Celebrating Black Veterans

Leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass famously wrote,

“Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny he has earned the right to citizenship.”

U.S. Army Veteran
12 1/2 years Honorable Service ODS Vet : Support Garrison OEF/OIF Vet : Deployed to Theatre
No Political Affiliation

Keeping in mind that these MEN/these FOLLOW UNITED STATES OF AMERICA CITIZENS/SOLDIERS that were lynched during on-going Jim Crow Laws that the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT both supported and enforced against ALL Black Americans still wanted to serve and defend the USA.

Yet White TRAITORS/White Domestic Terrorist both Active Duty & Former Military Personnel … that have murdered or caused the deaths of others … wasn’t hung/lynched.

All (3) of my Grandfathers served HONORABLE in the Army under these type of conditions from WAR II/Korea War. They shared their experiences with me.

Uncles :
(1) Marines * Vietnam Wars
(1) Navy * Vietnam War
(4) Army (2) * Vietnam War


None of the 3 of my Grandfathers wanted me to join the “white man army”, not because they didn’t enjoy the military … they didn’t enjoy the racist and racism during their service and didn’t want myself to experience it.

Yet here I am.
——————————————
The little-known mass hanging of black soldiers in Texas in 1917
Mildred Europa Taylor March 22, 2019 at 06:22 am

SOURCE :

https://face2faceafrica.com/article/the-little-known-mass-hanging-of-black-soldiers-in-texas-in-1917


A lynching kept out of sight

Pvt. Felix Hall died in the only known murder of its kind on a U.S. military base. How hard did the government try to find his killers?

Story by Alexa Mills
Published on September 2, 2016

SOURCE :

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2016/09/02/the-story-of-the-only-known-lynching-on-a-u-s-military-base/



Remembering the black soldiers executed after Houston's 1917 race riot
February 01, 2018 · 4:00 PM EST
By James Jeffrey

SOURCE :

https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-02-01/remembering-black-soldiers-executed-after-houstons-1917-race-riot

*** Lynching has ALWAYS been a special message sent.

CENTER FOR CIVIL AND HUMAN RIGHTS: LYNCHING POSTCARDS OF INHUMANITY EXHIBIT: JANUARY, 2011

https://kathmanduk2.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/center-for-civil-and-human-rights-lynching-postcards-of-inhumanity-exhibit-january-2011/


NSFW: AMERICAN TERRORISM … LYNCHING POSTCARDS : In
the past century on American soil – the estimated 3,436 lynchings of black American men and women between 1882 and 1950

https://cvltnation.com/nsfw-american-terrorism-lynching-postcards/

http://www.cvltnation.com/nsfw-american-terrorism-lynching-postcards/

https://www.amazon.com/Without-Sanctuary-Lynching-Photography-America/dp/ [login to see]

http://www.gettyimages.com/photos/lynching?excludenudity=true&sort=mostpopular&mediatype=photography&phrase=lynching

http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/projects/2001/06/lynching/page1.shtml

There is no such thing as a white, black, brown, red, or any other kind of veteran. We are all brothers who served. This is just one more thing to KEEP us divided. Period. End of discussion.

Race should have nothing to do with VA benefits, he/she is a Vet. that is all that matters. Semper Fi

It was said English military personnel were pissed at how the black Americans were treated by the US military.

1.) LIBRARY
LIBRARY
OF CONGRESS
RESEARCH GUIDES

American Minority Groups in the Vietnam War: A Resource
Guide

American minority groups served in all branches of the military during the Vietnam War. This guide comprises Library of Congress digital resources and print materials related to the topic.

SOURCE : https://guides.loc.gov/racial-ethnic-and-religious-minorities-in-the-vietnam-war


2.) Serving without 'equal opportunity': Vietnam veterans faced racism at home and abroad

During the civil rights movement, Ohio veterans Joseph Jennings and Edward Morast risked their lives for a country that denied them basic freedoms.

SOURCE : https://www.dispatch.com/in-depth/news/2020/12/03/black-vietnam-veterans-systemic-racism-military/ [login to see] /

V1 : https://youtu.be/Ds0YF3JQHtc?si=CU20zOc_O4qm9kU_


V2 : https://youtu.be/ox_rKFBooqo?si=uiv9yPRQAIX41NOl


1.) Fighting the Double Front: The Military Rights Movement of the World War II Era

On July 6, 1863, Frederick Douglass said, "Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters US, let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States." '

For most of history, military service has been directly linked to citizenship and the rights that come with it.

Although African Americans have been involved in every American conflict since the Revolutionary War, they were particularly limited to support units because of the connection between fighting in military combat and civilian rights.

During the First World War, there was hope that honorable service of African Americans in Europe would help secure more rights in the military.

This would not be the case. African Americans learned during World War I that "you don't do your duty and hope for reward. You make your demand, strike your bargain, and then go fight."?

The Second World War would see active, organized resistance to the racial discrimination faced by those African Americans seeking to participate in the war effort.

While some historians have pointed to this time as the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, others have attributed this time to disillusionment and futile struggle, brushing aside words like "watershed" and "turning point" to place emphasis on the later Civil Rights Movement.

The Second World War would see active, organized resistance to the racial discrimination faced by those African Americans seeking to participate in the war effort.

While some historians have pointed to this time as the foundation of the Civil Rights Movement of the This view, however, fails to recognize the impact the World War II experience had on African American society, the U.S. military, and American society as a whole.

To view this time exclusively in the shadow of the larger, more overt movement of the 1960s is to take away the very tangible effect these efforts had. By changing the lens through which we view the struggle of African Americans in the World War Il Era, we can see it not as a lead in to the Civil Rights Movement but as a stand-alone conflict with strategic and organized efforts to change the African American's place in the military and war industries.

Though undoubtedly linked to later movements, this unnamed fight of the 1940s is not simply the prelude to a bigger, better story.

This struggle of the 1940s can be identified as a Military Rights Movement with its own agenda, tactics, and palpable results, including the integration of American troops by President Truman in the years immediately following the conflict.

SOURCE : https://openspaces.unk.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1024&context=undergraduate-research-journal


2.) Pvt. Booker T. Spicely
Location: Durham County, North Carolina
Age: 34
Year: 1944

Pvt. Booker T. Spicely, 34, was a U.S. Army private on active duty who was killed in Durham County, North Carolina, in 1944.

On July 8 1944, Spicely, originally from Philadelphia and serving at Camp Butner, boarded a bus and sat in the second-to-last row. When more white passengers boarded, the bus driver, Herman Lee Council, ordered Spicely to sit further back. Jim Crow seating segregation was still enforced in North Carolina at the time.
The private initially protested, but eventually moved to the rear of the vehicle.

Council was employed by the Duke Power Company, who owned and operated the local buses.

When Spicely got off the bus, Council shot him twice, alleging that Spicely had started an argument and advanced on him.
Military police brought Spicely to Watts Hospital, where on account of his race he was refused care; he later died at Duke Hospital.

Council was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. The Duke Power Company paid his $2,500 bail. Council was permitted to drive his bus until the trial.
At trial, an all-white jury acquitted him after only 28 minutes of deliberation. The power company continued to employ Council, but switched his route.

For more information, search CRRJ’s archive.

SOURCE : https://crrj.org/efforts/booker-spicely/


3.) HISTORY
Black soldier killed during Jim Crow era now honored with historical marker in N.C.

DECEMBER 13, 20235:11 AM ET
HEARD ON MORNING EDITION
FROM
AMERICAN HOMEFRONT PROJECT

In 1944, the city of Durham, N.C., was riveted by the killing of a Black soldier – and the trial of the white bus driver who shot him. The soldier is now being honored with a historical marker.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

In 1944, the city of Durham, N.C., was riveted by the killing of a young Black soldier and the trial of the white bus driver accused of shooting him. Now a group of activists has revived that soldier's story, and the state has unveiled a historical marker on the place he was shot. WUNC's Jay Price reports.

JAY PRICE, BYLINE: Private Booker T. Spicely was a 34-year-old cook from Philadelphia. He was stationed at Camp Butner, not far from Durham.

It was a July Saturday, and he had come into the city on a weekend pass to spend time in Hayti, the thriving community that had become known as the Black Wall Street.

But when some white soldiers boarded a city bus he was riding, Spicely fell afoul of one of the most notorious of the Jim Crow laws enforcing racial segregation in the South.

SOURCE : https://www.npr.org/2023/12/13/ [login to see] /black-soldier-killed-during-jim-crow-era-now-honored-with-historical-marker-in-n


4.) Discovery About Lynchings: Military Veterans Often Were Targets

As they returned home from war, proud of their service, black veterans in the south often encountered suspicion, resentment, and - in some cases - brutal violence.

"The military has always enjoyed a kind of deference and respect and honor," he said.

"And it was hard to navigate that for white Southerners when they were dealing with black veterans coming back home."
And many white southerners were willing to use violence to suppress it.

Like the 1946 killing of J.C. Farmer of Nash County, N.C., who was shot by a mob after a law officer apparently attacked him for laughing at a bus stop.
Some white southerners even considered it a provocation if a black man wore his military uniform in public, Stevenson said.

"Many of them would be asked to take off their uniforms and walk home in their underwear, naked, in some optic of humiliation," he said. "And they would resist and there would be conflict, there would be violence.

"Victory at war, victory at home"

World War II in particular was a turning point for African Americans, in part because so many served. At the beginning of the war, there were fewer than 4,000 black troops. By the end, there were more than 1.2 million.
Many had enlisted in hopes of better lives, gaining more respect. Instead, they were viewed with suspicion and resentment upon their return.

During World War II, black leaders in the U.S. began promoting what they called the "Double V" campaign. One V represented victory over fascism in the war, while the second called for victory over racism at home.

"Victory at home meant getting the right to vote you go fight for your nation and come back home and you're not allowed to vote because of your color," Stevenson said.

But the right to vote wasn't one that many white Southerners wanted to yield, and that may have played a role in one of the more notorious lynchings of the post-World War II era -- one that amateur actors and activists now reenact annually in Georgia.

A veteran named George Dorsey was killed, along with his wife and another couple, near a bridge at a rural area called Moore's Ford. Their killings came in 1946, during the heated atmosphere of the first election after the U.S. Supreme Court blocked white-only primaries.

A leading candidate was campaigning on a pledge to prevent black voters from casting ballots in primaries.

The two couples were dragged from a car near a rural bridge and shot dozens of times.

The fact that Dorsey had served during the war likely contributed to the reasons he was killed -- and amplified the injustice, said Cassandra Greene, a minister who directed the reenactment.

"You go in another land, and you literally were risking your life for this country, and then you come back and you end up dead in a field, for what?" Greene said. "He was a vet, he served this nation, but it doesn't matter what we do, we are always second-class to a certain element of our country."

SOURCE : https://www.wunc.org/military/2018-09-24/a-shocking-discovery-about-lynchings-military-veterans-often-were-targets?_amp=true


A decisive moment for the civil rights movement

The Moore's Ford killings, as they are now called, were so horrific that they all but overshadowed another lynching of a veteran just days earlier and a few counties away.

The Ku Klux Klan had threatened violence against African Americans who dared to vote, but Maceo Snipes ignored the threats and became the first black voter in Taylor County, Ga.

A day later, four white men drove up to his house, called him out on the porch, and shot him after a brief altercation. Snipes lingered in the hospital for two days, but the doctor claimed not to have any "black blood" for transfusions.

When he died, many of his family members fled to Ohio. He was buried in an unmarked grave after the black undertaker received death threats.

For years, Snipes' great niece, Raynita Alexander, has collected records and stories from family members to illuminate his life and death.

She said stubbornness was a family trait, and that from all she has learned, she has no doubt that his service fighting in the Pacific in World War II affected his decision to vote.

"I think it made him say he had a right," she said. "I really think that's what went through his mind. 'Why would you keep me from voting if I served my country?'"

It has always amazed me that the Military is so willingly and
openly accepting ldentity Politics and so many are afraid to
challenge it. Whether it be Color, Race, Sex, or Religion, all are
irrelevant while in "UNIFORM." Just think of that word. Two root
words from Latin that ultimately means "ONE FORM" The only
things that should ever matter to any one in the Military is Duty,
Purpose, Courage, Honor, and Oath to God and
Brothers/Country. For ultimately a Country is your Kin, your
Family to one degree or another. Instead of these multiple
'adjectives" the Uniform and Common Standards for all,
irrespective of their origins, race, color, or gender, should be
uniting factors in pursuit of those goals above all else. It is a
shame that we have forgot the most important lessons of the
past, not just our Country's History, but those Republics before
us that we modeled ourselves after.

I may be a little late in posting this... However, Better Late Than Never!
Don't forget to celebrate, honor, and remember my good friend and Brother in Arms, Master Sergeant Melvin Hill. One of the finest soldiers I ever served with!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McQ8hzmJ3YU