Colonel Mildred Duff - "Catherine Booth"

Charles Kingsley - "True Words for Brave Men"

Rutherford Mayne - "The Drone"

Garrett P. Serviss - "The Second Deluge"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

M >> Morris J. MacGregor Jr. >> Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965




[Footnote 5-7: Bernard De Voto, "The Easy Chair"
_Harper's_ 192 (January 1946):38-39.]

[Footnote 5-8: Ltr, John H. Caldwell (Hartsdale, New
York) to the Editor, _Harper's_ 192 (March 1946):
unnumbered front pages.]

[Footnote 5-9: Ltr, Sen. W. Lee O'Daniel of Texas to
SW, 27 Feb 46, ASW 291.2 (1946).]

Nor did the armed forces escape the rise in racial tension. For
example, the War Department received many letters from the public and
members of Congress when black officers, nearly the base's entire
contingent of four hundred, demonstrated against the segregation of
the officers' club at Freeman Field, Indiana, in April 1945. The
question at issue was whether a post commander had the authority to
exclude individuals on grounds of race from recreational facilities on
an Army post. The Army Air Forces supported the post commander and
suggested a return to a policy of separate and equal facilities for
whites and blacks, primarily because a club for officers was a social
center for the entire family. Since it was hardly an accepted custom
in the country for the races to intermingle, officials argued, the
Army had to follow rather than depart from custom, and, further, the
wishes of white officers as well as those of Negroes deserved
consideration.[5-10]

[Footnote 5-10: This important incident in the Air
Force's racial history has been well documented.
See AAF Summary Sheet, 5 May 45, sub: Racial
Incidents at Freeman Field and Ft. Huachuca,
Arizona, and Memo, Maj Gen H. R. Harmon, ACofS,
AAF, for DCofS, 29 May 45, both in WDGAP 291.2. See
also Memo, The Inspector General for DCofS, 1 May
45, sub: Investigation at Freeman Field, WDSIG
291.2 Freeman Field, and Memo, Truman Gibson for
ASW, 14 May 45, ASW 291.2 NT. For a critical
contemporary analysis, see Hq Air Defense Command,
"The Training of Negro Combat Units by the First
Air Force" (Monograph III, May 1946), vol. 1; ch.
III, AFSHRC. The incident is also discussed in
Osur, _Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World
War II_, ch. VI, and in Alan L. Gropman's _The Air
Force Integrates, 1943-1964_ (Washington:
Government Printing Office, 1978). Gropman's work
is the major source for the history of Negroes in
the postwar Air Force.]

The controversy reached the desk of John McCloy, the Assistant
Secretary of War, who considered the position taken by the Army Air
Forces a backward step, a reversal of the War Department position in
an earlier and similar case at Selfridge Field, Michigan. McCloy's
contention prevailed--that the commander's administrative discretion
in these matters fell short of authority to exclude individuals from
the right to enjoy recreational facilities provided by the federal
government or maintained with its funds. Secretary of War Stimson
agreed to amend the basic policy to reflect this clarification.[5-11]

[Footnote 5-11: Memo, ASW for SW, 4 Jun 45; Memo, SGS
for DCofS, 7 Jun 45, sub: Report of Advisory
Committee on Special Troop Policies, both in ASW
291.2 (NT).]

In December 1945 the press reported and the War and Navy Departments
investigated an incident at Le Havre, France, where soldiers were
embarking for the United States for demobilization. Officers of a Navy
escort carrier objected to the inclusion of 123 black enlisted men on
the grounds that the ship was unable to provide separate
accommodations for Negroes. Army port authorities then substituted
another group that included only one black officer and five black
enlisted men who were placed aboard over the protests of the ship's
officers.[5-12] The Secretary of the Navy had already declared that the
Navy did not differentiate between men on account of race, and on (p. 129)
12 December 1945 he reiterated his statement, adding that it applied
to members of all the armed forces.[5-13] Demonstrating the frequent
gap between policy and practice, Forrestal's order was ignored six
months later by port officials when a group of black officers and men
was withdrawn from a shipping list at Bremerhaven, Germany, on the
grounds that "segregation is a War Department policy."[5-14]

[Footnote 5-12: OPD Summary Sheet to CofS, 2 Apr 46,
CS 291.2 Negroes; Memo, WD Bureau of Public
Relations for Press, 5 Jan 46; Ltr, Exec to Actg
ASW to P. Bernard Young, Jr., Norfolk _Journal and
Guide_, 14 Dec 45, ASW 291.2.]

[Footnote 5-13: ALNAV 423-45, 12 Dec 45.]

[Footnote 5-14: Memo, Marcus H. Ray, Civ Aide to SW,
for ASW, 11 Jun 46, ASW 291.2 (NT).]

Overt antiblack behavior and social turbulence in the civilian
community also reached into the services. In February 1946 Issac
Woodard, Jr., who had served in the Army for fifteen months in the
Pacific, was ejected from a commercial bus and beaten by civilian
police. Sergeant Woodard had recently been discharged from the Army at
Camp Gordon, Georgia, and was still in uniform at the time of the
brutal attack that blinded him. His case was quickly taken up by the
NAACP and became the centerpiece of a national protest.[5-15] Not only
did the civil rights spokesmen protest the sadistic blinding, they
also charged that the Army was incapable of protecting its own members
in the community.

[Footnote 5-15: See Ltr, Walter White, Secy, NAACP,
to SW, 6 May 46, and a host of letters in SW 291.2
file. See also copies of NAACP press releases on
the subject in CMH files.]

While service responsibility for countering off-base discrimination
against servicemen was still highly debatable in 1946, the right of
men on a military base to protection was uncontestable. Yet even
service practices on military bases were under attack as racial
conflicts and threats of violence multiplied. "Dear Mother," one
soldier stationed at Sheppard Field, Texas, felt compelled to write in
early 1946, "I don't know how long I'll stay whole because when those
Whites come over to start [trouble] again I'll be right with the rest
of the fellows. Nothing to worry about. Love,..."[5-16] If the
soldier's letter revealed continuing racial conflict in the service,
it also testified to a growing racial unity among black servicemen
that paralleled the trend in the black community. When Negroes could
resolve with a new self-consciousness to "be right with the rest of
the fellows," their cause was immeasurably strengthened and their
goals brought appreciably nearer.

[Footnote 5-16: Ltr, 28 Feb 46, copy in SW 291.2.]

Civil rights spokesmen had several points to make regarding the use of
Negroes in the postwar armed forces. Referring to the fact that World
War II began with Negroes fighting for the right to fight, they
demanded that the services guarantee a fair representation of Negroes
in the postwar forces. Furthermore, to avoid the frustration suffered
by Negroes trained for combat and then converted into service troops,
they demanded that Negroes be trained and employed in all military
specialties. They particularly stressed the correlation between poor
leaders and poor units. The services' command practices, they charged,
had frequently led to the appointment of the wrong men, either black
or white, to command black units. Their principal solution was to
provide for the promotion and proper employment of a proportionate
share of competent black officers and noncommissioned officers. Above
all, they pointed to the humiliations black soldiers suffered in (p. 130)
the community outside the limits of the base.[5-17] One particularly
telling example of such discrimination that circulated in the black
press in 1945 described German prisoners of war being fed in a
railroad restaurant while their black Army guards were forced to eat
outside. But such discrimination toward black servicemen was hardly
unique, and the civil rights advocates were quick to point to the
connection between such practices and low morale and performance. For
them there was but one answer to such discrimination: all men must be
treated as individuals and guaranteed equal treatment and opportunity
in the services. In a word, the armed forces must integrate. They
pointed with pride to the success of those black soldiers who served
in integrated units in the last months of the European war, and they
repeatedly urged the complete abolition of segregation in the
peacetime Army and Navy.[5-18]

[Footnote 5-17: For a summary of these views, see
Warman Welliver, "Report on the Negro Soldier,"
_Harper's_ 192 (April 1946):333-38 and back pages.]

[Footnote 5-18: Murray, _Negro Handbook, 1946-1947_,
pp. 369-70.]

[Illustration: ASSISTANT SECRETARY MCCLOY.]

When an executive of the National Urban League summed up these demands
for President Truman at the end of the war, he clearly indicated that
the changes in military policy that had brought about the gradual
improvement in the lot of black servicemen during the war were now
beside the point.[5-19] The military might try to ignore this fact for a
little while longer; a politically sensitive President was not about
to make such an error.

[Footnote 5-19: Ltr, Exec Secy, National Urban
League, to President Truman, 27 Aug 45, copy in
Forrestal file, GenRecsNav.]


_The Army's Grand Review_

In the midst of this intensifying sentiment for integration, in fact a
full year before the war ended, the Army began to search for a new
racial policy. The invasion of Normandy and the extraordinary advance
to Paris during the summer of 1944 had led many to believe that the
war in Europe would soon be over, perhaps by fall. As the Allied
leaders at the Quebec Conference in September discussed arrangements
to be imposed on a defeated Germany, American officials in Washington
began to consider plans for the postwar period. Among them was
Assistant Secretary of War McCloy. Dissatisfied with the manner in
which the Army was using black troops, McCloy believed it was time to
start planning how best to employ them in the postwar Army, which (p. 131)
according to current assumptions, would be small and professional and
would depend upon a citizen reserve to augment it in an emergency.

[Illustration: TRUMAN GIBSON.]

McCloy concluded that despite a host of prewar studies by the General
Staff, the Army War College, and other military agencies, the Army was
unprepared during World War II to deal with and make the most
efficient use of the large numbers of Negroes furnished by Selective
Service. Policies for training and employing black troops had
developed in response to specific problems rather than in accordance
with a well thought out and comprehensive plan. Because of "inadequate
preparation prior to the period of sudden expansion," McCloy believed
a great many sources of racial irritation persisted. To develop a
"definite, workable policy, for the inclusion and utilization in the
Army of minority racial groups" before postwar planning crystallized
and solidified, McCloy suggested to his assistants that the War
Department General Staff review existing practices and experiences at
home and abroad and recommend changes.[5-20]

[Footnote 5-20: Memos, McCloy for Advisory Committee
on Special Troop Policies, 31 Jul and 1 Sep 44,
sub: Participation of Negro Troops in the Post-War
Military Establishment; Memo, ASW for SW, 10 Jan
45, same sub, all in ASW 291.2 (NT).]

The Chief of Staff, General Marshall, continued to insist that the
Army's racial problem was but part of a larger national problem and,
as McCloy later recalled, had no strong views on a solution.[5-21]
Whatever his personal feelings, Marshall, like most Army staff
officers, always emphasized efficiency and performance to the
exclusion of social concerns. While he believed that the limited scope
of the experiment with integrated platoons toward the end of the war
in Europe made the results inconclusive, Marshall still wanted the
platoons' performance considered in the general staff study.[5-22]

[Footnote 5-21: Ltr, John J. McCloy to author, 18 Sep
69, CMH files.]

[Footnote 5-22: Memo, CofS for McCloy, 25 Aug 45,
WDCSA 291.2 Negroes (25 Aug 45).]

The idea of a staff study on the postwar use of black troops also
found favor with Secretary Stimson, and a series of conferences and
informal discussions on the best way to go about it took place in the
highest echelons of the Army during the early months of 1945. The
upshot was a decision to ask the senior commanders at home and
overseas for their comments. How did they train and use their black
troops? What irritations, frictions, and disorders arising from racial
conflicts had hampered their operations? What were their (p. 132)
recommendations on how best to use black troops after the war? Two
weeks after the war ended in Europe, a letter with an attached
questionnaire was sent to senior commanders.[5-23] The questionnaire
asked for such information as: "To what extent have you maintained
segregation beyond the actual unit level, and what is your
recommendation on this subject? If you have employed Negro platoons in
the same company with white platoons, what is your opinion of the
practicability of this arrangement?"

[Footnote 5-23: Ltr, TAG to CinC, Southwest Pacific
Area, et al., 23 May 45, sub: Participation of
Negro Troops in Post-War Military Establishment, AG
291.2 (23 May 45). On the high-level discussions,
see Memo, Maj Gen W. F. Tompkins, Dir, Special
Planning Div, for ACofS, G-1, and Personnel
Officers of the Air, Ground, and Service Forces, 24
Feb 45, same sub; DF, G-1, WDGS (Col O. G. Haywood,
Exec), 8 Mar 45, same sub; Memo, Col G. E. Textor,
Dep Dir, WDSSP, for ACofS, G-1, 10 Mar 45, same
sub; Memo for the File (Col Lawrence Westbrook), 16
Mar 45; Memo, Maj Bell I. Wiley for Col Mathews, 18
Apr 45, all in AG 291.2.]

Not everyone agreed that the questionnaire was the best way to review
the performance of Negroes in World War II. Truman Gibson, for one,
doubted the value of soliciting information from senior commanders,
feeling that these officers would offer much subjective material of
little real assistance. Referring to the letter to the major senior
commanders, he said:

Mere injunctions of objectivity do not work in the racial field
where more often than not decisions are made on a basis of
emotion, prejudice or pre-existing opinion.... Much of the
difficulty in the Army has arisen from improper racial attitudes
on both sides. Indeed, the Army's basic policy of segregation is
said to be based principally on the individual attitudes and
desires of the soldiers.

But who knew what soldiers' attitudes were? Why not, he suggested,
make some scientific inquiries? Why not try to determine, for example,
how far public opinion and pressure would permit the Army to go in
developing policies for black troops?[5-24]

[Footnote 5-24: Memo, Gibson for ASW, 30 May 45, ASW
291.2 (NT).]

Gibson had become, perforce, an expert on public opinion. During the
last several months he had suffered the slings and arrows of an
outraged black press for his widely publicized analysis of the
performance of black troops. Visiting black units and commanders in
the Mediterranean and European theaters to observe, in McCloy's words,
"the performance of Negro troops, their attitudes, and the attitudes
of their officers toward them,"[5-25] Gibson had arrived in Italy at the
end of February 1945 to find theater officials concerned over the poor
combat record of the 92d Infantry Division, the only black division in
the theater and one of three activated by the War Department. After a
series of discussions with senior commanders and a visit to the
division, Gibson participated in a press conference in Rome during
which he spoke candidly of the problems of the division's infantry
units.[5-26] Subsequent news reports of the conference stressed Gibson's
confirmation of the division's disappointing performance, but
neglected the reasons he advanced to explain its failure. The reports
earned a swift and angry retort from the black community. Many (p. 133)
organizations and journals condemned Gibson's evaluation of the
92d outright. Some seemed less concerned with the possible accuracy of
his statement than with the effects it might have on the development
of future military policy. The NAACP's _Crisis_, for example, charged
that Gibson had "carried the ball for the War Department," and that
"probably no more unfortunate words, affecting the representatives of
the entire race, were ever spoken by a Negro in a key position in such
a critical hour. We seem destined to bear the burden of Mr. Gibson's
Rome adventure for many years to come."[5-27]

[Footnote 5-25: Ltr, Gibson to Gen John C. H. Lee,
CG, ComZ, ETOUSA, 31 Mar 45, ASW 291.2 (NT).]

[Footnote 5-26: Memo, Truman Gibson for Maj Gen O. L.
Nelson, 12 Mar 45, sub: Report on Visit to 92d
Division (Negro Troops), ASW 291.2.]

[Footnote 5-27: "Negro Soldier Betrayed," _Crisis_ 52
(April 1945):97; "Gibson Echo," ibid. (July
1945):193.]

Other black journals took a more detached view of the situation,
asserting that Gibson's remarks revealed nothing new and that the
problem was segregation, of which the 92d was a notable victim. Gibson
took this tack in his own defense, pointing to the irony of a
situation in which "some people can, on the one hand, argue that
segregation is wrong, and on the other ... blindly defend the product
of that segregation."[5-28]

[Footnote 5-28: Washington _Afro-American_, April 15,
1945, quoted in Lee, _Employment of Negro Troops_,
p. 579. For details of the Gibson controversy, see
Lee, pp. 575-79.]

Gibson had defenders in the Army whose comments might well apply to
all the large black units in the war. At one extreme stood the Allied
commander in Italy, General Mark W. Clark, who attributed the 92d's
shortcomings to "our handling of minority problems at home." Most of
all, General Clark thought, black soldiers needed the incentive of
feeling that they were fighting for home and country as equals. But
his conclusion--"only the proper environment in his own country can
provide such an incentive"--neatly played down Army responsibility for
the division's problems.[5-29]

[Footnote 5-29: Mark W. Clark, _A Calculated Risk_
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), pp. 414-15.]

Another officer, who as commander of a divisional artillery unit was
intimately acquainted with the division's shortcomings, delineated an
entirely different set of causes. The division was doomed to
mediocrity and worse, Lt. Col. Marcus H. Ray concluded, from the
moment of its activation. Undercurrents of racial antipathy as well as
distrust and prejudice, he believed, infected the organization from
the outset and created an unhealthy beginning. The practice of
withholding promotion from deserving black officers along with
preferential assignments for white officers prolonged the malady. The
basic misconception was that southern white officers understood
Negroes; under such officers Negroes who conformed with the southern
stereotype were promoted regardless of their abilities, while those
who exhibited self-reliance and self-respect--necessary attributes of
leadership--were humiliated and discouraged for their uppityness. "I
was astounded," he said, "by the willingness of the white officers who
preceded us to place their own lives in a hazardous position in order
to have tractable Negroes around them."[5-30] In short, the men of the
92d who fought and died bravely should be honored, but their unit,
which on balance did not perform well, should be considered a (p. 134)
failure of white leadership.

[Footnote 5-30: Ltr, Ray to Gibson, 14 May 45, WDGAP
291.2. Ray later succeeded Gibson as Civilian Aide
to the Secretary of War.]

[Illustration: COMPANY I, 370TH INFANTRY, 92D DIVISION, _advances
through Cascina, Italy_.]

Lt. Gen. Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., then Fifth Army commander in Italy,
disagreed. Submitting the proceedings of a board of review that had
investigated the effectiveness of black officers and enlisted men in
the 92d Division, he was sympathetic to the frustrations encountered
by the division commander, Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond. "In justice to
those splendid officers"--a reference to the white senior commanders
and staff members of the division--"who have devoted themselves
without stint in an endeavor to produce a combat division with Negro
personnel and who have approached this problem without prejudice,"
Truscott endorsed the board's hard view that many infantrymen in the
division "would not fight."[5-31] This conclusion was in direct conflict
with the widely held and respected truism that competent leadership
solved all problems, from which it followed that the answer to the
problem of Negroes in combat was command. Good commanders prevented
friction, performed their mission effectively, and achieved success no
matter what the obstacles--a view put forth in a typical report from
World War II that "the efficiency of Negro units depends entirely on
the leadership of officers and NCO's."[5-32]

[Footnote 5-31: 1st Ind, Hq Fifth Army (signed L. K.
Truscott, Jr.), 30 Jul 45, to Proceedings and Board
of Review, 92d Inf Div, Fifth Army files.]

[Footnote 5-32: WD file 291.2 (Negro Troop Policy),
1943-1945, is full of statements to this effect.
The quote is from 2d Ind, Hq USASTAF, 26 Jul 45,
attached to AAF Summary Sheets to CofS, 17 Sep 45,
sub: Participation of Negro Troops in the Post-War
Military Establishment, AG 291.2 (23 May 45).]

In fact, General Truscott's analysis of the 92d Division's problems
seemed at variance with his analysis of command problems in other
units, as illustrated by his later attention to problems in the
all-white 34th Infantry Division.[5-33] The habit of viewing unit
problems as command problems was also demonstrated by General Jacob L.
Devers, who was deputy Allied commander in the Mediterranean when the
92d arrived in Italy. Reflecting later upon the 92d Division, General
Devers agreed that its engineer and armor unit performed well, but the
infantry did not "because their commanders weren't good enough."[5-34]

[Footnote 5-33: L. K. Truscott, Jr., _Command
Missions: A Personal Story_ (New York: Dutton,
1959), see pages 461-62 and 471-72 for comparison
of Truscott's critical analysis of problems of the
34th and 92d Infantry Divisions.]

[Footnote 5-34: Interv, author with General Jacob
Devers, 30 Mar 71, CMH files.]

Years later General Almond, the division's commander, was to claim (p. 135)
that the 92d Division had done "many things well and some things
poorly." It fought in extremely rugged terrain against a determined
enemy over an exceptionally broad front. The division's artillery as
well as its technical and administrative units performed well. Negroes
also excelled in intelligence work and in dealing with the Italian
partisans. On the other hand, General Almond reported, infantry
elements were unable to close with the enemy and destroy him. Rifle
squads, platoons, and companies tended "to melt away" when confronted
by determined opposition. Almond blamed this on "a lack of dedication
to purpose, pride of accomplishment and devotion to duty and teammates
by the majority of black riflemen assigned to Infantry Units."[5-35]

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