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Segregation
Despite a growing chorus of protests by black citizens, outraged at the idea of fighting bigotry abroad while it was tolerated at home, the military continued to insist on segregating African-American servicemen into all-black units. Even blood supplies for saving the lives of the wounded were kept separate. There were separate facilities on the base for black and white personnel "“ separate theaters, chapels, even bowling alleys.
Despite a growing chorus of protests by black citizens, outraged at the idea of fighting bigotry abroad while it was tolerated at home, the military continued to insist on segregating African-American servicemen into all-black units. Even blood supplies for saving the lives of the wounded were kept separate. There were separate facilities on the base for black and white personnel "“ separate theaters, chapels, even bowling alleys.
56 records found for “Segregation” |
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Black Marines of the 51st Defense Bn. -- John Gray's unit -- with a gun named "Lena Horne." 1945.
Source: National Archives (127-N-121743)
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African American Marines train at Montford Point Camp, Camp Lejeune, New River, North Carolina. March 1943
Source: Library of Congress (LC-USW3-023006-D)
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New African American Marine recruits at Montford Point Camp, Camp Lejeune, New River, North Carolina. March 1943.
Source: Library of Congress (LC-USW3-022971)
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Despite the bravery of African Americans in all of America’s previous wars, despite the argument made by the NAACP and others that “a Jim Crow army cannot fight for a free world,” the armed forces of the United States remained strictly segregated.
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Asako Maida Tukuno was born in 1923 in Oakland, grew up in an ethnically mixed neighborhood in Richmond, California. Her parents, Japanese immigrants, ran a successful flower nursery. She was a freshman at Berkeley in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Her parents were forced to leave the West Coast . . .
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At the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in Baltimore, Maryland, welders help assemble the SS Frederick Douglas, a Liberty ship. May 1943.
Source: Library of Congress (LC-USW3-24141-C)
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Barbara Covington was born on February 16, 1924 in Sacramento. Her mother's family came to Oroville, California in the 1870s. Her father James William Covington had been president of the NAACP in Sacramento in the 1920s, but died when Covington was 3-1/2 years old. Covington moved with . . .
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Sacramento's Barbara Covington and Jeroline Green at a Halloween dance. Both worked at McClellan Air Force Base during the war.
Source: Barbara Perkins
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Barbara Covington at a picnic at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento. Covington worked there as a typist.
Source: Barbara Perkins
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There was wonderful patriotism and people willing to fight.
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Of Mexican descent, Bill Lansford noticed very little discrimination growing up.
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Daniel Inouye, the son of a Japanese immigrant, was born in Hawaii, September 7, 1924. He was a seventeen year old high school senior on December 7, 1941, and witnessed first hand the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As a Red Cross volunteer he helped tend to the many civilian . . .
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African American Marines in dress blues, Harlem, New York, New York, June 1943.
Source: Library of Congress (LC-USW3-31097-C)
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At a newstand, a headline from the San Francisco Examiner reads: "Ouster Of All Japs In California Near!"
Source: National Archives (210-G1-A-36)
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Jeroline Green was born and raised in Coffeyville, Kansas. After high school, she enrolled in junior college for a time, and in the summer of 1943, decided to visit a friend who was living in Sacramento. She arrived in August, intending to stay for a few weeks. Instead, she quickly . . .
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As a Native American, Joe Medicine Crow encountered no discrimination.
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Mobile's John Gray.
Source: John Gray
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John Gray was born in his grandparents' home in Chickasaw, Alabama on November 27, 1924, and was living in Mobile when the war began. His father had left the family and gone north to work in the steel mills in Youngstown, Ohio. His mother worked as a cook and housekeeper. . .
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John Hope Franklin is the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of History, and for seven years was Professor of Legal History in the Law School at Duke University. He is a native of Oklahoma and a graduate of Fisk University. He received the A.M. and Ph.D. degrees in history from . . .
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Trying to volunteer to help fight, John Hope Franklin learned he wasn't needed.
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