial incident pushing the effort for integration. Woodward was an army veteran traveling in the south, when he was arrested over a verbal spat with a bus driver. Buses were segregated at the time, and the argument was probably over this African American soldier not wanting to sit in the back. For those of you that never heard the story, he was blinded by the police while in custody, and though tried in a Federal court, the officers were foiund not guilty and never punished for their crimes. The jury was composed of locals, and only white men were selected for jury duty at the time, so there wouldn’t be a fair trial. Much of the uproar had to do with the fact that Woodward was in uniform, and people wondered why Truman would tolerate the blinding of someone in the nation’s service.

    Truman didn’t tolerate it. But the president can only enforce the law, not make laws or interpret them. It would be the efforts of private citizens that brought about the end of racial discrimination in the service, not a government edict.