The Civil Conversations Project exists to provide you with the education that our schools and our national narrative about who we are as a country do not provide in order that you may have information that can help you understand “America’s Race Thing”, and how deeply detrimental, divisive, and harmful it has been to America. But today, the day before Veterans Day, I’m diverging slightly to provide you with a bit of history…history mostly not taught. Hopefully you will find it as interesting and enlightening as I do.
Over the entire course of this country’s history, Black Americans have been sought after during times of war. Many Black Americans volunteered for duty and combat in the belief that America would recognize them as full, loyal, and worthy Americans and as a chance to show they are the equal of white men or women. Their return home often did not go as planned. White supremacist hate groups and individual racists were more alarmed than ever. They feared that given a partial taste of equality and being trained in the use of firearms, that “their Negroes” might expect some greater form of equality, respect, and gratitude back home. And they did. But they were wrong. Returning Black veterans were often targeted for increased violence, not respect and gratitude.
Sgt. Isaac Woodard Jr., 26, was a decorated African-American veteran. He had just been honorably discharged from the United States Army in 1946 and was headed home to Winnsboro, S.C. from Camp Gordon in GA. Sgt. Woodard and the bus driver argued after Woodard asked to take a bathroom break. Although the bus company’s policy required drivers to accommodate such requests, the driver refused. An argument ensued which led the driver to call the police when they stopped in Batesburg, 35 miles southwest of Columbia.
The police chief, Lynwood Shull, and another officer dragged Sgt. Woodard off the bus, still in uniform, and beat him severely. Chief Shull beat Sgt Woodward so violently, jamming the ends of his nightstick into Sgt. Woodard’s eyes, that he permanently blinded the veteran and broke his nightstick
The next morning, Sgt. Woodard was dragged before the local judge where he was convicted of drunken and disorderly conduct and fined $50.
Sgt. Woodard recovered in a veteran’s hospital and eventually moved to New York without his wife, who walked out on the marriage after the incident. His family in New York helped to care for him until his death at 73 in 1992.
On July 24, 1944, Jackie Robinson, a 25-year-old Black American lieutenant with the 761st Tank Battalion, boarded a shuttle bus in front of the Black officers’ club at Camp Hood, Texas, and took a seat halfway down the aisle. Five stops later, the civilian driver ordered him to the back of the bus, as was the custom in states that enforced racial segregation. Robinson refused to move. He was a commissioned U.S. Army officer on a U.S. Army base and saw no reason why he couldn’t sit where he wanted. When Robinson didn’t budge, the driver promised to make trouble once the bus reached its destination.
Black men had fought in every war since the Revolution, but the armed services didn’t treat them the same as white men. Segregation was the rule. A flashpoint for racial tension was bus service at military bases. Soldiers, both Black and White, relied on buses, usually operated by civilian companies. Shuttles transported soldiers inside sprawling bases, and buses were necessary to travel to the nearest towns, often miles from camp. Civilians working on military bases also rode these buses. In areas of the country where Jim Crow laws and customs prevailed, Black soldiers were relegated to the back of the bus, even on army bases.
“The South,” Time Magazine reported, was “prepared to back up its Jim Crow laws with force.” On July 28, 1942, in Beaumont, Texas, police officers beat and shot Private Charles J. Reco for refusing to leave his seat in the White section of a bus. On March 13, 1944, a driver in Alexandria, Louisiana, shot and killed Private Edward Green for failing to move to the back of the bus.
Robinson had broken his right ankle playing football in 1937. The injury had not healed properly, and Robinson had aggravated it on an army obstacle course in 1943. In January 1944, an army medical board had found him fit only for limited duty and recommended against strenuous use of his right leg. He was ordered to McCloskey General Hospital in Temple, Texas, on June 21, 1944, for a final decision on his fitness for combat.
On July 6, while still being assessed at the hospital, Robinson, who didn’t drink, traveled to Camp Hood to visit friends at the Black officers’ club. He left at 10 p.m., planning to take a bus to the base’s central station and then hop on another for the 30-mile trip back to the hospital.
Robinson boarded a shuttle driven by a civilian, Milton Renegar, saw a familiar face, and sat next to her in the midsection of the bus. She was Virginia Jones, the wife of another Black officer in the 761st and a woman Robinson described as “very fair” and often mistaken for white. Five stops later, Renegar ordered Robinson to the back of the bus. Renegar expected white women to board at the following stops, he said later, and didn’t think they’d want to sit near a Black man. Texas law required Black Americans to sit in the back, but Robinson refused to move. He grudgingly obeyed Jim Crow rules while off post, but not on an army base.
When the bus arrived at the station, the MPs were called. A hostile crowd had gathered so the MP took Robinson and a couple of witnesses to the guard shack where the witnesses described Robinson as profane and out-of-control.
Eventually the Army charged Robinson with two offenses, neither of which related to the bus seating incident. The first alleged that he had acted in an “insolent, impertinent and rude manner” to a superior officer. The second claimed that he had disobeyed a direct order form the same officer while being detained in the guard shack.
For the army, the case came at a bad time. Two days after the incident, on July 8, 1944, the army had formally outlawed segregation on buses at military bases. “Restricting personnel to certain sections of such transportation because of race,” the directive stated, “will not be permitted either on or off a post, camp, or station, regardless of local civilian custom.” That same day, in Durham, North Carolina, a bus driver killed Private Booker T. Spicely after he had balked at going to the back of the bus. The army was in the awkward position of prosecuting charges against Robinson that arose from the enforcement of a Jim Crow rule that it now condemned and that had cost Spicely his life.
Robinson’s court martial took place at Camp Hood on August 2, 1944. Because the charges were limited to Robinson’s conduct in the guard room, the judges would hear nothing about the incident on the bus and little about events at the depot.
The prosecution called the superior officer, who described Robinson’s conduct on July 6 as disrespectful and disobedient, and a female passenger on the bus who had told Robinson that he didn’t know his place, corroborated the testimony. Robinson took the stand and denied the officer’s account. He also told the judges just how hateful another witness had been while in the guard shack. Robinson said his grandmother, a former slave, had told him that “The definition of the word nigger was a low, uncouth person.” “Sirs, I don’t consider that I am low and uncouth.”
The judges acquitted Robinson on both counts. Although he had been cleared, Robinson’s military career was effectively over. Two weeks earlier, on July 21, 1944, army doctors had decided that his ankle injury was permanent. His outfit, “The Black Panthers” had already deployed to fight in Europe from October 31, 1944, through May 6, 1945, and earned a Presidential Unit Citation. With his outfit gone and a bad taste lingering from the court-martial, Robinson asked to be discharged because of his ankle injury.
The rest of the Jackie Robinson story is history. Major league baseball owners had a long-standing agreement to keep baseball white, but the Dodgers intended to change that, and manager Branch Rickey was searching for the right player to break the color barrier. In addition to a talented athlete, Rickey wanted a man of unimpeachable character and firm inner strength. He knew that player would have to endure the vilest of racial slurs from fans and opposing players and, in some cities, he would be barred from the hotels and restaurants where his white teammates stayed and ate.
He found the right man in Jackie Robinson.
This Veterans Day, instead of - or even better, in addition to thanking a vet, how’s about donating to The Civil Conversations Project, an organization co-founded by a veteran that is on the front lines fighting every single day in this long struggle for racial justice - writing, talking, presenting, organizing, training, cajoling, and planning. Our 2022 goals have been impacted by the relentless, ad-nauseum political fundraising drive. In 2023 we will expand what we have been doing as well as hire several more people. In addition, with your help, we will roll out our Community Conversations Initiative, training any interested party how to facilitate these difficult conversations around race, debunking myths and filling in the gaps that none of us were taught in school. America can’t wait.
Wayne, thanks so much for sharing this on Veterans Day. A great reminder of how far we’ve come, but only because of the courage of men and women to stand up against what was wrong. To me there is a double heroism in these stories. The conviction to stand up for and serve your country. And the larger, but equally dangerous, conviction to stand up against racism and inequality. Thanks for making history a part of our conversation going forward.
|On March 13, 1944, a driver in Alexandria, Louisiana, shot and killed Private Edward Green for failing to move to the back of the bus.|
My hometown. My junior high school mascot was the volunteers. My high school mascot was the rebels. Both mascots wore confederate gray. However, by the time I passed through junior high ('95) and high school ('99), both schools were extremely diverse and with friends of all races, never once had I had to feel the sting of racism, from my teachers or fellow students. And I'm lucky because my parents did have to feel that bite. The needle is moving. #eracism