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CONFLICTING INTEREST:

THE 477TH BOMBER GROUP MUTINY, APRIL 1945

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the

Graduate School of the Ohio State University

by

Anthony BT Milbum, B.A., M.A.

*****

The Ohio State University

1997

Dissertation Committee : Approved by

Allan R. Millett, Adviser Adviser Mansel G. Blackford Department of History James N. Upton

Warren Van Tine UMI Number: 9801748

UMI Microform 9801748 Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.

This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code.

UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 Copyright by Anthony BT Milburn 1997 ABSTRACT

In April of 1945, a unit of the United States Army Air

Forces mutinied, an offense which, under Article of War 64,

carried the death penalty during war. That unit was the 477th

Bomber Group, the nation's only Black bomber unit, station at

Freeman Field, Indiana. This is the account of that event.

The Army Air Forces reluctantly organized the 477th

Bomber Group and the repeated transferring of the unit from

one base to another frustrated the men as they attempted to

train for combat. Promotions for the Black officers of the

477th were blocked, as whites were transferred into the 477th

to receive promotions and transferred out, making the 477th a promotion mill for white officers. In addition. Black officers were barred from using the officers; club on the orders of their commanding officer, an order that was in direct violation of military regulations. It was this order

that sparked the ire of the 477th Bomber Group.

This detailed study will not only be the first of the

477th Bomber Group but it will be significantly different from all other unit histories. As a prosopographical work, the

ii focus includes the backgrounds of the men. Their education and ideology will play a key role in this work. Black pilots were required to have the equivalent of two years of college, a requirement that was dropped for white pilots. The military's bureaucratic structure makes the appearance of institutional racism and its development clearer and easier to track than in other elements of American society.

At the end of the war, many of the men of the 477th remained in the new integrated Air Force. Benjamin Davis, Jr. became its first Black general officer, Daniel James became its first four star general, and Coleman Young went on to become the mayor of Detroit, Michigan.

The historiographic method for this project allows a clear narrative of the events, an illustration of the formation and workings of racism, and the response of Black

American servicemen.

Ill To the men who answered their nation's call under the banner of the Tuskegee Airmen (pilots and ground crews alike), my family, and the faculty of Pope John XXIII as personified in

Sister Donna Marie Anthony.

IV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish express my sincere appreciation to my adviser.

Professor Allan R. Millett, and Professor Warren Van Tine, for their support, guidance and undying belief in my abilities.

To the rest of my committee. Professors Mansel G. Blackford and James N. Upton for their feedback and occasionly ego stoking. Thank you as well to Professor Horace E. Newsum. To

Professors William Howard and Maurice Shipley, YES, Black and

Gold is a beautiful color combination. I need to thank the

Wroblewski family for allowing me to stay with them on one of my research trips. Monde you will ALWAYS be my little buddy.

"I love you man." To my family and friends, thank you for allowing me to "blow you off." To Sister Donna, Thanks! And most of all, I thank God. VITA

February 18, 1960...... B o m - Anchorage, Alaska

1988 ...... B.A. Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1989-1992...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1992...... M.A. Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio Summer FLAS Fellow

1992-1995...... Graduate Teaching Associate, Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1995-199 6 ...... Graduate Administrative Associate, Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio

1996-199 7 ...... CIC Andrew Mellon Fellow

VI FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: History

Studies in: Military with Allan R. Millett, John Guilmartin and Willamson Murray.

American with Warren Van Tine and Mansel G. Blackford.

Japanese with James Bartholomew and Philip Brown.

World with Kenneth J. Andrien.

Russian/Soviet History and Culture with Allan K. Wildman and George Kalbouss.

V I 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...... v

VITA...... vi

CHAPTER PAGE

1 INTRODUCTION...... 1

2 PEOPLE TRAPPED IN HISTORY...... 16

3 INTO THE FRAY...... 43

4 SELFRIDGE FIELD...... 70

5 FREEMAN FIELD...... 107

6 CONCLUSION...... 131

BIBLIOGRAPHY 14 6

VlXl CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

On April 5, 1945, as the Second World War drew to a close, a group of Black officers from the 477th Bombardment

Group (Medium) attempted to enter the Officers' Club at

Freemen Field, near Seymour, Indiana, but were denied entrance by the base provost marshal. The provost marshal acted on the orders of the base's commanding officer, who was also the commanding officer of the 477th. Later that night a second group of Black officers returned, made their way into the club, and were arrested. As the night progressed, several small additional groups of Black officers entered or attempted to enter the club. The provost marshal arrested each group until the base commander ordered the club closed for the night. At that point 61 officers were under arrest. Before the matter came to a complete end, 101 officers faced charges of mutiny, which in time of war could carry the death penalty with a conviction. Ultimately, however, only three of these

101 officers actually went in front of a court-martial, and only one was found guilty of any crime, that of pushing a

provost marshal, a significantly less consequential charge

than mutiny.

It would be impossible to reasonably argue that the

Second World War crept up on the United States, Preparations

for war were openly under way in both Europe and Asia when the

193 0s dawned. In 1931, when local Japanese army officers in

Manchuria staged an incident near Mukden, the Manchurian

capital, they did so with the tacit approval of their

superiors. Within a few months the Japanese had succeeded in overrunning all of Manchuria and setting up a puppet government there. By 1937, a de facto military government was

in place in Tokyo. In Europe, Hitler gained control of the

Reichstag, the legislative arm of the German government, in

1933. He had consolidated his position by 1936 and almost immediately started the process of seizing territory. Hitler

first reclaimed the Rhineland in 1936 and in 1938, he pressured the rest of Europe, represented by Great Britain's

Neville Chamberlain and France's Edouard Daladier, with their hats in their hands, to cede the Sudetenland to him, guaranteeing anything but "peace in our time," in Munich. In a single act of acquiescence the strategic balance in Europe shifted in a dangerous direction because the great powers of Europe were unprepared to defend a "far-off place inhabited by people of whom we know little." On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, and two days later Great Britain and France responded and the continent found itself at war.

Japan's and Germany's encroachments into China and the

Sudetenland respectively should have ended any illusions. For many, they no doubt did. For many Americans of African descent, the day of reckoning became clear when on October 3,

193 5 the Italian fascist Mussolini launched his forces in an attack against Ethiopia after an extended period of posturing.

Even the most insularly focused Blacks took notice and gave great thought to the international political issues of the day. Once his forces had defeated the only independent nation in Africa, Mussolini immediately dispatched them to Spain in order to support the rebelling fascists there. The failure to provide aid to the small African nation, as it struggled against the Italian forces, led a number of Black Americans to turn toward Spain. As civil war broke out there during the summer of 1936, some Blacks came to view it as a surrogate for missed opportunities in Ethiopia.^ Not until the dawn of a new decade would events force the rest of the nation to at least consider the unpleasant possibilities of a second world war. First, Hitler's armies marched across Europe driving the

armies of both the French and British off the continent at

Dunkirk in the summer of 1940. This was then followed by the

victorious German Armies later marching through the streets of

Paris. With the passing of these two events and what was

happening in Asia it became increasingly difficult to believe

that the United States would be able to remain out of the ever growing global conflict. New decisions confronted the United

States in the summer of 1940 as Great Britain's predicament, even at sea, grew critical. The untouched resources of the

United States, in terms of industry, materials, natural resources, and manpower grew in overall importance as the nation moved away from the neutrality acts put in place between 193 5 and 1939 toward becoming an inactive member of the anti-Axis alliance.

These slowly developing reactions were illustrated by the enactment of the Lend-Lease programs.^ The United States also moved forward in preparing for full activity, as seen in the

July 1940 funding by Congress for a two ocean navy and an expanded land force as the nation's first peacetime draft went into effect. All of this along with the implicit, if not explicit, coupling of the destiny of the United States to the success of Great Britain over Germany and her second tier allies made the participation of the United States in the

Second World War imminent.

The United States did a number of things because of this commitment, including providing arms to Great Britain. Other such actions included accepting Great Britain's willingness to trade a number of military bases, the most important of these were in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Trinidad, and Bermuda, for destroyers to supplement the island nation's fleet. The

United States also provided well over $36 million in loans to the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

The tensions that resulted from these actions were intensified by the growing differences between the United States and

Japan, Germany's Asian ally, and the trade embargoes put in place by the United States against Japan, the Soviet Union, and Germany.^ The concern was that if Great Britain fell, this unholy alliance would govern the rest of the world, particularly the western hemisphere, which would be forced to forever live at the point of a gun.'*

As with all wars, World War II carried its own kind of pageantry, symbolism, and ideology. With the United States emerging as the "Arsenal of Democracy" against the forces of fascism and as the advocate of four essential human freedoms, there was a new urgency facing the nation. In many ways the war was about the failure to stand up to tyranny and oppression in a forth right manner. This growing sense of awareness was verbalized when President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself said, "There can be no appeasement with ruthlessness.

Realizing this fact as well were Black Americans who were engaged in their own struggle to find a way to become involved in the war effort and some justification for that involvement.

War is by its very nature is an emotionally charged experience. The issues surrounding Blacks in the military were just as emotionally charged. The apprehension experienced by some African Americans concerning the war was no doubt an element of the " twoness" they faced as Americans constantly refused the benefits of their citizenship as well as the disappointment felt they after the First World War.®

Blacks felt cheated by the outcome of the First World War because of the limited civil rights gains they made under the

"close ranks " approach of uniting with the rest of the country, putting aside demands for equal and fair treatment of

Blacks, to achieve a common national goal. As a result Black

Americans during World War II attempted to make the linkage between military service and the constitutional distribution of civil rights clear and, for some, the conditions of their support explicitly plain.

Ever increasing numbers of Black Americans would not be willing to wait until the end of the war for the treatment they felt was their right by virtue of their citizenship. A number elected to voice their concerns as groups like the

Chicago's "Conscientious Objectors Against Jim Crow" began to appear and others called for Blacks to refuse to service until segregated units were explicitly banned. For the United

States, a nation proud of its democratic background and forgetful of its inegalitarian practice, the expenditures of fighting a two front war would include the continuing transformation of the rights extended to second class citizens. Of course, the desired result could only be the total eradication of such a thing as second class status.

This is what African American leaders hoped to make a reality.

Indeed, the Second World War would aid in the extermination of a caste like system within the borders of a nation proud of its democratic background.

Black leaders sought ways to collaborate with the war effort, but they had no desire for themselves or their constituents to appear to be obsequious. Black Americans regularly purchased war bonds, many of them through the payroll savings programs at their jobs, where predetermined sums were deducted from their earnings for the purchasing of the bonds. Pressure from the masses put intense pressure on the leadership of Black Americans to produce on several levels. Feeling as if they were constantly having their loyalty challenged, this was especially true of the press and those people with any links to the Communist Party, political or social. Black Americans often responded in cutting terms.

However, not all members of the ranks of the African

American leadership were reading from the same script. In

December of 1942 Warren H. Brown, Director of Negro Relations for the Council for Democracy, published "A Negro Looks at the

Negro Press" in the Saturday Review of Literature. A ruthless denunciation of the Black Press this article appeared a month later in Reader's Digest retitled, A Negro Warns the Negro

Press." Brown challenged the idea that Black Americans were unhappy with the racial environment of the nation and that the press was responsible for any unrest among Black Americans, including any hesitation to support the war effort.’'

As white papers echoed these sentiments, they made hardly any mention of the legitimacy of the concerns that

Black newspapers published and placed the burdened of poor racial relations squarely on the shoulder of the Black press. This kind of rationalization failed to understand that much of the burden had to fall on the shoulders of the white press as well. Because white papers ignored news of interest to the

Black community, Black papers stepped up to fill this void.

If Black papers had not done so, it is unlikely that they would have lasted long enough to become of any significance.

Historically the Black press has taken on this role. Black readers expected them to provide these kinds of stories.

Despite the attacks, launched against it, the Black press did a good job given its handicaps. Most of the papers were commonly understaffed. Because of this they often failed to corroborate stories. They were also given to sensational headlines. Despite the sensationalism and occasional errors in stories, the Black press was unable to match the provocative commentary commonly found in the white press concerning matters of race.

These controversies over the press came up repeatedly.

At one point President Franklin Roosevelt admitted to Walter

White, Executive Secretary of the NAACP, that he had come under a great deal of pressure, along with the Department of

Justice, to bring charges against the papers for sedition and

"interference with the war effort." White's response was simple in its approach to the problem. If the Black press is critical of the war effort, the president could take action

that would leave nothing to question. For the Black press

that meant that President Roosevelt could elect to abolish

segregation in the military services and to end discrimination

in government financed war industries. If he did these things he would find that the papers would become his "enthusiastic supporters." White suggested that the President also consider the records of those wishing to suppress the papers and their editors. White also suggested that the President include members of the Black press in the press conferences that he conducted periodically.®

It was no doubt the fact that the Black press was attempting to provide a service to both the leaders and the led by acting as a way to communicate, and it was the Brown article that influenced A. Philip Randolph to point out the importance of the leadership of the Black community remaining in touch with the desires of the community, lest "the leadership would have to catch up with the fellowship." As if to formalize this determination, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People issued the following statement :

Though thirteen million American Negroes have more often than not been denied democracy, they are American citizens and will as in every war give

10 unqualified support to their country. At the same time we shall not abate one iota our struggle for full citizenship rights here in the United States. We will fight but we demand the right to fight as equals in every branch of military, navy and aviation services.*

With this aspiration firmly in mind Black Americans made

several demands about Black military service. Two of the most

important were the addition of Blacks to the previously exclusively white Army Air Forces and the eradication of Jim

Crow practices within the military as an institution, because such practices affected access for Blacks to skilled positions and the officer corps.

In 1941 the Army met the first demand as elements of the

Air Forces started accepting Blacks for training as aviation cadets. This action came as a direct result of pressure from

President Franklin D. Roosevelt as he attempted to maintain the Black vote. The military was slower to meet the second demand, however, despite the publication of Army Regulation

210-10 in December 1940, which explicitly stated that the use of military facilities could not be denied to military personnel on the basis of race. Yet the Army continued to practice Jim Crow throughout the war despite the fact that this practice was outlawed in written regulations. This obvious hypocrisy came to a head near the end of the war in

11 1945, when members of the 477th Bomber Group refused to be barred from facilities legally open to them.

How, so close to the end of a war defined in part as a crusade against racism, could such an event take place? What motivated 101 men to challenge the military in such a direct manner, and were they aware of the possible consequences at the start? If not, why did they not acquiesce to the demands of their superiors? Who, if anyone, intervened in the matter and for what purpose?

The answers to such questions will tell us a great deal about racism in the United States military during the period of World War II as well as the society which it served. The actions of the 477th represented a fundamental change toward a more aggressive pursuit of civil rights, especially among middle-class Blacks. Their story, in combination with others like it, resulted in the military becoming the first truly integrated element of American society, albeit unwillingly so.

The men of the 477th Bomber Group took a large burden upon their shoulders in attacking Jim Crow at the time and in the manner that they elected to battle it. Jim Crowism is part of an unpleasant but recurrent theme in American history.

Although the events of Freeman Field were not an anomaly, they illustrated the frustrations of Blacks within the military

12 with Jim Crow practices and showed a determination among some to challenge those practices through the utilization of military law. In fact, this was the second confrontation of this type for some members of the 477th Bomber Group, the first occurred at Selfridge Field, Michigan in January 1944.

These were only two of the many confrontations which reflected the frustration experienced by Blacks at large within American society during the war years and the determination of some to force a change.^

Given the opportunity, the men of the 477th tell a very passionate story about how they came to be members of the

United States Army Air Force. That story becomes even more concupiscent when they explain their involvement in the 477th and the events of that April in 1945.

13 1. See Danny D. Collum's African Americana in the Spanish Civil War: "This Ain't Ethiopia, but It'll Do" (New York: G.K Hall, 1992) and Brenda Gayle Plummer's Rising Wind: Black Americans and U. S. Foreign Affairs, 1935-1960, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1996).

2. Between the time of its passage and November 1941, the Lend-Lease Act and related programs provided $13 billion, ten times what had originally been appropriated, of aid to the allies.

3. This was before Germany's attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. After the attack the embargo against the Soviet Union was lifted, and Lend-Lease aid was made available to the Soviets,

4. Samuel I. Rosenman ed, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937-1940, 639. 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1941). 1941-1945, 4 vols. (New York: Harper, 1950) .

5. Samuel I. Rosenman ed. Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1937-1940, 638. 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1941) . 1941-1945, 4 vols. (New York: Harper, 1950).

6. The concept of "twoness" or duality was first introduced by W.E.B. DuBois. Referring to the desire of Black Americans to live as Americans yet being constantly reminded that they did not enjoy all of the benefits that came with being an American citizen. See W.E.B. DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk, in Three Negro Classics, (New York: Avon Books, 1970) and Elliott Rudwick's "W.E.B. DuBois: Protagonist of the Afro- American Protest," in John Hope Franklin's and August Meier's edited work Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982). 63-84.

7. Warren H. Brown, "A Negro Looks at the Negro Press," Saturday Review of Literature. XXV (December 19, 1942), 5.

8. Walter White briefly discusses this encounter with President Roosevelt in his autobiography, A Man Called White, (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), 207.

9. Board Minutes, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, September 1940. Quoted in Minnie Finch's The

14 NAACP: Its Fight For Justice, (Metuchen, N.J.rThe Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1981), 106.

10. Until June 20,1941, the air arm of the Army was known as the Army Air Corps (AAC) . On that date its name was changed to Army Air Forces (AAF) and remained so until it received full independence in September 1947. Throughout its life the AAC/AAF followed the rules and regulations of the Army despite its semiautonomous existence. For simplicity the term Army Air Forces is used throughout this work.

11. The number of times Blacks in military uniform have been forced to react to mistreatment as a result of race is rather frightening. During the period of the Second World War there were incidents at Port Chicago as well as in Mississippi, North Carolina, and Kentucky. Jackie Robinson was court martialed when he refused to ride on the back of a b u s . Clashes were not limited to the U.S. Racial tensions amoung Americans flared up overseas as well.

15 CHAPTER 2

PEOPLE TRAPPED IN HISTORY

The backgrounds of the men of the 477th Bomber Group were

as diverse as that of any American military organization.

That in part is what makes their story so intriguing. Members

of the 477th came from such geographically dispersed regions

as the Northeast and Southwest. Some held collegiate

loyalties as University of California Los Angeles "Bruins" and

others as Tuskegee Golden "Tigers, " while still others were

self-educated to the point where they could pass the

qualifying examinations for military flight training. Despite

these socio-economic differences in many ways all of these men

set themselves apart as stellar examples of W. E. B. DuBois'

talented tenth or Thomas Jefferson's natural aristocracy.

While some came from well-to-do families, most came from working class or middle-class backgrounds. It is this set of apparent dissimilarities that underlines the most strikingly obvious links between these men. They were intellectually quick, politically aware men, unfamiliar with the concept of

16 total failure, yet they were in a military unit designed to

fail because they were in it.

The men of the 477th Bomber Group were representative of

the social and intellectual elite of the Black community; as

officers they should have been representative of the social

and intellectual elite of the military as well. Given the

social and military significance of the events that transpired

at Freemen Field, it is strange that scholars have not paid

more attention to them. The protest clearly illustrates, in

part, a change to an increasingly assertive manner of protest

as the Black population, -- especially those who could be

identified as the social and intellectual elite,

increasingly refused to bow passively to Jim Crow laws. The

significance of such reactions was perhaps best stated by John

Hope Franklin when he argued that "every generation of

Americans, from the very first handful in the seventeenth

century, has sought to create a social order in which equity

and justice, as they understood it, would prevail.

The relationship between the Black experience in the

American military and the continuing drive for equality has

not been studied in full detail. There are only a limited

number of works on the military experiences of Black

Americans. Briefly during the early 1970's, when there seemed

17 to be a sharp increase in public interest in the idea of civil rights, a number of books and articles were published on the

issue of Black military participation, some of which are of questionable value to scholars. Since then, new literature in this area has declined in volume, possibly as a result of the changes in the domestic political climate.= With the end of the Vietnam War, a vocal minority of African Americans came to perceive the military with a certain amount of suspicion, often seeing it as representative of a flawed and discredited, if not bankrupt, power structure. Such a perception failed to account for the continuously high enlistment rates for Black

Americans. Similar suspicions were directed at those who studied the military as an institution, especially if such studies appeared to be conservative in their assessments.

Despite the rhetoric around the perception that Vietnam was a war conducted by the rich and fought by America's poor and minorities, the single best attempt to address this issue, in terms of Black Americans, is Wallace Terry's Bloods.^

Black Americans made up roughly 19 percent of the fatalities suffered by American forces in Vietnam and 10 percent of the population. Terry's work is a no-nonsense look at how some of the men dealing with those odds viewed the war and their part in it. Working his way though twenty different views, officer

18 and enlisted, of the war, Terry paints an image of a slowly

changing mentality. A changing mentality that is the result

of a sense of frustration. This frustration grew out of a number of things, including seeing the military, integrated by

their fathers, moving from integration to polarization.

The anxieties that came out of this transformation colored much of the scholarly work of the period. After the

American withdrawal from Vietnam the United States military moved toward becoming an all-volunteer force. A major concern that resulted from this development was the fear of an over­ representation of minorities in this new all-volunteer force, and much of the attention of scholars was directed to that issue.

What these scholars wanted to point out was that for all of its existence the United States has put its faith in an armed force structured around volunteers. The only exceptions to this rule have been during major conflicts. And this had remained the case even after the 1948 Selective Training and

Service Act was put in place. During World War I, 404,348

Black Americans reported for military service and were eventually stationed overseas. At the war's end the number of

Blacks within the military was cut to the point that by 1940 only five, officers, three of them chaplins, and 5,000

19 enlisted men were on the active duty rolls, and all were in

segregated units. It was between the two world wars that the military put in place quotas to guarantee that the number of

Black troops would not exceed their proportion of the civilian population. With the advent of World War II, over 850 officers and 920,000 enlisted Black troops answered the nation's call. This propensity of Black Americans to answer the nation's call is what led to the belief that such studies were necessary.“

The volume of literature declined in the late 1980's; consequently, large gaps remain in our understanding of Black military activity, and historians of Black America and

American military historians have a responsibility to attempt to fill these gaps. Interestingly enough the study of the

American experience of World War II put forward a reasonable framework for dealing with those gaps. The writing on the

American involvement in and the conduct of the Second World

War was once, as one noted scholar points out, "dominated by the armed forces historical agencies."® In essence, the meaning of this is that these agencies have influenced the way academic scholars study the military and its institutional bureaucracies. The massive work produced by the Army's office of the Chief of Military History, collectively known as the

20 "green books," serves as a model. Covering such issues as strategy and operations, medicine, and finances, as well as race relations, the green books not only put forward a framework for, but they also pointed the direction of future studies. Because the official histories so extensively dealt with the traditional areas of strategy and operations historians were forced to look elsewhere for something to write about concerning the war. Given this situation, they then turned to the one area that the official histories had left little touched: military biography. Once historians locked on to this area as relatively untouched, they then proceeded to produce a wealth of biographies such as Forrest

Pogue's George C. Marshall, Stephen E. Ambrose's Eisenhower,

Thomas M. Coffey's Hap, and E. B. Potter's Nimitz.®

When concerned with issues of race, however, academics looked elsewhere. Concentrating much of their attention on the experiences and lives of the Black enlisted men, scholars have devoted little attention to the officer corps. There are only a limited number of biographies of Black officers, all relatively new. It has been only recently that an autobiography of Benjamin 0. Davis, Jr., who was without a doubt one of the most important figures in World War II and the immediate postwar period, become available.’

21 In 1989 Marvin Fletcher's biography of Davis' father

Benjamin 0. Davis, Sr., came out. Fletcher's work points out the complications and amplitude of both the institutional racism of the military and the resistance of Blacks to that racism within that military. However, Fletcher does not make use of the kind of issues that E. Franklin Frazier and Morris

Janowitz bring out in their works, which focuses on the Black middle class and the military respectively -- issues that might have proven useful in understanding the social and professional frameworks faced by Davis. Such an understanding would be useful in determining if the senior Davis was a man with the same appeasement outlook on race relations as Booker

T. Washington or if he attempted to take advantage of his political appointment and worked to improve the situation faced by such men as his son. It would also have given some insight on the junior Davis, as he would attempt to deal with many of the same issues well after his father's retirement.

Predating the junior Davis' autobiography are James R.

McGovern's General Daniel 'Chappie' James, Jr. and J. Alfred

Phelps' CHAPPIE: The Life and Times of Daniel James, Jr.*

Both works paint a picture of James as a man who was driven to succeed. Daniel James was the first Black to be promoted to the rank of four star general. He was also a member of the

22 477th Bomber Group while the bomber group was stationed at

Freeman Field. One of the things that comes out in these biographies is that James was not a man likely to remain quiet, especially when he believed that some wrong had been committed or was about to be committed. This became more of an issue as his career progressed and as the nation became entangled in Vietnam and the civil rights debates of the

1960's.

However, readers could easily assume that Black officers did not exist, if they were not well versed in this rich, though limited, literature. In fact, any mention of the unique experiences of the Black military man most often appears as an afterthought in larger, more general studies.

Partial exceptions to this include Fletcher's The Black

Soldier and Officer In The United States Army, 1891-1917, The

United States Soldier Between Two World Wars, and Blacks and

The Military In American History, both written by Jack Foner.®

Fletcher's piece benefits from focusing on a limited but important period of time in terms of the issue of blacks in the American military. Fletcher points out that there was an on-going contradiction between the reality of the performance of black troops in the field and the belief held by whites that they were cowardly and unreliable in combat. Fletcher

23 makes a serious effort to link the political atmosphere of this period to the conditions of Black servicemen. In his look at the reaction of Black soldiers he finds them to be dissatisfied with the racism they encountered. When backed into a c o m e r Black servicemen sometimes would react to protect themselves and their interests as they did in

Brownsville, Texas. Fletcher outlines the views of Colonel

Charles Young as he spoke in front of students at Stanford

University in 1903, stating that what Blacks needed was

"simply a white man's chance" as opposed to the kind of racial relations that Booker T. Washington outlined.

Of the two books by Foner, The United States Soldier

Between Two Wars is the one most valuable to scholars. It focuses on the period between the Civil War and the Spanish-

American War as a period of reform, and only the last chapter makes mention of Black servicemen. Indeed, what Foner does is indicate how unconcerned the military was with the treatment of Black soldiers as it attempted to deal with expansion, sought to lessen desertion, and the search for acceptance from an American people totally opposed to anything that remotely resembled a standing army. All issues of little importance in the military's relationship with Black Americans. Since the

Civil War Black Americans tended to be more supportive of the

24 army and many of them hoped that military service would expand their opportunities. These hopes manifested themselves in a number of ways, such as the significantly lower desertion rate among Blacks soldiers as compared to white soldiers.

While studies of Black members of the officer corps are seriously limited, the implications of racial issues within the military are not. One of the interesting things about this development is how it is most intense in terms of the period following the Civil War until the First World War.

With the exception of Fletcher's biography of Benjamin 0.

Davis, Sr., a career that extended until after the World War

II, there have been only limited attempts at serious academic studies in this period. For example, there are no good scholarly studies of the careers and experiences of Henry

Flipper nor Charles Young.

Flipper, a West Point graduate of the class of 1879, was the first Black to graduate from the Military Academy.

Assigned to the Tenth Cavalry, an all Black unit. Flipper had demonstrated that he was an able officer. However, his career was suddenly cut short after only five years when he was charged with embezzlement and conduct unbecoming an officer.

Dismissed of the Army, Flipper went on to a career as an engineer for American mining interests in Mexico and

25 apparently did very well for himself after leaving the service. Later investigations determined that Flipper's alleged unbecoming conduct was his dating of a relative of a white officer, and after ninety-five years he was posthumously vindicated and honorably discharged.^"

For part of the time he was at West Point, Flipper's roommate was Johnson Whittaker, the only other Black at the

Academy. Whittaker, unlike Flipper did not graduate. In

1881, he was court-martialled after being found in his room, unconscious, bloodied and bound. Whittaker stated that he had been attacked by three other cadets and saw no reason to call for help. Whittaker felt it was safe to assume that his calls would go unheard or, even worse, they would bring others to the aid not of himself but his attackers. In the investigation that followed it was determined that Whittaker had faked the attack to prevent being dropped for academic deficiencies. Whittaker's experiences are very vividly covered in John Marszalek's Court-martial: A Black Man in

America. Marszalek does not go much beyond providing a very detailed description of Whittaker's stay at West Point. He makes no real attempt to examine the implications of what happened. He offers several incomplete conclusions. How could the argument be made that Whittaker's military life was

26 in no way affected by prejudice? What is the relationship between the claim that Whittaker was able to will himself into unconsciousness because he was Black, the pseudoscience of the period used to justify stereotypes common to the period, and the military's willingness to accept such ideologies from civilian orchestras?" In short, Marszalek missed a perfect opportunity to discuss the failure of military progressives to put in place a true program of reform in relation to race.

The West Point tenure of people like Johnson Whittaker and

Charles Young could be seen as hollow attempts at such reforms.

The life and military career of Colonel Charles Young is more than overdue for a scholarly look. For an extended period of time Young was the only Black graduate to come out of the military academy. He was active both in field units, and education, running the precursor to the Reserve Officer

Training Cores (ROTC) program at Wilberforce and had an intimate working relationship with the Ohio National Guard.

Young graduated from West Point in 1889, and at the time of his forced retirement was the highest ranking Black in the military."

All three of these works present Black military personnel as victims of racism and while to some magnitude that is

27 correct, it is not a complete story. All of these men elected

to pursue a profession that by its very nature is a profession

of decision makers and non-passive actors. Indeed, the

military is a profession that is not kind to the compliant.

That being the case, a question that could stand to be asked

would be one that focuses on the impact that this career

choice had on men such as these and the importance or

influence of success, definable by any number of variables.

Of course, the other side of the issue is what impact these

men had on the profession, if any, and what is to be learned

from their experiences.

The Black military experience is an intimate part of the

American experience and even more so of the Black American

experience. Yet, works in both military and Black history

fail to address the issues of Black participation in the

American armed services in anything more than a perfunctory manner, despite the important influence of this experience on

the political and social history of race relations in America.

Therefore, those works that attempt to deal with these issues

often lack a conceptual focus or a discussion of the

implications of different policy decisions made by political and military leaders.

28 Historians of Black America are most guilty of this perfunctory treatment, usually restricting their studies to topics such as how World War II affected migration patterns.

Is this important? Undoubtedly, for it has been estimated that well over a million African Americans left the South just during the period of the war in search of jobs and better opportunity. But even here the military experience of Black

Americans had an important impact on events. Between 1940 and

1950, more than half of Black male veterans who had been in their twenties during World War II lived in a region different from where they had grown up." But, despite this kind of evidence a look at the historiography of Black America would lead one to believe that Black Americans were passive observers during times of war."

Bibliographies of the civil rights movement seldom include works providing information that would allow for an understanding of the linkage between that movement and Black

American military participation. Civil rights leaders at the local level were often veterans or the children of people with military backgrounds, acting on principles learned from their parents. Omissions are made in the bodies of works as well as in the bibliographies. For instance, Lee Finkle in

"Conservative Aims Of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest During

29 World War II," covers the relationship between the rhetoric of the civil rights movement of the 1960's and that of Blacks during World War II. However, he never mentions how that rhetoric influenced those in the military during World War II nor Vietnam. This is a connection that should be obvious because of the repeated emphasis placed on the differences between the rhetoric and the reality faced by Blacks from the period preceding the Civil War to Vietnam.In addition to that is the key fact that most, if not all, of the Black middle-class read the Black Press. It was the one place the

Black servicemen and women felt they could turn to when conditions were bad and attempts to correct the situation by using the chain of command had failed.

Such omissions are unfortunate as well as unacceptable, if the purpose of Black history, as proposed by Alan Coin, is to : (1) facilitate the correction of distortions with the use of critical historical interpretation; (2) describe the past and provide documentation of the events which mark the lives of Black Americans ; and (3) prescribe concepts, theories, and programs for the resolution of problems which may have some historical antecedents.^® While works on reform within the military are numerous, few address the issue in relationship

30 to Black soldiers, who have been a recognized part of the

American military system since 1 8 6 3 .

The importance of understanding the Black American

experience within the military is vital to comprehending the

Black experience in America; and, further understanding the

Black experience in America is essential to understanding the

entire American experience. While the need for this understanding is in no way new, it is, however, amplified in light of the fact that a Black American veteran of Vietnam was holding the post of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a time when the nation was just bringing to a conclusion the

Persian Gulf War, its first war since Vietnam. The Gulf War was a conflict in which the support of African Americans was questionable, since a vocal minority cried out that it was a white man's war, a cry frequently repeated by those who do not know or who discount history. Such events as these and the fiftieth anniversary of the Second World War have reignited interest in the Black military experience, a development that is true not only for scholars but for the popular media as well.

This recent interest is demonstrated by both the commercial success and critical acclaim of such scholarly books as Forged in Battle, and films like Glory, and the HBO

31 film The Tuskeaee Airmen. This is good. It is good because this rekindled interest illuminates an unclear and almost invisible story, and these works call attention to that fact. Forged in Battle attempts to address the beginning of the story of Black military service during the civil War.

Here the point of study is the relationship between the men of the Black regiments and their white officers. Still the film fails to discuss the relevance of the abolitionists' movement, or more precisely, the abolitionists' movement within the

Black community. Glorv likewise covers the official initiation of the Black man into the American military. It focuses, as pointed out by critics, on Colonel Robert Gould

Shaw, a viewpoint which makes sense if only because the film is based on his papers and letters. The result is mostly, though not exclusively, a white officer's account of Black troops in the Civil War. But the point of the film was to tell a story.

This work is driven by the desire to do the same thing.

That is, to tell a story that will in part address the brashfulness of the nation's historical forgetfulness. How nations develop a collective memory is something that has seized the curiosity of a number of scholars, historians included. Over the past 25 years or so scholars have began

32 redefined that collective memory. Historians, especially have begun to include new voices in their accounts. The result is that the nation's collective memory has started to slowly change. It begin to take on new voices, to gain new outlooks.

Ronald Takaki's A Different Mirror is no doubt the most recognizable of the kind of work reflecting this trend.

America's current obsession with its diverse multicultural make-up has a number of repercussions. One of those repercussions is that racial and ethnic minority groups must be connected to something resembling an all inclusive national narrative. What this has meant for African American history is that sampling editing the story of the master would no longer be satisfactory.

At the close of the Civil War, the Army assigned units the mundane task of guarding posts on the western frontier, where they were out of sight and thus, hopefully out of mind.

Some historians would argue that this especially applied to

Black units. But the army was actively fighting off the

Indians in order to protect the growing number of settlers moving west. Among those army units were the 9th and 10th

Cavalry Regiments and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments.“

As the 19th century drew to a close, the Army encountered a

33 period of relative quiet, with the only exception being the war with Spain, in 1898.

As a result of their performance in the Spanish-American

War, Black units received accolades after the war ended, but such praise was short-lived. The need to garrison the territories gained from Spain resulted in neither an increase in the number of Black units in the Regular Army nor in opportunities for the members of those units. By the middle of 1906, racial tensions within the military had increased.

This tension was illustrated by the events in Brownsville,

Texas, where on August 14, a riot broke out when a number of members of the 1st Battalion, 25th Infantry were mistreated;

President Theodore Roosevelt summarily dismissed every soldier in the 1st Battalion, with only a few exceptions, from the

Army

As the United States moved closer to war in Europe after

1914, the Army maintained four Black regiments on its rolls, the 24th and 25th Infantry and the 9th and 10th Cavalry. When

Woodrow Wilson entered the White House, his foreign policy concerns did not focus solely on Europe, but on Mexico as well. When the recognized government of Venustiano Carranza was challenged by Francisco "Pancho" villa, Wilson acted and sent troops to aid Carranza, using a raid across the United

34 States border by Villa as justification. Included in this punitive expedition force were elements of the 10th Cavalry and 24th Infantry, both of which saw action against Villa.

The end of hostilities with Mexico provided the Army with the opportunity to send both the 10th and 24th regiments as well as the 9th and 25th to Europe. Instead, however, the

Army formed two new divisions, which needed training, from the general Black population. This action was taken rather than bringing up to full strength and sending to Europe the units then stationed in the West which were already trained. And, in the case of the 10th Cavalry and 24th Infantry, combat proven. Rather these four Regular Army regiments were assigned the portentous duty of taking up defensive positions in the United States and its territories when the nation officially entered World War I. The two newly created Black divisions sent to fight in Europe, the 92nd and the 93rd, had vastly different records when the war came to an end. The

92nd served with the American forces and closed out the war with a questionable record, while the 93rd left France with the admiration of the French people and that nation's highest honors.

Most historians agree that the expectations of the commanders, and the influences of those expectations, had more

35 to do with the different quality of the performances of these

two units than any other factors. While American commanders,

on the one hand, possessed little faith in the Black troops

under their command, the French commsuiders on the other hand

recognized the Black troops as well trained infantry units and

demanded that they perform as such while fighting by the side

of French troops. Yet, when the performances of the two

divisions were critiqued and compared to those of white units

at the end of the war, the performance of the 93rd was dismissed. White officers studying at the Army War College

concluded that Blacks were incapable of functioning as

reliable combat troops, and moves were made to exclude them

from any such role in the future. This action, which

frustrated the Black community as a whole, led Carter G.

Woodson to state that his goal as a historian was to prevent

the Black race from becoming a negligible factor in the

thought of the world.

When America went to war in 1917, Blacks were willing, and encouraged by such leaders as William E. B. DuBois, to close ranks with the rest of the nation and fight, based on the assumption that their rights as citizens would be recognized. Given the rhetoric of fighting a war for democracy, it was argued that Blacks would have to receive

36 their proper place as members of American society if they supported that effort. But during the course of the war a sense of disappointment was deepened by such incidents as

Colonel Charles Young's forced retirement. The Army's senior

Black officer, Young left the service because the Army decided that his health was failing. Although Young countered this accusation by riding horseback from Ohio to Washington, D.C., in order to protest his forced retirement, his was a fruitless effort. Most telling, however, was an incident that occurred in Kansas during March 1918, when a Black non-commissioned officer was refused admittance to a theater. His complaint that this action was morally wrong as well as illegal brought an official bulletin stating that he was guilty of a greater wrong: protesting, no matter how legal his stand. The division commander. Major General Charles Ballou, suggested that Black soldiers simply avoid those places where their presence was not w e l c o m e d .

Frustration in the Black community was exacerbated after the war by increasing riots against Blacks and repeated lynchings, to which Blacks in uniform were not immune.

Journalist John E. Bruce evoked Black frustration. He was b o m a slave in 1856 and for most of his adult life worked as a journalist, working for or contributing to an endless list

37 of publications. While always a militant, Bruce supported

American participation in World War I, expecting, like most of the Black population, that by the spilling of blood. Black

Americans could take their rightful place in American society.

By 1919, he had grown increasingly bitter and more militant.

The anger of the Black community was the result of an increase in race riots and lynchings. Many of the victims of the lynchings were World War I veterans who continued to wear their uniforms after returning home.*® In 1922, Bruce delivered a speech to the White Rose Industrial Association in

New York. In it he stated why Blacks felt that they were mistreated relative to their service in the armed forces.

It does not matter that the Negroes fought in the early Indian wars as far back as 1669, or in the Revolutionary War, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, or the Great War. In the earlier wars they fought as slaves ; in all of these they fought for a flag which was only the emblem of their strife. In none of them were they treated as the equal of the white fellows in arms but were segregated, set apart, held aloof from their white comrades in arms and used as cannon fodder.*’

Exclusion from technological fields and combat became the fundamental element of the military's policy for the use of Black citizens. Air power made its debut during World War

I, and the thought of flight permeated the thoughts of many in

38 the interwar period. With the approach of the Second World

War, Black Americans were determined not to suffer the same failings that they suffered after the First World War. Black

Americans were no longer willing to be excluded out of hand.

With the involvement of the United States in World War II simply a matter of time, Blacks demanded once again the opportunity to play a part. They demanded a role in the Array

Air Forces as well.

39 1. John Hope Franklin, Racial Equality in America, (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1976), pp. 3-4.

2. Jack Foner's Blacks and the Military in American History (New York: Praeger, 1974) and A. Russell Buchanan's, Black Americans in World War II (New York: Clio, 1977) serve as examples out of this period.

3. Wallace Terry, Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War (New York: Random House, 1984).

4. See Charles Moskos, John Butler, Alan Sabrosky, and Alvin Schnexnider's, "Symposium: Race and the United States Military," Armed Forces And Society, Vol. 6, No. 4, (Summer 1980): 586-613, Morris Janowitz and Charles C. Moskos, Jr., "Racial Composition in the All-Volunteer Force: Policy Alternatives," Armed Forces and Society, Vol.i No.2 (November 1974) , 109, and Alvin Schnexnider and John Butler, "Race and The All - Volunteer System: A Reply To Janowitz and Moskos" Armed Forces and Society, Vol 2, No. 3 (May 1976) 504-510.

5. Allan R. Millett, "American Military History: Over the Top," In Herbert J. Bass (ed.) The State of American History, (Chicago: 1970). 166.

6. Forrest C. Pogue, Geogre C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope, 1939-1942. (Viking, 1965) and Geogre C. Marshall : Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945. (Viking, 1973). Stephen Ambrose, The Supreme Commander: The Wartime Years of Dwight D. Eisenhower (Doubleday, 1970) . Thomas Coffey, Hap: Military Aviator (Viking, 1982). E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Naval Institute Press, 1976).

7. See for example, Marvin Fletcher's, America's First Black General: Benjamin O. Davis, Sr., 1880-1970 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1989) and J. Alfred Phelps', Chappie: America's First Black Four-Star General (Novato: Presidio, 1991).

8. James R. McGovern. Black Eagle: General Daniel 'Chappie' Dames, Jr. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985. J. Alfred Phelps. CHAPPIE: The Life and Times of Daniel James, Jr. Novato : Presidio Press. 1991.

40 9. Marvin Fletcher, The Black Soldier and Officer In The United States Army, 1891-1917, (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1974). Jack Foner, the United States Soldier Between Two Wars, (New York: Humanities Press, 1970) and Blacks And The Military in American History, (New York: Praeger Publisher, 1974).

10. For information on the career of Henry Flipper see Barry C. Johnson's Flipper's Dismissal: The Ruin of Lt. Henry 0. Flipper, (London: 1980), Bernard Nalty's Strength for the Fight (New York: Free Press, 1986), William Leckie's The Buffalo Soldiers, (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), and Charles Robinson's The Court Martial of Lt. Henry Flipper (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1994) .

11. John Marszalek, Court-Martial : A Black Man in America, (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1972) .

12. The main works on Charles Young include Abraham Chew's A Biography of Colonel Charles Yoxmg, (Washington: R. L. Pendleton, 1923) , a poorly conceived and executed romanticized account of Young's career punctuated with inaccuracies and Robert Greene's Colonel Charles Young: Soldier and Diplomat, (Washington: Robert Greene, 1985),; while not at all sophisticated this is without doubt the superior of the two due to its extensive and accurate research.

13. John Modell, Marc Goulden, and Sigurdur Magnus son. World War II in the Lives of Black Americans : Some Findings and an Interpretation," The Journal of American History, Vol. 76 No.3 (December 1989), 839.

14. One example of this omission in the Historiography can be found in Robert Harris', "The Flowering of Afro-American History, " The American Historical Review 92 (December 1987) , 1150.

15. Lee Finkle, "Conseirvative Aims of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest during World War II," Journal of American History 60 No. 3 (December 1973), 692.

16. Alan Coin, "Critical Issues in Black Studies: A Selective Analysis," The Journal of Negro Education 53 No. 3 (Summer 1984), 269.

17. Both James Abrahamson's America Arms For A New Century, (New York: Free Press, 1981) and Peter Karsten's The Military in America, (New York: Free Press, 1986) serve as examples of works that ignore or provide perfunctory attention to the place of Blacks in the military and the reforms that touched them

41 18. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged In Battle, (New York: The Free Press, 1990) . Glory was an Academy Award winning film in 1989. Produced by Freddie Fields for Tri-Star Pictures, it was directed by Edward Zwick and starred Denzel Washington and Morgan Freemain. The screen play, written by Kevin Jarre was based on Robert Gould Shaw's letters. The Tuskeoee Airmen was produced by Price Entertainment in 1995, for Time Warner Entertainment's Home Box Office (HBO) division. Written by Robert Williams, a graduate of one of the early classes to come out of Tuskegee and member of the 332nd Fighter Group, it was directed by Robert Markowitz and starred Cuba Gooding Jr. and Laurence Fishbume.

19. William H. Leckie, The Buffalo Soldiers (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967).

20. Bernard Nalty, Strength for the Fight (New York: Free Press, 1986), 90-97.

21. Bernard Nalty. Strength for the Fight (New York: Free Press, 1986), 98-100.

22. The 93rd Infantry Division had a strong National Guard base drawing from units in Illinois, New York, and Ohio among others.

23. The 93rd Infantry Division, while it never fought as a division, served as an integrated element of the French Army, seeing action in the Champagne, the Vosges, and the Oise-Aisne offensive. It was for these campaigns that it received the Croix de Guerre.

24. For a concise description of Woodson's views see August Meier and Elliott Rudwick's Black History and the Historical Profession: 1915-1980 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 1986.

25. Bernard Nalty, Strength for the Fight (New York: Free Press, 1986), 113.

26. Many communities, mostly in the south, passed laws that required Black veterans to stop wearing their uniforms within three days of returning from military service or risk prosecution.

27. Peter Gilbert ed.. The Selected Writings of John Edward Bruce: Militant Black Journalist, (New York: A m o Press and The New York Times, 1971). 174.

42 CHAPTER 3

INTO THE FRAY

To understand the significance of the events at Selfridge

and Freeman Fields it is necessary to first understand the

importance given by Black Americans to being members of the

Army Air Forces. With the awakening of an airminded public.

Black Americans looked forwarded to the opportunities that aviation presented. Others looked ahead at the struggle that would come. The struggle simply to get into the cockpit of a military aircraft was a long and at times bitter fight. The general judgment was that Blacks could not and should not take part in this new and wonderful science -- what the reknowned aviator Charles Lindbergh called "scientific art...one of those priceless possessions which permit the White race to live at all in a pressing sea of Yellow, Black, and Brown.

In short many felt as did Kenneth Brown Collings, a well known and influential aviator of the period and a friend of Charles

Lindbergh, who stated that "Negroes cannot fly-even the Bureau of Air Commerce admits that.

July 2 9 , 1997 43 Two Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers. Dale

White and Chauncey Spencer, both Black, initiated the struggle to prove the bureau of Air Commerce wrong in the spring of

1939, with a public relations and goodwill flight. White and

Spencer hoped to increase the awareness of the nation about the relationship between Blacks and aviation. They wanted to enlighten Blacks about the opportunities in the ever, growing field and alert white Americans to the fact that Blacks were not only capable of flying but were indeed flying. As part of that mission they planned to fly to Washington B.C. in an old broken down rented Lincoln-Paige biplane.^ On May 9, 1939, intending to convince Congress to include Blacks in the

Aviation Training Program set up to provide introductory flight training, White and Spencer took off from Harlem

Airport in Auburn, Illinois. Ruptured fuel lines had forced them to land there thirty minutes into their flight. Less than four hours later they made a forced landing in a farmyard in Sherwood, Ohio because of a broken crankshaft. After making repairs they continued on to Washington, B.C., with a number of stops to make additional repairs/* Their flight symbolized a struggle that continued until 1941 when the all-Black 99th Fighter Squadron was activated. At that point a new struggle began.

44 Of course, the reality of the situation is that African

Americans had been flying since the turn of the century, and many said as much. Collings' statement was directly challenged by George S. Schuyler and William J, Powell in the same journal that printed Collings' remarks.® The main reason for the difficultly of making white Americans aware of the exploits of Black flyers rested in the fact that they were rarely mentioned outside of the Black press.

In the years before the First World War, Blacks were active in the field of aviation. Many engaged not only in flying but working to improve on the design of aircraft overall. In 1911, a young Los Angles Black named Walter

Swagerty was able to secure the backing of a local millionaire, and in 1912 three Blacks received patents for aircraft. While it is unlikely that any of these inventions flew, it demonstrates that Blacks were fully engaged in the idea of flight prior to World War I.

During World War I, the Army trained thousands of military pilots, but it refused Black Americans admission to the air arm, as it had refused them admission to most technical fields. This restriction was imposed despite the proof that Black Americans could fly in combat, provided by

45 the Black American Eugene Bullard who flew for the French during World War I with the Lafayette Escadrille.®

In the summer of 1917, shortly after the United States entry into the war, there was some question about qualified

Blacks being trained to be pilots. The Des Moines, Iowa

Bystander printed a story stating that the War Department had sent a telegram to W. S. Scarborough, President of Wilberforce

University. Wilberforce was known to have a relatively well respected military training program, with all of the Army's

Black officers doing tours of duty there teaching. The telegram was in all likelihood sent to Wilberforce in a mass mailing to all schools with senior ROTC programs and by error since there is not additional indication that the military was thinking about training Blacks as pilots.

After the war ended, people became even more enthralled by the concept of flight. Wartime pilots had pushed their aircraft beyond the known limits of what the planes were capable of doing. The interwar period would be one of goal setting and record breaking.

One of the notables among Black flyers was Bessie

Coleman. Coleman was forced to learn French and travel to

France when no flight school in the United States would accept her. As a result she was the first woman pilot to receive an

46 international pilot license from the Federation Aéronautique

Internationale (FAX), the only institution issuing licenses good to fly anywhere in the world, after graduating from Ecole d'Aviation des Freres Caudron at Le Crotoy in the Somme.

Coleman had logged hundreds of hours of air time before

America's better known darling of the air, Amelia Earhart, had even taken her first flying lesson.

With the end of World War I, America immediately acted upon her now old habit of rapid demobilization and developed a peacetime army administered under the National Defense Act of 1920. The act was intended to allow for the rapid expansion of the Army, in the event of another war, around elements of the active Army and National Guard. The eventual result of this legislation, however, was a dangerous reduction in the size of the peacetime Army, requiring regular units to be placed in an inactive status. In the beginning, all of these inactivated units were white, in order to preserve the

Black units thought to be protected by an act of Congress in

1866.7

By 1922, continued cuts in the military had taken their toll on the sensitivities of the Deputy Chief of Staff who was offended by the protection afforded the Black units and so wrote :

47 Is there anything in the National Defense Act, particularly that portion of it which leaves the organization of the Army somewhat to the discretion of the President, which can be construed into a rescindment of the law which requires four regiments of the Regular Army to be composed of colored men?... It seems to me an absurdity that with the reduction of the Army the War Department should be obliged to maintain these four regiments of colored soldiers.®

In addition to expecting further troop reductions which would place more units on the inactive list, the Army found itself forced to make some decisions about what to do with

Black troops returning from the Philippines. On March 4,

1922, Major General James G. Harbord requested a meeting with the Judge Advocate General to discuss the need for the 9th

Cavalry to send 400 men home to the United States and what the

Army was going to do about providing an organization in which to place them. The only unit available was the 10th Cavalry, and the Deputy Chief of Staff viewed the continual transfer of men between the 9th and 10th as ineffective in terms of the cost. Moreover, it resulted in turning the 10th Cavalry into a mere recruiting unit for the 9th. This too was cost ineffective, since both units tended to be close to, if not, fully manned throughout their history. The Deputy Chief was also concerned that further reductions would result in the

48 assigning of both white and Black regiments to the same division.®

By 1931, the four Black regiments were no longer immune to the cuts and faced possible reductions as a direct result of the creation of the Army Air Corps. In 1926, with the passage of the Air Corps Act, Congress had allowed for the expansion of the air forces. The manpower for this expansion was to come from the allotments previously assigned to units in other branches. While increasing the size of the Air Corps, this transferring of personnel would not increase the total size of the service. Over the next four years, as the War Department moved personnel from the various branches of the Army to the air forces, matters ran smoothly. In 1931, however, the remaining allotments were to come from the previously untouched Black regiments. Black leaders were alarmed and launched a letter writing campaign, pointing out what they felt should have been obvious, that an element of discrimination was driving this decision. They pointed out that taking the remaining allotments from the Black regiments would mean an overall reduction of strength in the number of

Blacks in the Army, since no equivalent positions were made available in the air forces. The fact that the Air Corps saw no merit in this argument is clarified by a letter from the

49 Assistant Chief, Personnel Division in which he stated:

"... there are no units in the Air Corps. composed of colored men, no provision has been made for their enlistment or training. . . . "^°

Later in the year, the Acting Chief of Staff, Major

General George Van Horn Moseley, attempted to justify the

Army's position in a letter to Walter White, secretary of the

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People

(NAACP) . A Georgia-born racist of the worst sort, Moseley indicated in his letter that it would require action by

Congress to allow Blacks to enter the Air Corps, a totally false statement. He further stated that even with such an act the Air Corps would have the additional problem of obtaining qualified Blacks since it was true that "As a rule, the colored man has not been attracted to this field. . . to the same extent as the white man." Moseley went on to question the existence of educated and/or technically qualified

Blacks.Walter White immediately fired back a pugnacious response to the insinuation:

It is obvious that colored men cannot be attracted to the field of aviation "in the same way or to the same extent as the white man" when the door to that field is slammed in the colored man's face.... There are thousands of excellent colored mechanics in the country and if the War Department did not prejudice the case by definitely excluding them, we feel sure that there would be no

50 difficulty in finding and developing men with all the qualifications required of pilots, mechanics, and all the other functions included in the air service.

The 193 9 flight of White and Spencer helped to demonstrate the indisputable error of Moseley's statements, and won for Black airmen the support of a number of

Congressmen, including Senator Harry S. Truman (Democrat-

Missouri) . While meeting with White and Spencer and listening to their concerns, Truman expressed surprise when he learned that Blacks had been excluded from the various pieces of legislation concerning the expansion of the military and the

Air Corps being debated in Congress at the time and simply said "if you got guts enough to fly this thing to

Washington. . . I've got guts enough to see you get what you are asking for. Truman went on to encourage both men to apply to the Air Forces despite earlier rejections that their peers had received.

While in the long run neither White nor Spencer became a national celebrity, their flight no doubt weighed heavily on the minds of the Congress as the issue was debated. The number of debates and the resulting legislation concerning the

Air Corps and its capabilities and deficiencies reflected

Congress' desire to make the Air Corps almost as important as the Navy. Supporters of the Air Corps in Congress, such as

51 Representative Jennings Randolph (Democrat-West Virginia) and

Senator Truman pushed for increased funding and manpower as they attempted to read the minds of the American people.^

The minds of Black Americans, however, did not require a great deal of effort in ordered to be read and understood.

Through the Black press and organizations such as the National

Colored Democratic Association, Black Americans were clearly able to get across their message. The Courier became increasingly unrelenting as it pushed for the dismantling of all the obstacles prohibiting Blacks from filling vacancies in the Air forces and other technical branches of the Army.^®

Gaining the attention of New York Representative Hamilton

Fish, Robert Vann, editor of the Black newspaper The

Pittsburgh Courier, indicated that he spoke for others, as well as himself, when he asserted that it was a shame that foreign-born white spies could enter the United States armed services with less trouble than native born Black Americans.

Vann was clearly following the debates in the senate about the place of non-whites in the military.

As the senators attempted to work out the issues facing them, they were undoubtedly aware of the fine line they were threading. When Senator Robert F. Wagner (Democrat-New York) sought to explain why the senate could not overlook the issue

52 of race in the series of new military-related legislation

coming before it, the response he received for his efforts to

enlighten his follow senators was one showing that most

senators were simply not willing to yield if they could at all

avoid it. Senator Connally (Democrat-Texas) led the

opposition against Wagner saying that he felt that the type of

legislative amendments that Wagner was attempting to introduce

were "wholly unnecessary" and did nothing more then

"accentuate [s] the abuse," of a minority of people.^® Some

in Congress were afraid to allow Blacks to participate in the military because they believed such a policy would somehow

allow "disloyal" Japanese Americans the opportunity not only

to enter the service but perhaps serve as spies and saboteurs.

This group felt that the use of color as qualifying element was the only way to limit the threat. This, more than one senator argued, was why Hawaii could not be granted statehood.

Despite the concerns of the senators, neither Japanese spies nor saboteurs ever presented a realistic threat within the

United States. Yet, Blacks continued to lobby despite encountering this type of mistaken logic.

One result of their lobbying efforts was an amendment that Senator Harry H. Schwartz (Democrat-Wyoming) introduced as a method to guarantee that Blacks would have the

S3 opportunity to take a full and active part in the Air

Forces." The year 1939 was a pivotal one. That was the year when many Americans begin to consider the possible meaning of the events in Europe. It was also pivotal for the

Air Corps and Blacks attempting to gain entry to that component of the services.

Because of the situation in Europe, many Americans started to think that expansion of the military might be a good idea, and that it would be an especially good idea to expand the Army aviation assets. Such a belief among military planners and politicians would be confirmed by an early 193 9

Gallup poll which stated that ninety percent of the American people wanted a bigger Air Corps and wanted it immediately.""

Military planners in Washington quickly realized the expansion plan put together by the Baker Board in 1934 and put in place in 193 5 was dangerously inadequate. The increased importance of airpower was underlined when Germany "conquered"

Czechoslovakia without firing a shot, in part a result of the fear that Germany would bomb Prague.

At the time the Air Corps had fewer than 500 frontline combat planes and a manpower roster of 2,337 officers, 29 warrant officers, and 19,301 enlisted men, including flying cadets." When Germany snatched Poland in September 1939,

54 the United States was just beginning to try to deal with the

need to expand its air forces. At the start of the year Major

General Frank M. Andrews had publicly stated that the American

air arm was a "fifth rate air force. By August the

service had 800 frontline combat aircraft with 2,720 officers,

27 warrant officers, and 23,779 enlisted men, including 860

flying cadets. Of the 59 squadrons, 13 were balloon or observation squadrons. On top of these aircraft and personnel shortages rested the fact that the Air Corps had only 15 airfields in operation.

The recommendations of the Baker Board had set policy until 193 9. Included in their recommendations was a goal of

2,33 0 aircraft, but by 193 8 the Air Corps had only 1,250 planes on hand, that may have proved useable in a major conflict, with another 1,000 planes on order. Underlining that problem was the fact that the production rate for aircraft was an inadequate 88 aircraft per month/" This was measured against the 8,000 planes in service and 3,000 in reserve that the Italians and Germans had between them."

Clearly a number of changes needed to be made in order to address this dangerous shortage. Two such changes dealt with leadership. General Henry H. (Hap) Arnold was named head of the Air Corps in 1938 after the death of General Oscar

55 Westover, and General George C. Marshall was named Chief of

Staff in 1939. In addition to that President Roosevelt made it clear that he wanted more planes and that he wanted them immediately.^® He underscored his desires when he requested

$525 million for emergency defense programs, over half which was designated for expanding the Air Corps and a training program to be conducted by the Civil Aeronautics Authority

(CAA). Inside of a ninety day period Congress had approved the appropriation of the necessary funds needed for 3,251 additional airplanes and 3,203 officers and 45,000 enlisted men to fly and maintain them. This commitment represented a growth of 150 percent. It may have also been driven by a

Gallup Poll that clearly showed that the American people were concerned by the situation.

It was this kind of urgency that would drive the legislation concerning the Air Corps. It was a similar urgency that drew the attention of Black leaders, who viewed these moves as a way to get finally their constituents involved in the Air Corps. In a move which showed some political, imagination Black leaders started to question the issue of "taxation without representation," pointing out that while Black citizens were paying to support the expanding military, they were being deliberately prevented from playing

56 a role in it proportional to what they provided in taxes. The argument was simple: if Black Americans made up ten percent of the tax base supporting the military, they should clearly make up ten percent of the military and that should include the Air

Corps.“

Focusing on the training programs being put in place.

Black leaders asked why the Air Corps did not have contracts with any of the Black flight schools in the nation. The Air

Corps justified the lack of contracts on the grounds that no

Black school had been accredited as a military training facility. The first move, then, was clearly to establish an accredited facility. The first choice was the Thomas Coffey school in Chicago. Forming a coalition, the National Airmen's

Association and the Challengers, both predominantly Black flying clubs, and the Black Press moved to improve the school's position. They worked to acquire more aircraft and maintenance equipment, attract instructors and students; and they sought political support. 2?

Going to the mayor of Chicago, they were able to convince him to use his influence to persuade Senate and House members from the state to support the inclusion of Blacks in the Air

Corps and the selection of Coffey's school in Chicago as their training facility.^® The coalition's efforts yielded some

57 fruit when the Senate decided to amend the Air Corps expansion so as to include a recommendation that one of the schools to receive aircraft and equipment should be Black in order to train Black pilots. Despite the seriousness of the projected manpower shortages, the Air Corps and senior War Department officials opposed the use of Black pilots, and a compromise between them and those senators supporting such use was needed.

The first of a series of amendments was offered by Styles

Bridges, the senator from New Hampshire. Bridges suggested that the Air Corps lend the planes and equipment needed to

Black colleges. This would, he argued, allow them to train pilots, mechanics, and the other support personnel who would normally have been trained at Air Corps training facilities.

The opposition to this idea was overwhelming, as southern senators argued that there was no reason that the Air Corps could not enter into contracts with Black colleges as the appropriations bill stood nor that there was anything in the bill that forbid Blacks chances to obtain training. With that as their justification they felt the amendment was unnecessary. Both Bridges and Senator Charles McNary, from

Oregon, who had supported Bridges felt that such reasoning was absurd. Also on the floor for discussion was the Schwartz

58 amendment. Schwartz justified both bills being debated by- saying that he had missed an earlier meeting about the issue/"

When the Bridges' amendment was voted down, Kentucky

Senator Marvel M. Logan pushed forward a weakened version of

Schwartz's amendment, legislation that relieved the Air Corps from both the responsibility and commitment of training and accepting Blacks in the immediate future. One thing that all of the senators seemed to have missed was that the training plans for CAA facilities were intended for a different purpose than training plans using facilities at colleges. In fact, the Air Corps was vehemently against training pilots at college facilities and had no plans to do so -- not even at schools with ROTC affiliations."

The Schwartz amendment, passed as part of the March 193 9 bill, known as Public Law 18 (PL 18) in April 1939, establishing the Civilian Pilot Training Program, which authorized the Secretary of War to lend equipment to civilian flight schools. In presenting his amendment, Schwartz observed:

Somebody may say, "There is no provision in the bill now which would prevent a Negro receiving such training, " but, Mr. President, I can only judge the future by the past. I believe the

59 situation is such that unless we give this specific and affirmative recognition, possibly our qualified Negro citizens will not have an opportunity to become air pilots.^

The final amendment lacked any of the strong points of the Bridges amendment, such as a definitive statement that the training provided at these centers was to prepare students for

Air Corps service and maintained all of its weak points, such as locating the centers on college campuses.The amendment stated that at least one of these schools would provide for the training of Black pilots.

While Congress mandated that the Air Corps would provide for the training of Black pilots, the Air Corps leaders did not believe they were required to accept those pilots for further training. In addition. Air Corps officials viewed the difficulties involved with moving Black pilots across the country in a segregated environment as unmanageable. Once completing his initial training, a Black pilot could expect to be sent to Randolph Field and then to Kelly Field. At this point the pilot would meet qualifications to receive a commission. All additional training would require that the pilot be assigned to white units. This kind of integration was thought by some to be "ruinous to morale."^ Congress responded to the issue during its debates on the Supplemental

Military Appropriation Bill for 1941. Representative Louis

60 Ludlow (Democrat-Indiana) mentioned that it would be "sheer justice" to accept Black pilots and provide them with the necessary training because, in the advent of war, he realized:

Negroes will be conscripted on a widespread scale, and it is just as certain as anything in the future can be that a considerable proportion of Negroes with aviation training will be sent into air combat detachments. It would be positively cruel and inhumane to assign Negroes to the combat air service without giving them the means to protect themselves. The protection to which they are entitled is a thorough course in combat air training, the same course that is given to white air pilots.... Now is the time to begin that training.^

As a result of political pressures, the Congress and the

President announced their demands. Congress wanted the training of Black pilots to start, and President Roosevelt wanted to be re-elected for an unprecedented third t e r m .

Facing strong opposition from Republican candidate Wendell

Willkie, who had a growing amount of Black support, Roosevelt acted. On September 27, 1940, he met with Walter White,

Secretary of the NAACP, T. Arnold Hill of the National Youth

Administration, and A. Philip Randolph, head of the

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and of the March on

Washington Movement, along with Secretary of the Navy Frank

Knox and Assistant Secretary of War Robert Patterson at the

White House. Among the items discussed in that meeting were

61 the increased need for trained Black officers once the draft

went into effect and the possibility of "backing into"

desegregated units in both the Army and the Navy.^®

Yet when the President's secretary, Stephen Early,

released the new policy of the War Department to the

Democratic National Committee, with the intention of getting

the greatest possible coverage in the Black press, it became

clear very quickly that the Black press felt there was nothing

new in the policy at all. The Black press was indeed correct.

The policy which Roosevelt initialed had been in existence

since 1937 and stated that Blacks would serve in numbers equal

to their proportion of the population, in all branches,

combatant and non-combatant, and that Black officers would

serve only in Black units. In addition, the statement that

Early released to the press from the White House implied that

Hill, White, and Randolph had endorsed the policy, but their

denial on this point was both quick and unequivocal.

Demanding that the Administration take the responsibility for

clearing their names within the Black community, they refused

to confer with the President until the matter was settled to

their satisfaction. Roosevelt wrote a letter of apology to

White, Hill, and Randolph and forced Early to clarify the matter with the public. Roosevelt also appointed Judge

62 William Hastie as "Civilian Aide on Negro Affairs" to the

Secretary of War, promoted Colonel Benjamin 0. Davis, Sr. to

General, and forced the Army's announcement that Blacks would be accepted into the Air Corps -- all in the weeks immediately before the election.

Roosevelt won the election, but doubters still persisted.

The Afro-American quipped that Roosevelt, when asked to change the rules, simply handed out new uniforms.^’ No attempt was made to address the concern of segregation, which prohibited full military participation for Blacks.

After the election, the Black leadership maintained the pressure. The NAACP provided legal aid to individuals who had been denied entrance into the service, and intensified the letter-writing campaign for the admittance of Blacks into the

Air Forces. This appeared necessary because despite the declarations that Blacks were to be a part of the Air Forces, the Army continued to drag its feet on the issue of training

Black pilots.

The Selective Service Act of 1940 forced the Air Corps to accept Blacks in numbers which strained the segregation system. In an effort to deal with the problem, the Air Corps assigned Blacks to aviation squadrons attached to different bases, and they were used as the base commander felt best.

63 This policy meant that Black units in the Air Corps spent their time taking care of the maintenance requirements of the bases by doing such tasks as cutting the grass. In an attempt to justify this use of manpower the Air Corps referred to low

Army General Classification Test (AGCT) scores as an indicator that Blacks were not up to the task of providing the needed educational level for maintaining an air combat force.

Such an argument was weak, however, since the AGCT only served to measure the formal educational levels and not the learning abilities of the individuals taking it. In addition, the system of segregation forced a high concentration of

Blacks with poor scores on the AGCT into a limited number of units. This was not the case for white units where marginal performers could be spread out and surrounded by average or above-average performers and given the opportunity to learn from those individuals. However, the Air Corps built on this illusion, stating that once training began for a pursuit squadron, as was planned, "a much longer period of time will be required [by Blacks]... to absorb the requisite technical skill. "3* This statement ignored the fact that the pilot candidates were required to complete two years of college or receive test scores on the AGCT showing that they had an

64 equivalent foundation of knowledge, which could come from an

informal education.

The Air Corps argued that there were only a limited

number of positions for Black pilots, fewer than the number of

men that had qualified for training, yet it continued to

actively recruit whites to train as pilots. The policy of

accepting Blacks for training only as fighter pilots merely

increased the problem of placing these men in segregated

squadrons. All applicants in excess of the required number were placed on a waiting list. Some eventually became too old, and many others found themselves filling other duties in the military or civilian sectors.

Despite the continual training of pilots, when Air Forces officials decided to organize a Black bomber unit, the 477th

Bomber Group, in 1943, the Air Forces found that it had a shortage not only of pilots but of support personnel as well.

Tuskegee Airfield was already overburdened to the extent that it would be impossible to utilize properly those facilities to train any additional men. Rather than send Blacks to white schools, the Air Forces elected to postpone training the needed crews for the 477th until Tuskegee could provide the bulk of the necessary facilities. Despite the fact that the

65 477th Bomber Group never made it to Europe nor the Pacific, it

fought a number battles just the same.

66 1. Charles A. Lindbergh, "Aviation, Geography, and Race," Reader's Digest 35 (November 1939)

2. Kenneth Brown Collings, "America Will Never Fly," American Mercury 38 (July 1936).

3. Lee Nichols, Breakthrough on the Color Front, (New York: Random House, 1954), 82.

4. The trials and tribulations of the Spencer and White flight were followed closely by the Black press. See for example "Goodwill Aviators Delayed," in the 13 May 1939 edition of the Pittsburgh Courier. Also chronicling the flight is Chauncey Spencer's Who is Chauncey Spencer? Detroit: Broadside Press, 1975.

5. George S. Schuyler, "Negroes in the Air," American Mercury, 3 9 (December 1936) and William J. Powell, "Negroes in the Air," American Mercury, 41 (May 1937) .

6 . The United States Air Force Museum Dayton, Ohio has a display memorializing the Lafayette Escadrille and Bullard. See also P. J. Carisella and James Ryan, The Black Swallow of Death, (Boston: Marlborugh House, 1972).

7. There is legitimate reason to doubt this interpretation in spite of strong support for Black units in the Army within Congress. The act itself can be found in The Congressional Globe. 3 9th Congress, 1st Session. 265.

8 . Memo from the Deputy Chief of Staff to the Judge Advocate General, March 1, 1922. Adjutant General Reports 322.97. Record Group 18. Washington National Records Center (WNRC), Suitland, Maryland.

9. Memo from Deputy Chief of Staff to Judge Advocate General, 4 March, 1922. Adjutant General Reports 329.97 Record Group 18. WNRC, Suitland. There was concern that the 2nd Division would have to absorb the 24th and 25th Infantry and inactivate two of the oldest regiments in the Army. This absorption would have made the 2nd Division an integrated unit and this deeply concerned Army planners.

10. Letter from Office of the Chief of the Air Corps to Albert Roberts, March 4, 1931. Chief of Staff Reports. Record Group 165. WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

67 11. Letter from Acting Chief of Staff to Walter White, September 21, 1931, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers. Container 376. Library of Congress. Washington, B.C.

12. Letter from Walter White, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers. Container 376. Library of Congress. Washington, B.C. and Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops, (Washington, B.C. : Office of Military History, 1966).

13. Truman is quoted in Spencer's Who is Chauncey Spencer? 34.

14. Jennings Randolph, Representative of West Virginia. 76th Congress 3rd Session. Appendix Page 3648. Harry Truman Senator from Missouri, 76th Congress 1st Session. Page 1687.

15. Nalty, Strength For the Fight. 132.

16. Congressional Record . 76th Congress, 3rd Session, vol 86, pg 10888.

17. Congressional Record . 76th Congress, 3rd Session, vol 86, pg 10890.

18. The Schwartz amendment was issued after Wagner failed to advance his.

19. Wesley Craven, The Army Air Forces In World War II, Washington: Office of Air Force History. 1983. pg. 10.

20. Wesley Craven, The Army Air Forces In World War II, Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1983. pg. 173.

21. New York Times, 17 January 1939, p 6.

22. Wesley Craven, The Army Air Forces In World War II, Washington: Office of Air Force History. 1983. pg. 173.

23. Wesley Craven, The Army Air Forces In World War II, Washington: Office of Air Force History. 1983. pg. 7.

24. Thomas Coffey, HAP Miliary Aviator, New York: Viking Press, pp.184.

25. Wesley Craven, The Army Air Forces In World War II, Washington: Office of Air Force History. 1983. pg. 10.

26. "20,000 Negro Jobs," Pittsburgh Courier, 9 April 1938.

68 27. Earl Renfroe, "Suggests Way to Open 'Close Door' of Army," Pittsburgh Courier, 25 February 1939.

28. "City Fliers Make Appeal to Mayor Kelly," Chicago Defender, 2 April 1939.

29. Congressional Record, 76th Congress, 1st Session, 7 March 1939. pp 2368-69. U.S. Congress, Senate, Military Establishment Appropriation Bill for 1941: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate on H.R. 9209, 76th Congress, 3rd Session, 30 April-17 May 1940, pp 368.

30. U.S. Congress, Senate, Hearings before the Committee on Military Affairs, United States Senate on H.R 3791, pp. 39-40, 54-58, 150-56, 159-60.

31. Congressional Record. 76th Congress, 1st Session, vol 84, pg 2367-2370.

32. Robert Jakeman, The Divided Skies, (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1992), 101.

33. Lee, Employment of Negro Troops, 58.

34. Lee, Employment of Negro Troops, 60-61. Congressional Record, 76th Congress, 1st Session vol 84, Page 7666. Also 3rd Session vol 86. 549, 4017-4018, and 12487.

35. Jack Foner, Blacks and the Military in American History, (New York: Praeger, 1974). 133-135.

36. National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers. Container 376. Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.

37. Jack Foner. Blacks and the Military in American History, (New York : Praeger Press, 1974). 140.

38. Memo to Adjutant General From Office of the Chief of Air Corps. December 18, 1940, Record Group 18, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

39. Richard Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939 -1953, (Columbia:University of Missouri Press, 1969). 28-31.

69 CHAPTER 4

SELFRIDGE FIELD

The 477th Bomber Group was a bastard child from its

conception. In fact, General Henry "Hap" A. Arnold gave

significant thought to, if he did not actually attempt to have

it aborted.1 Many within the War Department staff of the Army

Air Forces viewed the 477th Bomber Group at best as a political entity, understanding that its existence was

fundamentally the result of political pressure. General

Barney Giles, who in June of 1943 was the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff in charge of Operations, Commitments, and

Requirements, referred to the issue of using Blacks as

"political dynamite." Giles as early as 1943 pointed out that the War Department was simply going to "be forced by public opinion into the decision which thus far they have been unwilling to make," clearly illustrating that the development of a Black bomber group had been an issue on peoples minds for sometime.* While Giles believed that the formation of a Black bomber unit was inevitable, there is no evidence that he made any effort to bring such an unit into being, possibly wishing

70 to avoid such a potentially dangerous issue. Enough of an issue that some officers had come to the conclusion that there was no way to justify such a move as organizing a bomber unit manned by Black Americans. The loss in combat efficiency through the use of Blacks to form a bomber group would be out of proportion to the productive effort at home was the root of their arguments against the formation of the 477th Bomber

Group.^

Its organization in January of 1944 went against the established policy of using Black personnel only in fighter units. This policy was a result of the belief that it would be impossible to locate and train the necessary number of qualified pilots and technicians to serve as bomber crews and maintain the aircraft within a bomber command, as each bomber required 85 men to fly and support it. Arnold's beliefs and desires fell right in line with those of most of the military establishment. It was these beliefs that in turn caused a vicious cycle resulting in repeated postponements of the day when the 477th Bomber Group would become operational. They also provided justification for those holding the view that the 477th was nothing more than a drain on the service's already extremely limited resources.

71 The problems encountered by the commanders who took on

the responsibility of fielding and staffing the military in

general, and the Army Air Forces in particular, were largely

of their own making. At the start of the war the Air Forces

had no experience in organized training of skills required in

bomber units, specifically bombardiers and navigators. It had

been depended on the use of informal, on the job training of

individuals who desired to receive it. Not until late in the

year 1941 did the service put in place a program utilizing two

separate schools for each skill and establish a set program of

instruction for the students enrolled.

Wanting to expand the number of bombardiers Air Forces officials made plans to train the additional men at Barksdale

Field in Shreveport, Louisiana, as early as 15 February 1941, but a shortage of planes and equipment made this impossible until May." During the early phases of the program most of the trainees were enlisted men but a large number of them came straight from civilian life. In less than a month the commanders at training bases were finding that their students lacked "training in discipline and military training" and were

"not properly fitted to be released to tactical units." By the end of June, the training commands were requesting that:

72 all future students from civil life for specialized bombardier and navigation schools be ordered to Maxwell Field for preliminary training five weeks prior to beginning of their course of instruction at specialized schools.®

This later ceased to be such a significant difficulty

since by autumn the majority of students in both the

bombardier and navigator schools were selected from

individuals eliminated from pilot training.

Bombardier schools were set up at Albuquerque, New Mexico,

Midland, Texas, and Victorville, California with additional

schools to be established later. Trainees reported to these

schools after they had completed training at one of the

preflight schools at Ellington Field, near Houston, Texas or

Santa Ana Army Air Base in Santa Ana, California. After a

period of time the initial twelve week bombardier training

program was extended to eighteen weeks and again later to

twenty-four weeks. The educational requirements for the

schools were theoretically fixed but flexibility was allowed where it met the needs of the service. Potential bombardiers

customary fell into one of five priorities for selection.

Graduates from recognized four institutions holding degrees in engineering ranked as the most desirable type of student,

followed by college graduates with degrees in mathematics, and those with two years of college and a strong mathematics

73 background. The fourth in ranking were those who had two

years in college and they were followed by former flying

cadets who did not fit any of the first four sets of criteria.

Initially education requirements for navigators were less

flexible in the sense that they were required to have a

college degree with at least two years of college mathematics.

Navigation instruction was originally provided through a

contract school administered by Pan American Airlines located

in Coral Gables, Florida and eventually was expanded to

include four Army Air Forces schools. It became clear that

the additional schools were needed after commanders realized

that the Pan American facilities would not be able to produce

the necessary numbers of navigators in a timely fashion. The

instructors at the Army Air Forces original school at

Barksdale Field, in Shreveport, Louisiana were then divided up

and sent to the new schools at Turner Field in Albany,

Georgia, Mather Field in California, and Kelly Field in Texas

to act as the training cadre at each school. ® While the classes at the Air Forces schools were smaller at first, usually twenty students, new students arrived every three weeks. After Pearl Harbor class sizes were enlarged to sixty students. Initially designed to last fifteen weeks the instructional program was stretched out to cover twenty weeks.

74 This became more of a problem when new students started to

arrive every three weeks or seven to eight weeks at the Pan

American facilities and began to cause severe overcrowding.

Surprisingly, even the training of gunners presented a

fundamental difficulty. While the gunnery school was only six

weeks in length, it was required for the entire crew, not just

the "career gunners". With only seven schools, training this

number of men to operate the guns on a bomber became in and of

itself a mountainous task. Exacerbating this problem was the

late starting date of the training program, which did not get

under way until after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and for bombardiers and navigators not until November 1942.

Morale was also an issue. Most of the non-flying aircrew members were not training in the area they desired. Often men were talked into attending the first available class without any concern for their wishes. If a place in the navigation class opened up men waiting to go to bombardier school were talked into filling the slot. Not surprisingly most of the men seeking assignments wanted to be pilots, because of all the attention they received, since flying was the "glamorized" position. Since a large number of the individuals attending bombardier and navigation schools had already been eliminated from flight training they were already dishearten. To combat

75 this melancholy state among their non-flyers Army Air Forces

planners put together a massive campaign to bolster the

position of the rest of the aircrew on a bomber. Calling on

the skills of Milton Caniff and Zack Moseley, the program

proved to be so successful that men coming in hoping to be

bombardiers and navigators had to be talked into training as pilots

In its search for the requisite personnel to field a bomber group the Army Air Forces intensified the competition

for qualified Blacks. Seeking aid from the Ground and Service

Forces, the Army Air Forces requested that they look through their rolls for people suited for duty in a bomber command.

When these commands completed their investigations they were only able to provide about one-sixth of the needed manpower.

Still in need of men, the Air Forces suggested a lowering of the required score on the Army General Classification Test from 110 to 100. The Service Forces and Ground Forces strongly opposed this idea for fear that it would result in a mass transfer of Blacks out of these arms into the Air Forces, leaving them short of their share of Black manpower.® The concerns of the Service and Ground Forces were no doubt well founded. Because the quotas for Black slots in pilot training were substantially limited, many of the men who were eligible

76 for the training went to these two commands, which welcomed them.® Despite that fact, given the opportunity, many of the enlisted men in these units could reasonably be expected to seek training in skilled areas that they could make use of once they returned to civilian live. In addition, acceptance into, followed by the successful completion of flight training also meant receiving a commission as an officer. This was also true of those men becoming bombardiers and navigators.

What makes the analysis of AGCT scores confusing is the idea that the AGCT could be viewed as an intelligence or IQ test. This was not the case. The AGCT did nothing more than test the educational obtainment level of the individual taking the test. The concept that a intelligence test not based on some level of education has been repeatedly rebuked, as has racial determinations based on such tests. A look at the intelligence median scores of World War I American

Expeditionary Forces veterans shows that education is the key factor for doing well. Blacks out of northern states, where the educational opportunities were better, had median scores that averaged six points above those of their southern reared white counterparts. Even when taking in account the inferior quality of education generally received by blacks, more than 65 percent of the enlisted members of the 477th

77 tested in 1944 had scores on the AGCT that fell into the three

highest categories. While educational requirements for

bomber crew positions differed from one position to other they

generally included at least two years of college and preferential treatment was given to those with strong mathematic backgrounds.

The delay in readying the 477th Bomber Group for combat was the result of a combination of factors including the testing and classification of personnel and the lack of training facilities, which was exacerbated by the requirement that its bombardiers, navigators, and pilots, like those in the fighter units, receive their training at the Tuskegee Army

Airfield. The product of such a policy was an overcrowded base simply unable to fulfill the mission assigned to it of providing satisfactory training facilities, as one-third of the Black officers of the Air Force were stationed at

Tuskegee." Because Tuskegee fell in its area, the Army Air

Forces Eastern Flying Training Command was to provide for the equipping and training of the men of the bomber unit as well as replacements for the already forwarded deployed fighter units.

This misuse or lack of use of the potential leadership among Blacks officers led to a decline in the morale not only

78 among the officers, but also among the enlisted men. That this kind of frustration existed was demonstrated in a letter from an Air Forces officer, dated as early as June 26, 1943, to Carl Murphy, the President of Afro-American Newspapers.

After disclosing the conditions he faced, including exclusion from the Officers' Club, this officer went on to explain that such a situation "...seriously injure[s] the morale of the

Negro soldier." Understanding and wanting to fulfill his responsibilities as a commissioned officer, he asked the not- so-simple question: "What would you do?"

In early 1944, Black officers decided to do something, albeit without much previous deliberation. The confrontation that resulted would intensify already existing resentment and harden resolve among Black pilots. Elements of the fledgling

332nd Fighter Group started moving from Tuskegee to Selfridge

Field as early as March 1943, the first all Black fighter group organized in an attempt to increase the use of Blacks in combat aviation and maintain a segregated force. They were followed shortly by members of the 477th Bomber Group.

Michigan was covered by an extremely tense atmosphere in early 1944 and the situation was even worst at air bases with

Black personnel. On May 5, 1943, Colonel William Colman, the base commander, shot and seriously wounded his Black enlisted

79 driver, Willie McCrae. An intoxicated Colman was arrested and placed under psychiatric care. The McCrae shooting received prompt attention due to the interest of Michigan Congressman

Paul Shafer, a member of the House Military Affairs Committee.

Shafer's interest was the result of Colman being one of a number of people at Selfridge under investigation for essentially selling duty assignments at the base. Shafer believed that the shooting was part of an elaborate attempt at

"whitewashing an unsavory mess."^

The night immediately after the McCrae shooting, a Black guard shot a white civilian who was attempting to sneak on to the base. This raised tensions even more as the War

Department prepared to dispatched a team of investigators, including Julius Amberg, legal aide to Robert Patterson,

Undersecretary of War, to the base. During the investigation additional assertions were made that revolved around Colman's wife and her adulterous affairs and Colman's stating that he had given repeated instructions that he did not want a Black chauffeur. Colman was later court martialed and removed from the service.“

In the middle of all this intrigue investigators also arrived at to Selfridge to examine a number of training accidents that occurred. Between May and June four pilots

80 were killed flying training missions. While pilot error was

determined to be the reason for these accidents, there were

some concerns about the aircraft. The pilots were flying

P-40S, and accusations were made that the planes were being

recycled out of service with the American "Flying Tigers" volunteers in China. They were known to overheat and stall and were exhibiting signs of fatigue. Lieutenant Colonel

Westbrook, the acting commanding officer, stated during the

investigation that the pilots had complained to him about the aircraft and his repeated request for replacements had not been acted on by the chain of command. Westbrook had been relieved of duty shortly after one of the accidents.

Things were not any better once one stepped off of the base. On Sunday, June 20, 1943 the worse race riot of the year, if not the war, exploded. A Life magazine article appearing on August 7, 1942, had clearly described the foundation for the riots that would take place almost a year later. As the war was progressing Black Americans were unhappy with their situation in Detroit, as they were in other parts of the country. Detroit, however, was different.

Both Blacks and white were migrating in large numbers to

Detroit in search of wartime employment. In the three years before 1943, an estimated 50,000 Black Americans had moved to

81 the city, along with 450,000 other people. Despite the growing wartime economy, competition for jobs was furious.

Blacks were often forced to accept those jobs that whites refused as to dirty and undesirable. When Blacks did succeed in getting better jobs the opposition was intense. In June three blacks were promoted at the Packard plant which manufactured engines for bombers and FT boats. In response some twenty-five thousand employees went on a wildcat strike.

Walter White heard one Southerner tell a crowd he would rather, "see Hitler and Hirohito win the war than work beside a nigger on the assembly line."^’ With most of these new arrivals to Detroit being from the South, it was not long before signs begin to appear in restaurant windows barring

Blacks and seating for Blacks on public transportation was limited. Housing in the city was not only segregated but for

Blacks housing was overpriced, crowded, and centralized in the worse parts of Detroit. The building of the Sojourner Truth

Housing Project failed to provide any leeway, as violence broke out there earlier in the year.

That Sunday was a squelching ninety-degree day and massive numbers of Detroit's population sought relief on Belle

Isle, a recreational park on Detroit's east side. A number of fights broke out between Blacks and white throughout the day.

82 By 11:00 P.M. the situation was ripe for trouble. As people

started crossing the Belle Isle bridge going back to the city,

the riot seems to have been the result of spontaneous combustion. It is unclear what actually started the riot, everything from a fist fight to a Black woman and her child being thrown off the bridge have been listed as the possible cause. On thing that is clear is that within hours Blacks and whites were fighting throughout the city but most of the violence focused on the Black communities, as was the case when white crowds concentrated on Black Bottom. In the Black community of Paradise Valley, Blacks attacked stores owned by whites and left those owned by Blacks or whites known to be sympathetic untouched.

Much of the violence was random as whites stopped buses and pulled people off and beat them in the street. Leontine

Cole Smith remembers the story of how her stepfather was hidden under a white woman's seat on a streetcar until he had reached safety." The Detroit Police Department failed to handle the situation appropriately at all. They did little to admonishment whites caught in acts of violence, though they were quick to arrest Blacks. Of the eighteen hundred arrests made during the riot 82 percent were Black citizens."

Police were also accused of firing endlessly into a building

83 after someone in the building fired a single shoot at whites who were attacking it. Once tear gas forced the residents to come out of the building they were beaten and arrested.

Detroit's mayor, Edward J. Jeffries recalled Michigan

Governor Harry F. Kelly from a conference in Ohio. Jeffries wanted to call in federal troops and needed the governor to actually make the request. Kelly forwarded the request for troops to the Sixth Service Command Headquarters in Chicago.

Elements of the 701st Military Police Battalion and 728th

Military Police Battalion were already on alert at River Rouge

Park. Kelly then flew back to Michigan to find things were worse than he had feared. While federal troops were on alert they were powerless to do anything until Kelly formally requested President Roosevelt to place Michigan under federal martial law. Kelly seeing the political dangers of such a move first declared a state of emergency deploying Michigan

State Troops, banned liquor sales, the formation of crowds, the carrying of weapons, and imposed a curfew. By 9:24 on the night of June 21, 1943 the riot was out of control and Kelly's efforts had proved fruitless. Kelly called the commander of the Sixth Service Command again and was reminded that he had to made his request to the president. At 11:00 he made the call and by 11:55 when the president formally approved the use

84 of troops, federal troops had already brought the situation under control.

It had been a costly event. Thirty-four Americans were dead; twenty-five of them Black, seventeen of them killed by police, none of the nine whites that were killed were killed by police. In excess of $2 million in property had been damaged and war production had dropped by 40 percent during the mayhem.

At Selfridge and its auxiliary field at Oscoda, Colonel

William L. Boyd, the new base commander, and Colonel Robert R.

Selway, Jr., the new commander of the 332nd, ordered the Black airmen confined to their respective bases. Concerned that the pilots would buzz downtown Detroit or worse white units were brought in from Fort Custer to guard the 332nd and the service units that supported it. The commanders were also worried that the riot may have been the work of enemy agents playing on the nation's racial tensions. It was such illogical thinking that would undo both commanders.

On January 1, 1944, three Black second lieutenants, then stationed at Selfridge Field, Michigan, entered the Selfridge

Officers' Club with the intention of having a few beers, talking, and joining the club. They were eventually approached by a Major William Feallock, who asked if they were

85 members of the club and what they were doing there. After their conversion. Major Feallock telephoned Lieutenant Colonel

William L. Boyd, the commanding officer at Self ridge Field.

Boyd arrived at the club shortly thereafter and suggested that, in order to prevent trouble, the Black officers leave.

This incident and its immediate aftermath were the subject of an investigation initiated on March 1, as the result of a letter detailing the event to Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt. The largest portion of what is known about the events at Selfridge comes out of the testimony at the Inspector General's investigation, conducted by General Benjamin O.Davis, Sr. and

Lieutenant Colonel Harvey Shoemaker.

The letter to Mrs. Roosevelt was just one of many links in the chain of events bringing the situation at Selfridge to light.The letter itself was written by Mrs. Florence

Kibble and Mrs. Esther Burns, officers in the E. J. Andrews

Civic and Charity Club, in response to an article that appeared in the January 15, 1944, issue of The Michigan

Chronicle, a Black newspaper published in Detroit, which received word of the incident in an unsigned letter, no doubt from someone at Selfridge Field.

It was common for such complaints to be voiced through

Black newspapers as a way to solicit support. As Louis

86 Martin, editor of The Michigan Chronicle. testified, the papers were interested in what served as the foundation for policies directing the treatment of Blacks. In this specific case the paper wanted to know if it was policy to bar

Blacks from the Officers' Club. It was for that reason alone that Martin, faced with "perennial gripes" from the airfield, expressed an interest in the Selfridge Field episode. Martin was pressed by John Wood, one of the reporters at the

Chronicle as well as assistant editor, for approval to investigate the initial story. Wood later admitted confidentially that he was attempting to build a strong enough case to justify a Congressional investigation of Selfridge

Field.

Wood wrote to Major Walter Master, the public relations officer at Selfridge, on January 10, 1944, stating that he had received a letter outlining the confrontation at the Officers'

Club. He also pointed out that rumors about what had happened were circulating in Detroit. He explained that he wanted to know the facts and requested a statement from the base. Major

Masters received Wood's note the next day and called the reporter an hour later after discussing the matter with the commanding officer, telling Wood that the commanding officer had no comment about what had happened at the Officers' Club.

87 What is interesting, given Masters' contention that the article was based on "information that was unfounded and not a fact, " was that Masters did not encourage Colonel Boyd to issue a statement. In fact, despite Martin's contention that

The Chronicle and the public relations staff at the base possessed a good working relationship. Masters wholeheartedly supported the decision to stonewall the paper's investigation of the tensions that were brewing and openly displayed an antagonistic attitude towards the paper. Issuing a statement would have defused the impact of the rumors and may have even given strength to Masters' stance that since none of the white newspapers in the area produced any similar articles the entire occurrence was itself questionable and that The

Chronicle was repeatedly guilty of producing articles and editorials which he described as scurrilous.^

Masters was additionally infuriated because his attempts to circumvent supplementary articles and editorials failed.

He had invited Wood to visit the base at Wood's convenience.

When an editorial, critical of conditions at Self ridge, appeared without the reporter first visiting the base. Masters felt tricked. Wood explained that he did not visit the base because the newspaper was understaffed and he was forced to spend a large amount of time out of town gathering and writing

88 stories. Wood felt that anyone from the paper could visit

Selfridge since he had informed Martin that the invitation was

a standing one, yet no one from the paper appears to have made

that effort.

If The Chronicle had made the effort to send someone out

to Self ridge, it is doubtful they would have received the

total freedom to go where they pleased. But it is equally

doubtful that such an effort would not have discovered someone

willing to fill in the blanks that existed in the story as the paper had printed it. It is safe to speculate that the majority of whites saw no problems at the base and Blacks would not wish to risk being singled out as troublemakers without someone present to support their claims.

The three Black lieutenants to enter the club were Milton

Henry, Lloyd Hathcock, and Earl Sharod.^® Both Hathcock and

Sharod, who had been classmates at Tuskegee, were sitting in the lounge of the bachelor officers' quarters (BOQ) when Henry came back from watching a movie at the theater. Hathcock, new

to Selfridge and bored, asked if Henry would like to go to the

Officers' Club. Sharod, in fact, insisted that they go, apparently without any comment about challenging possible segregation regulations.

89 They arrived at the Officers' Club sometime between 7:00

p.m. and 8:00 p.m., finding it quiet with only 20 to 25 people

there. They took off their hats, hung up their coats, and

ordered three beers. The bartender served them as he informed

them that they were not in the Black Officers' Club, a remark

that surprisingly drew little reaction since none of the three

officers knew about a Black club. Such a club could not exist

within the framework of Army Regulation 210-10. As they

drank their beer and talked, Lieutenant Hathcock asked the

bartender about getting a membership to the Officers' Club.

Based on the testimony neither the bartender, Hathcock, nor

any of the others made any additional mention about the

existence of a Black Officers' Club. They stood undisturbed

talking and drinking for 10 to 15 minutes when they were

suddenly approached by a Major William Feallock.

Feallock claimed that he was made aware of their presence

by another officer, who seemed to be aggravated by the three

lieutenants' presence in the club, and came over to ask if

they were members. Lieutenant Henry replied that they were

not members of the club but were in fact interested in

joining. Feallock quickly explained the process of getting a membership. During the investigation the investigating

officers were principally concerned with exactly what Feallock

90 said. The most important part of his response is whether or

not he indicated that the requested membership in the

Officers' Club required approval through the chain of command.

Feallock maintained that he told the Black officers that

such a request simply passed through the organizational

commander's hands (possibly to be commented on in terms of the

officer's ability to act responsibly, which was to make sure

that the candidate for membership had a record for keeping

credit accounts paid up to date and for not writing bad checks), and was actually decided by a board of governors.

Major Feallock admitted to attempting to "evade the issue," and not making a clear statement on the base policy of Black officers and membership in the Officers' Club, despite being pressed by the lieutenant.^'

Both Henry and Hathcock stated that Feallock said that membership to the club was restricted and the club in fact

"had a special means of getting its members," which in part required an invitation to join, something that Lieutenant

Henry felt was clearly against Army Regulation 210-10.

Lieutenant Henry was, in fact, right if "special means" and invitations resulted in the expressed and intentional exclusion of Black officers.

91 Following their discussion of how to join the Officers'

Club and whether or not they were eligible, Major Feallock

strongly suggested that the three lieutenants leave the club.

They refused to do so, believing that it would be best if they

were ordered to leave. Although other no reason was ever

given for their refusal to leave, this was the action that the

three agreed on as the most appropriate. During their

conversation Major Feallock stated that he did not understand why the three men did not drink beer at their own Officers'

Club. Lieutenant Hathcock immediately argued that he was not aware that the lobby of the officers' quarters constituted an

Officers' Club.

Major Feallock must have begun to feel at a loss to deal with the officers' growing impatience with him because it was at this point that he excused himself and telephoned the post commander. Colonel Boyd. Feallock explained to the investigating officers that he felt compelled to take this action because he thought it was something that the commander should know about before anything happened. He defined it as purely a decision of personal judgement. Colonel Boyd no doubt thought that Major Feallock was making the right decision, as Feallock quoted Boyd as saying, "I will be right over there.

92 Boyd arrived shortly after receiving the call and was immediately belligerent toward the young officers. Boyd walked directly up to the three Black lieutenants and immediately began to interrogate them. The colonel first asked them why they were in the club. Henry replied that they had simply come over to get a beer and talk. Boyd dwelled on the question of who had sent them to the club. By this point patience was beginning to wear thin, with Lieutenant Hathcock snapping back at the colonel, asking who had sent him. Boyd was convinced that the officers were not acting on their own; but rather instigating Black citizens of Detroit and the Black newspapers had aroused them to act. The colonel believed the

Black Detroit community was more interested in making an issue out of the use of the club than the officers were in actually using the club. The lieutenants' insistence on staying only drove this point home in Boyd's mind. When he failed to intimidate the officers, Boyd questioned their patriotism and their understanding of what it meant to be an officer and a gentleman. It was at this point in the conversation where

Boyd stated to the officers that if they intended to aid the war effort, they could not do it in that Officers' Club. In addition he reminded them that they had their own club at their quarters. After this Boyd left the room.

93 After briefly resuming their conversation. Lieutenant

Sharod excused himself and headed into the latrine. While inside the latrine, he was accosted by five white officers.

Sharod said that these five officers were accompanied and supported in their actions by Major Feallock. Feallock later denied this charge. Sharod asserted that these officers physically blocked his way, and preventing him from leaving the latrine, and that Major Feallock attempted to frighten him. According to Hathcock, Sharod appeared to have held his temper until Major Feallock told him: "You go and get your friends and get the hell on out of here." After this confrontation Sharod came out of the latrine, obviously shaken, and told the others that they should leave and that

Major Feallock had, in fact, ordered them to do so. As they walked back to their barracks, they realized that they were being followed.

Feallock claimed that he entered the latrine and was followed by one of the Black officers, whom he did not name, who started to badger him on why they could not be members of the club. Feallock maintained that despite being perturbed, he explained that he was not in a position to answer the question and exited the room. After being pressed on this point during the investigation Feallock changed his story

94 saying that the Black officer was in the latrine before he entered. Feallock stated that other white officers were in the latrine at the time and that he attempted to prevent a fight as these officers approached Lieutenant Sharod.

Feallock claimed that he was referring to the white officers when he said, "Let's go," or "Let's leave." He said that he was unable to remember the details of that particular part of the evening.

Despite Feallock's protestations, it was clear that senior white officers at Selfridge would not tolerate integration and that their actions were supported by some portion of the white officer population at large. The freedom with which junior officers expressed displeasure to senior officers at the presence of Blacks in the Officers' Club was telling; not only did they assume that they would find support but also that the Black officers would be removed.

The next evening a committee of three Black officers returned to the club in an effort to see Colonel Boyd. It was their hope to be able to talk to Colonel Boyd in an informal atmosphere about the previous night. Lieutenant Charles

Dryden acted as the spokesman for that committee, and he was accompanied by Lieutenants Wilburt Johnson and Henry Scott.

These three men were the senior Black officers at Selfridge

95 and took the responsibility to try to bring the matter to a close. When they arrived at the club, they found that it was closed to general use because of a private party. Colonel

Boyd was not at the club when they arrived, but they waited a short period of time and were eventually approached by

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Gayle, their squadron commander.

Dryden explained their purpose to Gayle in an one-on-one conversion in the cloakroom. Although both Johnson and Scott waited outside the cloakroom, they contended that they were able to hear Gayle during this conversion because he was yelling at Dryden.

Gayle expressed concern about Blacks in the Officers'

Club, explaining that several white officers had approached him asking that he allow them to take care of the retribution for this breach of custom. Gayle failed to use his authority to enforce the rules and regulations of the Army. Gayle said he had to settle the matter by peaceful means or military, implying the use of force if needed to maintain the status- quo, but, he would prefer peaceful means. In short, he told

Dryden's committee members to keep Blacks away from the

Officers' Club. Any Black attempting to use the club would be court-martialed for inciting a riot and disobeying an order.

Gayle claimed that he would have no choice.

96 Gayle ordered a meeting for 9:00 a.m. the next morning

January 4, to explain his position to the Black officers as a

group, but then decided to postpone the meeting because the

weather was unexpectedly good, allowing more time to fly. The

meeting finally took place starting at about 7:00 p.m. that

same day with Gayle talking to approximately 100 officers

about how officers should relate to one another. He

eventually got to the Officers' Club issue and reasserted that

he would court-martial any Black officer that entered the

club. As an alternative he suggested that an entertainment

facility be established at the Joy Estate. The Joy Estate was

a collection of old buildings located in the far northwest

corner of the base. The building Colonel Gayle was offering was once a house of considerable size, but it now needed an

extensive amount of repair work, which Gayle promised to have done by the engineers. Gayle made it clear that this new

facility could not be called an Officers' Club; he also stated that he understood that by regulations such actions should not be necessary but he wanted to "keep peace in the family.

In essence what Gayle did was acknowledge that the plan to

"keep peace in the family" was illegal. He, along with others in the chain of command, refused to take responsibility for enforcing the letter of the regulations. Despite the ongoing

97 discussion and being questioned about the burden of paying

dues to maintain both clubs, which some of the officers argued

they would be doing, Gayle was unable to comprehend why this

idea "didn't click.

In a meeting among themselves the Black officers

discussed the pros and cons of Gayle's offer. Noting that it

was an unarguable ploy towards appeasement, they were unable

to find any advantages in Gayle's plan. Thus, they voted

unanimously to turn down Gayle's proposition, and Dryden

drafted a letter to that effect to Colonel Boyd. Dryden

delivered that letter the next day in a short and tense

meeting.

Gayle arranged for Dryden to see Colonel Boyd, who took

the opportunity to outline his policy pertaining to the club.

Boyd maintained that he agreed with Gayle and that a consensus existed among officers on the issue of who should be allowed

to use the club and who should not. When Dryden tried to explain that a consensus did not, in fact, exist since a number of officers desired to use the club and were prohibited

from doing so, against published regulations, Boyd cut him short saying, "You can go back and tell those men I am the big son-of-a-bitch at Post Headquarters that says they can not use that club.Again, Boyd's justification was to prevent

98 trouble. Boyd explained to Dryden that the responsibility for the welfare and safety of personnel at Selfridge Field rested squarely on his shoulders as the commander. With that in mind, Boyd maintained throughout the investigation that he considered Army Regulation 210-10 and the tension at the base, and decided that it was in the best interest of everyone to prohibit Black officers from using the club, in total disregard of the regulations.

For most of the later investigation. General Benjamin

Davis, Sr. and Lieutenant Colonel Harvey Shoemaker, the investigating officers, were able to focus the statements of the witnesses on the issue of racial discrimination at the base which contradicted the regulations. However, Colonel

Gayle's testimony concentrated a great deal on Lieutenant

Milton Henry, one of the three officers who went to the

Officers' Club and was confronted by Gayle. Gayle attempted to paint a picture of Henry as an instigator and subversive.

Gayle maintained that Henry had presented him with one problem after another from the time that Gayle was the base executive officer until he became squadron commander. Gayle attempted to paint an image of Henry as a poor officer, going into considerable detail about Henry's requests for leave, his troubles with other officers, and his obsession with

99 promotions for enlisted men. Shoemaker becoming aggravated demanded that Gayle make an effort to limit his comments to the details and focus on items that had some relevance to the investigation. The relationship between Gayle and Henry can only be described as antagonistic. Gayle attempted to have

Henry reclassified based on what Gayle believed were traits that were undesirable in an officer, and eventually filed charges against Henry for being AWOL when he reported to the base hospital four hours late. In response to questioning by

Colonel Shoemaker, Gayle stated that he was intimidated by

Henry. When asked if he would like anyone called to testify to support his testimony, Gayle named Lieutenant William

Bailous.

Bailous, the only Black on record defending Gayle, had a low opinion of the other Blacks at Selfridge and felt that many of them were inadequately prepared to serve in the military, all of which made Gayle's duties that much more difficult. Bailous indicated that he thought Gayle was too lenient with the officers under his command and suggested that

Henry was the best example of this fact. Bailous felt that

Henry should have been court-martialed long before Gayle filed charges against him and told Henry so Bailous also told

100 Henry that the only war they needed to fight was the one overseas.

According to Bailous, during the course of their conversation Henry noted that often small groups can be responsible for major changes in societies and pointed out the

French and Russian Revolutions as examples. He went on to say that at some point he would be in a position to dictate change." Bailous concluded his testimony with this allegation, and the investigation hearings ceased shortly after that.

When the smoke cleared over the events at Selfridge

Field, Michigan, several things became clear and a number of people paid a price. Both Colonel Gayle and Colonel Boyd were relieved of their commands and severely reprimanded. A great deal of time was spent on the precise wording of these reprimands and on deciding who was going to sign them. The investigating committee was intent on sending a message about

Gayle and Boyd's behavior and made every effort to make sure that it was loud and clear to everyone. Davis and Shoemaker argued over what to include in their report; Davis wanted a detailed account of the infractions with strong wording while

Shoemaker favored a more moderate approach. Davis could have been upset, feeling that he was deceived on an earlier visit

101 to Selfridge when he failed to detect any possibility of

trouble. Once Davis and Shoemaker agreed on the final text of

the report, which included the recommendation that both Gayle

and Boyd be relieved of their commands, they forwarded it to

General Miller White at the War Department's Personnel

Division. General Frank 0. Hunter then made an effort to

intervene on Boyd's behalf, requesting that the reprimand be

directed towards him instead of Boyd. When this failed and

Hunter was forced to endorse the reprimand, he attempted to

add a statement to the effect that Boyd had simply been

following orders. Hunter was quickly alerted by Lieutenant

General Barney Giles, Chief of Air Staff, that no such

statements could be included, despite General Arnold's support

of Hunter and Boyd.^“ In the end, the reprimands were

strongly worded.

Lieutenant Henry was later court-martialed for being a

subversive and being unfit as an officer. He can no doubt be

viewed as a unfortunate casualty. Gayle made every attempt to

cloud the issue of his support for an illegal regulation and place blame on Henry for instigating the entire conflict.

Henry did little to help his own case, his sworn statement in

answer to the charges leveled against him notwithstanding.

His comments on revolution and his rhetorical statement

102 betting Bailous that Gayle would be relieved or court-

martialed before him, could easily be misconstrued. Henry's biggest offense appears to have been that he was outspoken and

lacked anything resembling tact.

While the smoke may have moved, the matter was not clear

to everyone. Hunter made a speech on March 29, 1944, at

Selfridge in which he stated that no racial problems existed as far as he was concerned. He was not interested in racial problems. While General Hunter expressed this as his opinion, the text of the speech indicates otherwise, for the entire speech directly or indirectly addressed racial issues. Hunter felt that Gayle's removal was unfortunate but placed the blame on Gayle's own shoulders, stating that Gayle had been relieved because he was too nice and had bent over backwards to avoid racial conflicts. As a result, he was relieved for not being a forceful c o m m a n d e r .

103 1. Alan Gropman, The Air Force Integrates, (Washington.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1978). 14. Memo from Col. E. O'Donnell to General Hall, 2 October 1943, Box 85, Henry Arnold Papers, Library of Congress.

2. Memo from General Barney Giles to Chief of Air Staff, "The Negro Problem," 27 April 1943, Box 72, Henry H. Arnold Papers, Library of Congress. Memo from AAF-Operations to Commanding General, AAF, 10 June 1943, Box 72, Henry H. Arnold Papers, Library of Congress.

3. Memo from Col. E. O'Donnell to General Hall, 2 October 1943, Box 85, Henry Arnold Papers, Library of Congress.

4. Historical Section, A-2 AFTRC, Headquarters, February 1944, pp. 1.

5. Wesley Craven, The Army Air Forces In World War II, Washington: Office of Air Force History. 1983.

6 . Historical Section, A-2 AFTRC, Headquarters, February 1944. pp. 1.

7. Both Caniff's Terry and the Pirates and Moseley's Smiling Jack were cartoon series that played up the roles played by non-pilot members of bomber crews. Historical Data On Assignment of Non- Pilot Aircrew Trainees To and From Classification, Preflight and Specialized Schools of Army Air Forces training Command, Historical Section, A-2 AFTRC, Headquarters, February 1944. pp. 3.

8. Morris MacGregor Jr., Integration of The Armed Forces 1940- 1965, (Washington D.C.: Center of Military History, 1981). 272. Lee, Negro Troops, pp. 113-114.

9. William Hastie, On Clipped Wings: The Story of Jim Crow In The Army Air Corps, (New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 1942). pp. 6.

10. Victor H. Cohen, Classification and Assignment of Enlisted Men in the Army Air Arm, 1917-1945, USAFHS-76, pp. 123-125.

11. Richard Bardolph ed.. The Civil Rights Record: Black Americans and the Law, 1849-1970, (New York: Thomas Y. Cromwell Company, 1970), 239.

12. 477th Bomber Group Unit History: January 1944-September 1945, Item 4, USAFHS.

13. MacGregor. Integration. 272.

104 14. Phillip McGuire, Taps for a Jim Crow Army, (California: ABC-Clio Press, 1983), 41-44.

15. "Allege Bribery in Death at Air Field," Baltimore Afro- American, 15 May 1943.

16. Ibid./ Ralph Mathews, "Jealousy Not Hate Caused camp Shooting," Baltimore Afro-American, 22 May 1943; "Public Court- Martial," Baltimore Afro-American, 11 September 1943.

17. Walter White, A Man Called White, (New York: Arno Press, 1969), 225.

18. "Michigan Goes to War," Michigan History Magazine, May/June 1993, pp 34-39.

19. Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943, University Press of Mississippi, 1991.

20. White, A Man Called White, 225-230; T. John Wood, "Detroit Riot Toll 25, FDR Orders Military to take City," Baltimore Afro- American, 26 June 1943.

21. "Michigan Goes to War," Michigan History Magazine, May/June 1993, pp 34-39.

22. Letter to Eleanor Roosevelt from E.J. Andrews Civic and Charity Club, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

23. Testimony of Louis Martin, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

24. Exhibit E, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

25. Testimony of Major Walter Masters, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

26. Summary of Events, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

27. Testimony of Major William Feallock, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

28. Testimony of Major William Feallock, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

105 29. Testimony of Lieutenant Charles Dryden, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

30. Testimony of Lieutenant Charles Dryden, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

31. Testimony of William Boyd, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

32. Testimony of Lieutenant William Bailous, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

33. Exhibit K, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

34. Gropman, The Air Force Integrates. 18.

35. Frank Hunter, "To All Officers Of Selfridge Field," Theater No. 2, Selfridge Field, Michigan, 29 March, 1944, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports. NARG 229, BOXES 89-94, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

106 CHAPTER 5

FREEMAN FIELD

The command chain packed up the 477th Bomber Group and shipped it out of Selfridge Field, Michigan, like an unwanted stepchild. On the night of May 5, 1944, after being told to send their families home, those men not assigned to fly were loaded onto trains. Not knowing where they were going, they rode up to Canada, down through Buffalo, New York, and finally arrived at Godman Field, Kentucky, where they were greeted at the train station by armed white soldiers in full battle dress. Ten months later they were packed up and moved again, this time to Freeman Field, Indiana.

Better facilities were the justification given for the move to Godman Field, but it is more likely that most of the high-level officers wanted to move the airmen away from

Self ridge, where the heat of racial tensions resulting from the Detroit race riots, the shooting of William McCrae by the base commander, and the shooting of a white trespasser by a

Black guard were just too intense to ignore. The officers'

107 club affair followed closely behind other episodes aggravating racial tensions at the base. While the stay at Godman Field was intended to serve as a cooling off period, matters did not improve. The men of the 477th Bomber Group found themselves isolated, at Godman because there was no nearby city like

Detroit with a large Black population, and because the townspeople of nearby Louisville were openly and actively hostile. Godman Field also lacked an adequate officers' club.

The pilots stationed there often used nearby Fort Knox as their entertainment center. But, it too was closed to Black members of the 477th Bomber Group, who were expected to use the smaller Godman Field club. As a result the Black officers often went to Chicago on weekend retreats.

The strategy used by Hunter and his confederates of stationing the 477th Bomber Group at Godman Field so that its officers would be prevented from challenging the closed membership at the Fort Knox club may have made sense, except for one major point: the regulations stated that all the facilities at any base were to be open to anyone assigned to that base. Clearly those officers assigned to Godman Field were not assigned to Fort Knox. However, white officers of the 477th were not only invited but actively encouraged to use the Officers' Club at Fort Knox, while Black officers were

108 barred from making use of this club. White officers were also

assigned to Fort Knox for "administrative purposes" in an

attempt to legitimize their charade.

The level of frustration in the 477th Bomber Group surged

as discrimination and the inability to get promoted served to

farther dampened the morale in the unit.^ It was a customary hcibit to rotate white officers into slots in the 477th Bomber

Group to allow them the opportunity of promotion, especially for promotions into command positions. Despite the fact that many of the members of the 477th had been with the 99th

Fighter Squadron and the 332nd Fighter Group, which also had elements stationed at Selfridge and Osceda Fields, and thus, were returning from combat in Europe, they too were refused promotion. As a result, no Black officer in the 477th carried any rank above that of 1st lieutenant.^ The use of the 477th

Bomber Group as a promotion mill for white officers heightened the anxiety level as Black officers did the work, and whites, who based on time in grade as a measure of seniority theoretically should have been the subordinates of the Black officers, received the credit and were promoted as a result of the Black officers' labors.

This is the legacy that the 477th Bomber Group took with it to Freeman Field, Indiana, in March 1945. The move to

109 Freeman Field was apparently a legitimate attempt to find superior facilities to enhance the unit's training. While some could see the war coming to a close in Europe as Cologne and Düsseldorf fell and American troops crossed the Rhine,

Japan still presented a challenge. With Japan engaging in a tenacious defense, the invasion of the Japanese home islands weighed heavy on the minds of American military planners, who anticipated massive casualties. Fueled by its feelings of success in Europe, the Air Corps pushed to field additional bomber units.

Freeman Field offered more hanger and apron space, a gunnery range, and better weather. Freeman Field was located in southern Indiana, just southwest of Seymour and not far from Indianapolis. As a white agricultural community, with a

Black population smaller than that of Louisville, Seymour was not ready for the rapid inundation presented by the 477th, and racial confrontations were almost immediate. Black servicemen, officers and enlisted, were turned away from laundries and grocery stores. Tempers flared among the men.

The commander of the 477th Bomber Group did not earn any accolades for the prevention of violence in Seymour. Colonel

Robert R. Selway was appointed the commander of the 477th at its activation, after relinquishing command of the 332nd

110 Fighter Group to Colonel Benjamin Davis, Jr. Graduating from

West Point in 1924, Selway served in a variety of positions before reaching the rank of colonel. His negative opinions of

Blacks were known early in his career. Noel Parrish, the commander at Tuskegee, described Selway as hostile to Blacks ;

Selway believed that Blacks were unable to act as crew chiefs of maintenance teams, much less as pilots and officers.^

Selway brought with him a hard-driving approach to training, exemplified by his motto, "Get to your damn guns." Yet, one can be sure that despite the colonel's incessant demand for hard work, the men continued to look for some form of relaxation after their duty hours. Selway's actions overwhelmed all hopes of relaxing the tensions within the unit.

Selway established a policy which segregated the two clubs located at Freeman Field, based on the training status of the individual pilots. Those pilots who were designated as trainees were to use one club, those designated as supervisory personnel were to use the other club. All Blacks were designated trainees, and all whites were designated supervisory. As it did not require any real effort to see through this facade, the gauntlet was down, and the men of the

111 477th Bomber Group, hardened by their experiences at Selfridge and Godman Field, hastened to pick it up.

During the week of February 15, 1945, Colonel Selway made a commander's inspection of Freeman Field, shortly after learning that the unit would be moving there, in order to get a feel for what buildings and facilities would be available to him. On February 23, he issued a letter order, to take effect on March 1, allocating buildings and facilities at Freeman

Field to the various organizations affected by the move.

Included in this order was a statement designating building T-

885 as the Officers' Club for the 477th Bomber Group as well as designating it as the group mess and recreation room. This same order indicated that a separate mess was assigned to base and supervisory officers but made no mention of a separate club to be maintained at the mess building.

Selway asserted that this arrangement of segregating students from instructors was customary in the Air Force, which viewed it as a way to allow both instructors and students to relax after duty hours and forget the tension of the official instructor-student relationship. He indicated that it was also in accordance with the policies of the

Commanding General of First Air Force, General Frank O.

Hunter, as well. Hunter had previously issued orders

112 pronouncing that the group commander, his deputy commander,

and the group staff -- all positions held by whites -- were not assigned to the 477th Bomber Group for training but as

instructors and supervisors. This declaration freed them to use the supervisors' and instructors' club. It made no allowances for the Black flight surgeon or chaplain, neither of whom could be listed as trainees. Selway's assignment of

Black officers responsible for administrative duties, for example a major and a captain who performed as the mess officers, to the replacement squadron cast further doubt on the sincerity of Selway's defense because the distinction of what were administrative duties and what were not appeared to be arbitrary.

A reaction was quick in coming. Advance party elements of the 477th Bomber Group began arriving at Freeman Field by

March 5, and after making preparations for the arrival of their comrades, these men started to look for some form of rest and relaxation. Prior to Selway's issuing the segregation order. Black officers had visited the Officers'

Club, now closed to them. The club manager soon found himself on the spot.

Major Andrew White, the club manager, stopped in the club on the night of March 9, and discovered almost twenty Black

113 officers there. Calmly he explained the situation to them closing with, "So you see, we can't serve you boys in here!"

Someone among the officers stated that they intended to stay until the colonel came and ordered them out. Apparently no one was aware that Selway was sick in bed with the flu.

Despite being called at home, he did not go to the club, but instead called General Hunter. Since Selway had been at

Selfridge Field he was aware of the fate suffered by Boyd for taking simular actions under the instructions of Hunter and was fearful of taking a wrong step. During their discussion

Selway suggested closing the club, but Hunter immediately vetoed that idea saying that as long as race was not mentioned as the reason for segregating the clubs, Selway was within his rights as commander. A lesson Hunter had learned as a result of what had happened at Self ridge Field. Hunter made it clear that he would welcome a confrontation when he said: "I'd be delighted for them to commit enough actions that way so I can court-martial some of them. " Hunter told Selway to assemble all the officers and to advise them that the decision to segregate the club was his. Hunter also sent his inspector to

Freeman Field to investigate. In the meantime Selway had to find comfort in the fact that there were Blacks on the base willing to keep him informed.*

114 The next day Colonel Torgils Wold, Hunter's inspector, arrived, read Selway's order, and approved it, saying it was

"proper and okay. " At the end of the month Hunter received a report on the conditions at Freeman Field, which stated that the base was the primary location of discontent and possible uprisings.

The colored officers and colored enlisted men located there are in the majority thus giving them the psychological feeling of superiority over the white personnel, and the white personnel... resent said attitude.s

What was actually resented by these officers was that an insistence of equality was made by Black officers.

By April 1, the expected arrival of additional units made it necessary for Selway to rewrite his orders allocating buildings and other facilities on the base. He did not change the designated Officers' Clubs. Selway continued to assert that his decisions were based on War Department Pamphlet No.

20-6. Yet, while the War Department's pamphlet was relatively clear in its intent, Selway's order of April 1 was described as being obscure, inexact, and ambiguous in meaning and purpose, a technique commonly used by individuals or organizations with questionable ends or acting on the fringes of the rules and regulations that govern their behavior.® In

115 addition there was no indication that the order was distributed to all of the elements of the 477th Bomber Group, which were then located at different bases around the country on training missions.

It is clear that the 477th officers consciously decided to challenge the legality of Selway's de facto segregation order and wanted this challenge to be public as a way of protecting themselves. The arrival of Lowell Trice at Freeman

Field on the morning of April 5 illustrated this strategy.

Trice was a reporter for the Indianapolis Recorder and was affiliated with the NAACP, at least according to reports on the subsequent investigation of events at Freeman Field. Once discovered. Trice was removed from the base on the grounds that he had not received the proper authorization from Bureau of Public Relations in Washington. But the ball was already moving as far as the press was concerned, for as early as

March 17, the Recorder published an article announcing the intentions of Black officers at Freeman Field to protest openly the situation at the base.

As the late-arriving elements of the 477th Bomber Group started to report, Selway was alerted that they planned to visit the Officers' Club later that evening. Selway immediately ordered white military police personnel assigned

116 to the Officers' Club. Selway also called Major White, instructing him to lock all doors to the club, except the front door, and to arrest any trainee personnel who insisted on entering. Selway attempted to maintain his belief in the ruse, even in the process of losing control.

An hour and a half after Selway called, the provost marshal was at his post. By 9:15 that night the first of several groups of Black officers arrived at the club. A small group of four officers approached the club and were stopped by

Lieutenant Joseph Rogers, the provost marshal, who told them that they were prohibited from using the club. After some conversation they requested that Rogers get White, which he did. According to Rogers, White explained that he had no idea why they were prohibited from using the club, but he was to enforce that decision. After that explanation, the four withdrew without further protest. At 9:30 a larger group arrived, a little more determined to get into the club.

This new group consisted of nineteen officers, including

Lieutenants Marsden Thompson and Shirley Clinton. As they approached the club, Rogers stepped out of the club to meet them, and blocked the door with his body. Rogers repeated basically what he had told the first group but he was unprepared for the reply he received. Both Marsden and

117 Clinton pushed past Rogers, telling him to let them in the

club and to arrest them. They were followed by the rest of

the officers, who quickly spread out to occupy as much of the

club as possible. Major White was then summoned from the pool

room and upon entering the main club found a group of officers

who "were not suppose[d] to be in the club."’ White ordered

them to leave and said that he would arrest them if they

failed to obey. Lieutenant Thompson instantly stated that he would refuse to go. By this time their squadron commander,

Captain Anthony Chiappe appeared and read the riot act to his

Black officers. When asked if the club was for use by whites only, Chiappe replied that it was not and ordered them to gather the following morning when he planned to read the April

1 order to them. After all of their names had been written down the protesters were released to their quarters. The whole time. Lieutenant Coleman Young waited quietly by the bar for a beer he never received.

The night was still young when this group of officers left the club, and Lieutenant Rogers called for reinforcements. Lieutenant James Rice and Lieutenant Robert

Harrison arrived just in time to see yet a third group of

Black officers marching to the club. This time Rice and

Harrison stood in front of the door alongside Rogers. This

118 group made what was to be the final assault for the evening.

Three officers walked up to the club and were met by the three

M.P. officers, who started to go through what had by now become a routine. After Rogers announced that if the officers entered the club he would have to arrest them. Lieutenant

Roger Terry reached around Rogers, opened the door, and entered the club. After entering the club, one of the three officers calmly asked Major White for a cigarette. Major

White informed them they were under arrest, took their names, and confined them to their quarters. The rest of the evening was quiet.

The following morning Selway awoke to find out that thirty-seven of his officers had issued a direct challenge to his orders and were under arrest as a result. He called

General Hunter once again. Hunter sent his air inspector.

Colonel Torgils Wold, and a legal officer. Major Osborne, to provide immediate assistance and they were at Freeman Field by that afternoon. Selway again gathered all the officers together and read his order of April 1. By 3:15 p.m. seventeen more officers were arrested for disobeying and entering the club. With the aid of Wold and Osborne, Selway was already looking for the proper articles under which to initiate court-martial proceedings. It was decided, with

119 Hunter's blessing, to use the 64th Article of War, which covered the willful disobedience of a lawful order and the

66th Article of War, because it was thought that a case could be made for conspiracy and mutiny.

Brigadier General Edward Glenn, Hunter's chief of staff, and Selway discussed the possible need for additional military police as panic and paranoia began to set-in. Selway felt that he was being personally attacked, because, as he stated,

"all of the articles [by the Black Press] pick on me and

General Hunter as the symbols of segregation."® Support for this conspiracy theory was derived from the belief that only trained agitators could have organized such a massive revolt, which explained Trice's appearance on the 5th, in Selway's mind at least. Outside agitators had been listed as a possible reason for the riots in Detroit and Harlem as well.

Selway was worried that these trained agitators would show up again and that he would be forced to depend on Black M.P.s to maintain order, having only six or seven white ones on hand.®

In the meantime Hunter was on the telephone with General

Ray Owens, the deputy chief of the Air Staff in Washington, explaining the situation. Owens reassured Hunter that any case for discrimination that the Black officers tried to make would not stand up. He also agreed that Hunter should reserve

120 the option to send a general officer to aid Selway if the need

arose.

On April 7, Selway, acting on advice from Osborne,

released all of the arrested officers with the exception of

the three who allegedly used force to enter the club. The

atmosphere was tense despite the lack of confrontations, as

everyone pondered the situation for the next two days.

Selway, Wold, Osborne, and Selway's own base legal

officer sat down and attempted to write a more detailed

assignment order to eliminate any possible misunderstanding.

This regulation. Base Regulation 85-2, defined all personnel

assigned to the Officer Training Unit, Combat Crew Training

Unit, and Ground and Air Replacement Training as trainee personnel except for those men officially assigned as command,

supervisory, or instructor personnel.

Although nothing in essence was different from the April

1 order, this new regulation excluded Blacks who were in administrative positions by banning officers in their positions from access to the club. These Black officers were replacing whites who were free to utilize the club during their tenure in those same positions. Selway, Hunter, and the others missed an opportunity to prove that their intention was not to segregate the club by race when they first wrote and

121 then attempted to enforce this new regulation. By changing the definition of those administrative positions occupied by

Blacks in order to exclude them along with flight surgeons and chaplains, the white command structure undermined its own claim that race was not part of the issue.

Hunter approved the text of Base Regulation 85-2, after

Selway read it to him over the phone, but demanded that a provision be added requiring each officer to sign that he had read the regulation and understood its contents. On the morning of April 10, Selway assembled his squadron commanders and explained what was happening. Each commander would read and explain the regulation, requiring all of the officers under their command to sign the endorsement, which read: "I certify that I have read and fully understand the above order.

It was not surprising that all of the base and supervisory officers signed the endorsement as it was written.

However, few of the trainee officers did. The majority of trainee officers who did sign altered the text by striking out key words or by adding clauses stating that it was discriminatory and in violation of AR 210-10 (paragraph 19).

With Hunter's authorization, Selway offered those refusing to sign a second chance. This time they needed only to verify

122 that they had read the regulation. Most again refused, and

Selway claimed that this action amounted to not only

insubordination but was also an indication that these

individuals lacked the professional qualifications to serve as

officers.

After a great deal of discussion Selway was decided that

the sole way to deal with those officers still refusing to

sign was to have each of them report individually to a board

made up of his commander, two Black officers, two white

officers, the base legal officer, and a secretary. At this

time each individual would get yet a third opportunity to

sign. If they refused, the legal officer was to read and

explain the 64th Article of War. The commander would then order the individual officer to sign. If he again refused, he would be placed under arrest. By the end of April 11, 101 officers still refused to sign the document. Retribution was

swift; Colonel J. Harris arrived from the Office of the Air

Inspector at 8:30 p.m.that night, and the 101 officers were on their way to confinement at Godman Field by 9:00 p.m.

As the evening of April 13 neared and with the most troublesome of the Blacks officers enroute to Godman Field,

Selway acted on Hunter's orders and reopened the Officers'

Club. A number of white officers attended the reopening with

123 their wives and families, but it turned out to be a short­

lived affair. Shortly before 8:00 p.m. Selway received a call

from one of his "spies" among the Black officers, saying that the Black officers were grouping up to come to the club. They had three goals in mind, according to the informant: cancellation of the bomber program, the grounding of all aircraft on the base, and the creation of a major incident with mass arrests. Selway insinuated that the conversation was a short one because his informant feared being missed or caught on the phone. Five minutes later the club was closed again.

Not a single person seems to have questioned how these three objectives could benefit the men of the 477th. The cancellation of the bomber program would have gone against everything that the men hoped to accomplish. As members of the Black elite the men of the 477th were interested in increased opportunities. At this point many of the men had their entire military careers tied up in bomber aircraft. A great deal of time and effort had gone in the formation of this unit and the men that staffed it were no doubt aware that they, not unlike the men originally staffing the 99th Fighter

Squadron, were viewed as an experiment. To do anything that endangered the successful conclusion of that experiment would

124 be a mark against the entire concept that stood behind the

Double-V campaign.

If the men of the 477th wanted to ground the aircraft at the base they would not need to stage an elaborate protest.

They only needed to go to the ground crews. The ground crews stood solidly behind the actions of the officers and if asked would have without a doubt disabled the planes. It is a generally excepted rumor that on more than one occasion Black officers had to talk ground crew members into "preventing accidents." If this was indeed the case it would have been an additional catalysts for the officers to take some form of action.

It is unlikely that any of the men of the 477th wanted a major blemish on their military record. Though a number of them viewed themselves as citizen soldiers many of them were thinking of service in the air force as a possible career. A record with a court martial conviction for mutiny would clearly erase that option.

Selway justified closing the club for a number of reasons, including the presence of women and children and his belief that the shortening patience of the white officers could result in violence, if not a riot. He felt that such a confrontation needed to be avoided so as not to embarrass the

125 nation as it prepared to bury President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died on April 12. No doubt, Selway was also concerned about his career and his chances to make general.

After ordering the club closed, Selway called Hunter and then, leaving his quarters, went to the club so that he could survey the situation himself. When he got there, he found

Lieutenant Colonel Pattison, who told him that as many as three carloads of Black officers had driven by the club with approximately fifteen in each car. Selway reacted by taking

Pattison and Colonel Harris with him to the trainee quarters area. There they would find two groups of officers in full dress uniform ready, if Selway's source was right, to go to the Officers' Club. In questioning the men Selway was unable to identify a spokesman nor was he able to get a response about the intentions of the groups to challenge the regulations. Colonel Harris claimed that it was in later questioning that several of the officers and enlisted men said that they fully intended to challenge any regulation that they felt was in conflict with Army Regulation 210-10. In short, they were openly stating that they would refuse to obey any orders they knew to be illegal and an infringement on their rights as officers of the U.S. Air Forces.

126 As the investigation of what occurred at Freeman Field

continued to labor along a number of things became

increasingly clear. The actions taken by the men of the 477th

Bomber Group at Freeman Field were in fact pre-planned,

intended to make a statement about what they felt was

acceptable as well as what was legal. Despite this pre­ planning the men of the 477th were clearly not guilty of mutiny, which is in general terms defined as an organized rebellion of one group against the military authority of their superiors. As part of the assumption of mutiny, superiors must have been acting in a responsible manner, including the issuance of lawful orders.

The essential offspring of the entire debate was an uncovering of the illegal nature of first Boyd's and then

Selway's orders at Selfridge and then Freeman Fields respectively. Higher commanders' verbal support of both Boyd and Selway notwithstanding, the leadership of the Air Forces found itself with no alternative but the removal of both as mandated.

Blacks had found a legal leg to stand on within the military and the will to exercise that leg. Enraged by the treatment they received at Selfridge and Godman Fields and encouraged by their success in these two battles, the men of

127 the 477th Bomber Group were compelled to force the issue as

Selway and Hunter dug in, clearly supported by members of

Arnold's staff.

When the initial investigation ended and Colonel Wold

wrote his report, on the behalf of the First Air Force, he

loaded it with emotion-laden phrases such as "seditious acts"

and "defiance and disorder" in an attempt to discredit the men

of the 477th Bomber Group. Yet, even Wold failed to suggest

that Thompson, Clinton, and Terry be court-martialed for

mutiny but instead he suggested that they be tried for

disobeying the orders of the provost marshal.

When the summary report of the investigation was

released, Truman Gibson, who became Civilian Aide to the

Secretary of War after Judge William Hastie resigned in

protest, was quick to denounce it as a "fabric of deception

and subterfuge.Gibson's outrage was supported by the

decisions made by the McCloy Committee during their May 21,

meeting. At that meeting the committe members decided that, while Selway was within his rights as commanding officer to exercise police powers, his decision to establish separate

facilities on the basis of race was directly in conflict with

Army Regulations. They indicated a need to expedite the

128 court-martial trial which appeared to be in a state of suspended animation.

Those court-martial proceedings started under the watchful eye of the Black press. Convening with a full complement of officers, named by General Hunter, little happened that could be pointed to as out of the ordinary.

Both Lieutenants Shirley Clinton and Marsden Thompson were found not guilty of all the charges against them. Their status as permanent party at Freeman Field and not as trainees did serious damage to Selway's case. Lieutenant Roger Terry was also a member of the maintenance unit at Freeman Field but he was found guilty of using force against the provost marshal. As a result he was fined $150, a sentence that

Hunter found to be totally insufficient. It was over such misgivings as Hunter's that the Air Corps, as well as the rest of the services, would change.

129 1. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American, (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Press, 1991). 140-148.

2. Alan Osur, Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II, (New York: A m o Press, 1980) . 112.

3. J. Alfred Phelps, Chappie: America's First Black Four-Star General, (Novato: Presido Press, 1991). 52.

4. Alan Gropman, The Air Force Integrates, (Washington D.C. : Office of Air Force History, 1978) . 21. J. Alfred Phelps, Chappie: America's First Black Four-Star General, (Novato: Presido Press, 1991). 93. Summary of Events at Freeman Field, Selfridge/Freeman Fields Air Inspector General Reports, NARG 229, WNRC Suitland, Maryland.

5. Alan Gropman, The Air Force Integrates, (Washington D.C. : Office of Air Force History, 1978). 21.

6 . Investigating Officer's Report, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports, NARG 229, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

7. Exhibit C. Selfridge/Freeman Fields, Air Inspector General Reports, NARG 229, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

8 . Testimony of Colonel Robert Selway, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, NARG 229, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

9. J. Alfred Phelps, Chappie: America's First Black Four-Star General, (Novato: Presido Press, 1991). 112, and Testimony of Colonel Robert Selway, Selfridge/Freeman Field, NARG 229, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

10. Testimony of Robert Selway, Selfridge/Freeman Fields, NARG 229, WNRC, Suitland, Maryland.

11. Gropman, The Air Force Integrates. 28.

130 CHAPTER 6

CONCLUSION

Although the War Department found Lieutenants Shirley R.

Clinton, Roger C. Terry, and Marsden A. Thompson not guilty, it issued administrative reprimands to the remaining officers of the 477th Bomber Group arrested at Freeman Field based on the belief that there was :

...reasonable doubt that these officers fully understood the implication of their action nor is it certain, because of their recent arrival at Freeman Field, that they had been adequately apprized of existing regulations. For these reasons, it was determined that they should be released from arrest and suitable orders were accordingly issued for their restoration to duty following the administration of an appropriate reprimand.^

Despite the attempt to appear benevolent, the War

Department was simply trying to find a face-saving way out of a bad situation. It was clear that the African American officers knew exactly what could be the possible consequences of their actions. In addition to the attention of the Black press, the War Department's McCloy Committee, headed by

Assistant Secretary of War John B. McCloy, received inquiries from a number of congressmen. On May 5, the McCloy Committee

131 received the summary report of the Army Air Forces on what

occurred at Freeman Field. It was the first statement that

made no pretense about the nature of the separate facilities,

pointing to War Department Pamphlet 20-6 which the committee

felt legitimized racial segregation saying:

Negro officers at Freeman Field...have c[uestioned the right of a post commander to establish separate officers' clubs or mess facilities which operate to deny them full use of such facilities. Freeman Field had separate and essentially equal club and mess facilities and the Commander issued orders which in effect restricted Negro officers from using the facilities assigned to white officers.2

The authors of the summary felt that the problem pointed

to the need to modify Army Regulation 210-10, incorporating

the policies outlined in Pamphlet 20-6, Based on the view

that officers' clubs were social centers and functioned as

extensions of the homes of the members, elements of the Army

Air Forces command hierarchy stressed that :

Officer's entire families participate in club activities. Thus far in the history of this country, it has not been [the] custom for white and negroes to intermingle socially either in homes or clubs. It is believed the Army should follow the usages and customs of the country as a whole rather than attempt to depart from accepted practices and establish social customs which are at variance with those obtaining in the country as a whole. ^

Assistant Secretary of War John B. McCloy did not find this to be an acceptable argument, since he believed that a

132 policy returning to the use of separate and equal facilities constituted a retarded effort to reverse the position taken in the Selfridge Field case. Such a backward step, Secretary

McCloy thought, could only be viewed as unacceptable.

Almost by definition wars leave the world turned upside down for some group, and World War II was no exception. The world of the nations of Europe was devastated, and would require the assistance, ironically enough from a plan carrying the name of George C. Marshall, the man who had overseen

American's efforts to save them from Hitler. Japan was paying the cost of waking a sleeping giant. It would be quite sometime before Europe and Japan could regain their pre-war status. At home individuals like Colonel William L. Boyd,

Colonel Robert R. Selway, and General Frank 0. Hunter should have noticed a slight list in their world. Despite indicators that Selway was breaking down under the stress, attempts were made to keep him in command so that African American officers would not get the impression that they had "got another" white commander on racial charges.*

The experiences of the 477th Bomber Group were just a part of the chain of small explosions that would eventually bring the walls of the old citadel of a segregated military collapsing on the heads of those who refused to accept change.

Diehard commanders referred to occurrences such as the work stoppage at Port Chicago, California, the hunger strike by

Seabees at Port Hueneme, California and a sit-down strike by

133 WACS at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, as breakdowns in

discipline. However, the outcome of the Freeman Field

confrontation and the immediate aftermath shows that a slow

but strong force for racial change was at work. The Army had

set a precedent for itself when it dealt with the clash at

Selfridge Field. Once it acknowledged that segregation was

against regulations, reprimanding and removing a commander for

stepping outside of those regulations, the Army had no option but to confront itself. The Pandora's box of change sat opened in front of them. When Selway not only ignored paragraph 19 of AR 210-10 but also attempted to write orders circumventing it, he dropped the bomb in his own lap.

Frustrated, not even General Frank O. Hunter was able to pull all his resources together to help him. As a result, Selway and his entire staff were removed. Replacing them would be the most experienced of the Air Force's African American commanders. Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., bringing with him a hand-picked staff.

Davis did not find a new and completely accommodating

Army Air Forces. After the Freeman Field incident, the First

Air Force shipped the 477th Bomber Group back to Godman Field in Kentucky where Davis encountered difficulties obtaining usable housing for his command. The availability of quarters was not the question because Selway and his staff had recently vacated housing at Fort Knox. Not only was Davis' request denied, but Fort Knox officials explained to the First Air

134 Force that Fort Knox was an old cavalry post with four generals living on it and "by God, they just don't want a bunch of coons moving in next door to them. In addition, officials at Fort Knox told the school administrators that

Blacks were not part of the Fort Knox command and their children were not eligible to attend the post schools established at Fort Knox.®

Despite Davis' best efforts and MacArthur's support for the idea of dispatching the 477th to the Pacific at the earliest possible date, Davis was not able to get his command into the war before the Japanese capitulated. In March 1946 the unit packed up and moved once again, this time to

Lockbourne Field, Ohio, located just eight miles outside of the state capitol, Columbus, where once again the Black airmen were greeted with anything but a heroes' welcome. The editor of the Columbus Citizen warned the "trouble makers" of the

477th that America was "still a white man's country,"”' In

July 1947 the 477th was deactivated.

Events like those at Selfridge and Freeman Fields occurred as a direct result of one group's fear that it risked a loss in status or power. The men of the 477th Bomber Group made a conscious decision to challenge the belief held by some that they were not entitled to and would not seek the same rights and privileges afforded their white counterparts. To demand the use of the same facilities was to demand recognition of equality. Boyd, Selway, and Hunter could not

135 allow such a direct challenge to go unanswered despite their lack of legal grounds ; they believed that they had tradition behind them. When they lost the engagement that resulted, they made a bid to discredit the 477th. Implicit in their attempts to discredit the 477th was an effort to discredit to

Black officers who had dared to challenge their authority and the place of these types of officers in the service.

The headquarters of the Army Air Forces required its subordinates to write reports on the value of African

American participation in the service. The headquarters would summarize these reports and use them to respond to concerns raised by the McCloy Committee. Hunter assigned this task to Selway, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Reach, the former executive officer of the 477th, and Captain William Swanzy.

Hunter's endorsement of the final report, dated July 20, 1945, stated that he believed it was a carefully prepared and honest document put together by "those who have actually had the most intimate connection with the training of Negro air organizations."® No doubt they were attempting to make the best of their opportunity and their lack of objectivity was clear in the their conclusions. Colonel Selway pointed out the fact that the men of the 477th were the "cream of their race," concluding that a high level of education and intelligence among members were not reasonable factors in assessing the performance of Black units. Selway stated that

Black units should be required to meet the same training time

136 tables as white units. Since, on average, it took two to three times longer to train Black units than white units,

Selway argued, African Americans would be better utilized in unskilled units under the supervision of white officers. At no point did the report address the fact that the 477th, as well as other African American Air Forces units, had to wait longer for trainees than white units because segregated training facilities created bottlenecks that affected Black units, but not white ones. The report concluded that Black flying units should be eliminated from the postwar service because such units barely reach satisfactory proficiency levels within the expanded time-frame.*

The men of the 477th Bomber Group were dependent on the regulations of the Army. Those regulations which stated that mutiny in time of war was a capital offense and said as well as saying that race would not be a factor in the assignment of recreational facilities. Clearly understanding that they were putting themselves at as much risk as if they refused to fly in combat, the men of the 477th pushed repeatedly for the rights and privileges to which they were entitled.

The Black officers of the 477th Bomber Group were a different kind of generation than their parents. The majority of the officers had some type of education equal to the post­ secondary level, whether at an official institution or not.

While a variety of charts and tables are available showing the breakdown of AGCT scores for the Army, those depicting the

137 scores for Army Air Forces units separate from the rest of the

service are limited as are those comparing test scores of white units to Black units. Despite the eventual lowering of the scores required to enter the Army Air Forces, the Army Air

Forces must have had a disproportionately high number of men with scores in the category I, II, and III ranges. This would simply be a result of the originally strict educational requirements of a minimum of two years of college and the high wash-out rate among candidates, especially pilots. These are the men who read Garvey, Du Bois, and Adam Clayton Powell.

Politically aware, they kept track of family and friends and the situations they encountered. They wrote to and read the

Black press, calling on its support when the need arose, as well having third parties carry their concerns to political leaders.

This study, like so many of those before it, is concerned with the military as an institution. But it is also concerned with the concept of social change and how institutions change the societies in which they function. The give-and-take of those relationships, whether they are defined as symbiotic or not, determines the shape of the future of both the society and the institutions serving it. Social change is dependent on a number of things only hinted at here--such as resource management, education, and motivation, to name but a few. The decisions that are made at the top of the hierarchy or at the bottom are driven by priorities set at these extremes. What

138 happens is a clash of wills and the result of that clash is a

societal change.

Revolutions from below, which the struggle of the 477th

Bomber Group depicts, can be powerful; attempts to limit such

revolutions will over the long-term fail. The inequitable and

inefficient nature of segregation is what motivated the men of

the 477th. They declared their case against a system that

limited access to promotions and privileges, a clear

manifestation of an impractical concept. Winning their case

in front of an official tribunal gave immediate legitimacy to

their cause.

The protests of the 477th Bomber Group did not end

segregation in the American military in and of themselves.

President Harry S. Truman ended official segregation when he

signed Executive Order 9981 in the summer of 1948. Two things motivated Truman to sign the order: politics and military efficiency. While African American opinion of the president

ranged across the spectrum, from those that supported him because he was Roosevelt's vice-president to those who concluded that Truman was a card-carrying Ku Klux Klan member.

He, in fact, consistently condemned the Klan. Truman was proud of his voting record in Congress on issues that affected the Black community and often referred the Black press to it when challenged. He recalled the riots that followed the

First World War and realized that the Black community would no longer accept the status quo. He found the routine violence

139 against African American veterans disgusting. Such actions were in fact frighteningly all too common. For example, South

Carolina police pulled Isaac Woodward off a bus, in February

1946, and jammed their night sticks in his eyes blinding him.

In July of the same year, two veterans and their wives were jerked from their car and executed by a mob in Georgia.

Propaganda from the Axis during the war was an early indication that the racial policies of the United States were a potential problem. And, the United States could not easily justify opposing the oppressive regimes of the Communists'

Bloc as the Cold War developed, when it was oppressing members of its own society.

The military doctrine of separate-but-equal was simply a reflection of American society at large. Military leaders, being products of that society, balked at the idea of taking the initiative and initiating change. The notion of a

Southern aristocracy within the military may also have been a factor. A number of the white officers involved with the

Tuskegee program were from the south. Colonel Noel Parrish, the commander at Tuskegee Army Air Field from 1943 until the end of the war was a Southerner and so was Georgia born

General Frank Hunter.

The separation of Air Forces resources exacerbated the waste that is synonymous to segregation. The oppressive task of maintaining two separate programs that required the

140 co-ordination of everything from training and supplying an

African American air arm and a white air arm proved to be an unreasonable and cost inefficient burden. Not only were there backlogs of air crews waiting to be trained but African

American pilots were lost to other allied forces, as was the case with Fred Hutcherson who flew bombers to Europe for

Canada. When the service had a shortage of meteorologists, it turned away trained African American meteorologists, preferring to train white meteorologists from scratch and launched a large scale recruitment drive.^ The additional cost of maintaining two Air Forces was not something that the service could defend in a period of rapid demobilization.

Caught between the Cold War on the one hand and the upcoming

1948 election on the other, Truman took the opportunity to be pragmatic and signed Executive Order 9981.

World War II forced America to re-examine the issue of race and the importance it carried in every social and political arena. The April 1945, Freeman Field, "mutiny" made it clear that African Americans would take what was rightfully theirs if it was not freely given. The lessons of how to do so successfully were learned during this period, as indicated by Eleanor Holmes (Norton) :

Non-violent resistance to gain civil rights did not begin with the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. It began... in 1940 and was perfected as a technique before 1945. The Negro movement for integration today [1963] . . . had its dedicated avant-garde. Economic distress, armed forces segregation, and war slogans denouncing racism produced

141 bitterness that ran through all classes of Negroes in the early forties. Out of their anger came interracial conflict in countless incidents. But out of it also came the search for a new, dignified, and more direct way to protest.... Perhaps the greatest gain from the war years is that they inspired the use of a tactic that would be consistent with militancy and peaceful protest.

Members of the 477th Bomber Group stepped forward as leaders in these protests. Daniel James remained in the Air

Force to eventually retire as the nation's first Black four star general officer; Coleman Young went back to Detroit and became mayor, and William Coleman; served as secretary of transportation in the Gerald Ford administration. Those members of the 477th Bomber Group who regularly attend annual meetings of the Tuskegee Airmen Incorporated veterans association, express no bitterness about their experiences.

They look back on their military service with great pride and see what happened at Freeman Field as simply something that could have been avoid if the Army Air Forces had wished to do so. Given the reactions of their chain of command the men of the 477th saw themselves with no other options other than to force the issue. In many ways Freeman Field serves as a symbolic portal. It actually marks the end of the World War

II era of protest. World War II brought out into the open the fact that there was indeed a "new Negro." One who was politically shrewd enough to make demands that required the

142 attention of politicians, as was A. Philip Randolph. The threatened march on Washington allowed many their first chance to recognize the political power the Black Americans could bring into play. An era that showed a limited number of options available to the nation with which to address its dilemma of race relations. Black Americans had given warning during the war and with its end waited for a response. When none came, they started to put to use the lessons they had learned during the war as Black Americans marched through the

1950s and 1960s. As such efforts gained Blacks better access to jobs with the development of the PEPC they would again prove useful as the Civil Rights Movement progressed.

Despite the continued insistence of some military officials that they had to follow the rest of society to change on such sensative issues, others acknowledged the need to move forward. Lieutenant General James Doolittle was one of these advocates for change, telling Major General Hugh

Knerr:

Hugh, I don't like to be naive about this but I am convinced that the solution of the situation is to forget they are colored. You are merely postponing the inevitable and you might as well take it gracefully.^

Despite its initial unwillingness to lead, the American military has endured the confusion and tribulations of

143 desegregation. Air Force bases experienced sporadic riots as late as 1971. One of the worst of these occurred at Travis

Air Force Base, located in California, where one of the investigating officers was Lieutenant Colonel James Warren.

Warren had been one of the 101 men arrested at Freeman Field just over twenty-five years earlier. With all of the confrontations and pains it faced the Air Force and its sister services emerged not only none the worst for wear but as the only institution in the country to resemble a integrated society.

144 1. Letter from administrative assistant of secretary of war to Senator Johnson July 3,1945 narg 107.

2. Summary Sheet, May 5, 1945, "Racial Incident at Freeman Field, Indiana and Fort Huachuca, Arizona," File 291.2.narc.

3 . Agenda for the Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies, "Remarks and Recommendations on the Proposed Report of Advisory Committee Meeting, "narg 18.

4. Osur Blacks in the Azmy Air Forces During World War II,

5. Davis, American, 144 and Gropman, Integrates, 31.

6 . Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. An Autobiography: Benjamin O. Davis, Jr. American. Smithsonian Institution Press. Washington D.C. 1991. Page 141-148.

7. Davis, 148; Gropman, 78.

8 . Gropman, Integrates.39.

9. First Air Force, "Participation of Negro Troops in the Post-War Military Establishment," File 114-528. NARG and Gropman.

10. Truman, Memoirs, Vol. II, 180-81.

11. William Hastie, On Clipped Wings: The Story of Jim Crow in the Army Air Corps (New York: NAACP) 1943, 15-20.

12. Nalty, Strength For The Fight, 233 .

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