Courage Has No Color Read online

  Gone with the Wind, the next big movie about the Civil War, came out in 1939. It reinforced more black stereotypes, especially through the character of Mammy, the strong but loving servant who is so loyal to her mistress that she fights off black soldiers to protect the southern plantation she calls home. She even chooses to stay with Miss Scarlett after being set free when slavery is abolished. This “mammy” figure, often a heavyset black woman wearing a maid’s uniform or a kerchief on her head, showed up repeatedly across media forms — in cartoons, songs, television shows, movies, and advertisements. All of these portrayals reflected the idea that black Americans were childish, backward, or dangerous — and certainly not equal to their white counterparts.

  Lena Horne was the first African American to sign a movie contract that promised not to cast her in negative roles. But then she guest-starred as herself and said, “They didn’t make me into a maid, but they didn’t make me into anything else either.” Directors placed her in scenes that could be cut when shown in the South so Southerners wouldn’t protest her non-subservient roles.

  Stereotypes abound in Gone with the Wind. Offscreen, the black actors were banned from the premiere. Leading man Clark Gable threatened to boycott if Hattie McDaniel — who played Mammy — couldn’t go. For her role, McDaniel became the first African American to win an Academy Award.

  The Birth of a Nation depicts happy pre–Civil War slaves, while post-war scenes turn them into vicious rebels. The Ku Klux Klan (which advocates white supremacy through violence) is glorified as a heroic group that stifles the rebels. The film sparked a resurgence of the KKK.

  Aunt Jemima was named after a song about a mammy, and the character became a trademark. She wore a head wrap associated with black female slaves, and the advertising campaign featured a former slave named Nancy Green, who made public appearances as Aunt Jemima. A fictional life for Aunt Jemima was created, which included her working on Colonel Higbee’s Louisiana plantation, shown in this 1940s ad.

  Who does this ad target — the black woman in the uniform being shown using bad grammar, or the person hiring her to wash the dishes? Hint: the consumer is not getting her hands wet. This 1930s GE ad assumes racial stereotypes that would not be tolerated today.

  This 1930s Monel ad is a typical example of negative stereotyping. It uses an illustration, a form that allows the art-ist to further exaggerate the cliché of the black mammy character happy to serve the likely white owner of that brand-new water heater.

  Important positive changes were taking place. The NAACP, which worked with Rayford Logan on the Selective Training and Service Bill amendment, had grown from 9,000 to 90,000 members during World War I. By 1946, it would hit 500,000 members. Its publication, The Crisis, had an enormous readership, and the number of African-American newspapers, such as the Chicago Defender, New York’s Amsterdam News, and the Pittsburgh Courier, was rapidly increasing.

  These northern newspapers reached far and wide and were a powerful means of uniting people and alerting them to how life for African Americans was beginning to change in parts of the country. Readers learned, for example, that more jobs were open to them in the North, even if blacks would not earn the same pay as whites. Southern blacks were encouraged to migrate north, where racism was certainly not gone but was a bit easier to stomach in light of more tolerable living conditions. When George Starling moved from Florida to New York during World War II, he got a job working as a coach attendant on a train. The white passengers still called him “boy,” even though he was twenty-seven years old by then, and a tall, outspoken man. As Isabel Wilkerson describes it in The Warmth of Other Suns, “They could call him what they wanted on the train. He didn’t like it, but it didn’t define him. He lived in Harlem now and was free.”

  The Cotton Club was open only to whites but offered a venue for some of the greatest black entertainers of the time, such as Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole.

  The magazine Opportunity represented a new avenue for talented black writers and artists to be published.

  And then there was Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), who was president from 1932 to 1945. At the suggestion of his wife, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, FDR put together a group, informally called the Black Cabinet, to help him understand what black Americans needed from their government. Some of his New Deal programs also helped create job opportunities for blacks. In 1941, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a massive march on Washington unless Roosevelt agreed to integrate the Army and end racial discrimination in the defense industry. This industry was experiencing a huge rise in jobs because the military needed ships, aircraft, weapons, and other war-related supplies and services, but was giving most of these jobs to whites. FDR met with Randolph and Walter White, head of the NAACP. He did not agree to integration, but he did issue Executive Order 8802, commonly called the Fair Employment Act, which prohibited discrimination in the defense industry. The Order said: “I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin.”

  FDR’s Black Cabinet, March 1938. Most were community leaders, not politicians. Front row, left to right: Dr. Ambrose Caliver, Dr. Roscoe C. Brown, Dr. Robert C. Weaver, Joseph H. Evans, Dr. Frank Horne, Mary McLeod Bethune, Lieutenant Lawrence A. Oxley, Dr. William J. Thompkins, Charles E. Hall, William I. Houston, Ralph E. Mizelle. Back row, left to right: Dewey R. Jones, Edgar Brown, J. Parker Prescott, Edward H. Lawson Jr., Arthur Weiseger, Alfred Edgar Smith, Henry A. Hunt, John W. Whitten, Joseph R. Houchins.

  Of course, these few changes did not make racism and prejudice disappear. Some soldiers sent letters to the African-American newspapers in search of help, such as one addressed to the Pittsburgh Courier: “We have a lot of skilled workers here. . . . But, we are not classified by our skill. We’re classified by color. If you’re white you get the good jobs. And if you’re colored you get a pick and shovel.” The men who wrote the letter were afraid to sign their names for fear of worse treatment.

  In this 1943 cartoon, Alston highlights the supposed change in attitude toward black workers. Although his cartoons were intended to run in black newspapers, some editors refused because they felt the images did not reflect what was going on in reality.

  In another letter, sent to the secretary of war’s office, a group of soldiers stationed at Camp McCoy, in Wisconsin, wrote: “On the post and off we are subjected to being called names. . . . When we report these things, they are overlooked. There is an inner tension growing among the men, they fell [sic] they would just as soon be in the guard house as in this slave camp.”

  The treatment of black soldiers stationed in the South was far worse than that in the North. Some black soldiers actually feared for their lives. From Jackson, Mississippi, a group of soldiers wrote to William H. Hastie. He was an African-American judge and scholar who had graduated first in his class from both high school and Amherst College and was dean of the Howard University Law School. Hastie had been asked to serve as the civilian aide to Secretary of War Henry Stimson, fielding issues related to black soldiers. The soldiers wrote: “We are treated like wild animals here, like we are inhuman. . . . Civilian polices have threatened to kill several soldiers. . . . Lieutenant Bromberg said all Negroes need to be beaten to death. . . . We never get enough to eat. In the hospital we are mistreated. Please help us.” From Brackettville, Texas, another soldier wrote, “We’re not even good as dogs, much less soldiers, even our General on the post hates the sight of a colored soldier.”

  Ashley Bryan drew this pen-and-ink sketch of two men in his company. Bryan captures their somber mood during a moment at rest.

  These practices and attitudes inflicted damage in many ways. Walter Morris and his demoralized men were among those suffering.

  Unlike many soldiers during World War II, Morris was not drafted into the Army. He was there by choice. He joined the Army in January 1940, jus
t six months after graduating from high school. Three years later, he had come very close to his goal of becoming an officer. The review board suggested he join a service outfit and reapply in three months. Morris knew in his heart that he was a good leader.

  He had also had his share of demeaning experiences and understood why it was sometimes, as he put it, “a natural thing for black soldiers to have an inferiority complex.” He wanted to show his men how valuable they really were. He wanted to wipe out the idea that black men weren’t smart enough or brave enough to jump out of airplanes. He wanted his soldiers to know that they were as up to the task as anyone else.

  Watching the white students go through their routine, Morris had an idea. What if he had his men mimic the training of the white paratroopers? They could learn everything the paratroopers were learning, aside from jumping from the highest towers or out of airplanes — they would have needed official approval for that. But there was no reason they couldn’t model themselves after the paratroopers. And if they could do what those paratroopers were doing, what might that do to boost their morale?

  Morris put his plan into action one fall day in 1943.

  “At four o’clock, when the white students left, we took over,” Morris said with a glint in his eye.

  He gathered the soldiers who weren’t on guard duty that day. He marched them from the barracks out to the field. Double-time. He put them through their paces. Push-ups. Sit-ups. Jumping jacks. Running.

  They leaped off the five-foot platform to learn how to fall so the impact of a landing would be distributed evenly on the body. Otherwise, just the ankles or knees would take the brunt of the fall, which would lead to injuries.

  After first going through the routine of hooking up their equipment and checking it, they lined up one by one to jump out of the stationary body of a C-47 cargo plane to simulate exiting an aircraft. Once they were out the door, the countdown to the chute opening began.

  One thousand, two thousand, three thousand.

  If a parachute doesn’t open after three seconds, it is time to pull the reserve parachute. This was just a simulation on the ground, so the chutes did not actually open and a sawdust pit cushioned their fall.

  Standing in the door of a C-47 mock-up, this trainee is about to take a practice jump into sawdust a few feet below him.

  “Within weeks, you could see the changes in our men: shoes shined, clothes pressed, hair cut and combed — morale was up,” Morris said. “An amazing thing happened: they began to act like soldiers.” The satisfaction in Morris’s voice came through loud and clear.

  “When you talked to them, they looked you straight in the eye,” he added. “They had found that, given the opportunity, they were just as good as the white students.”

  Morris wasn’t the only one who noticed the changes going on. Someone high up had seen the black soldiers training in what was supposed to be an off-limits facility in the afternoons.

  Morris got word to report to General Ridgely Gaither’s office. Gaither was the commandant of The Parachute School. The eager young sergeant had no idea what was in store for him.

  Morris’s voice shook at the memory: “I was so nervous and afraid, I didn’t even sleep that night.”

  During her visit to the Tuskegee Institute on March 29, 1941, and against the wishes of her escorts, Eleanor Roosevelt asked C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson to take her on a flight to show she trusted the skills of black pilots. Anderson, the first black pilot with a commercial license, and chief instructor of civilian pilots at Tuskegee, took her up for forty minutes.

  The next morning, Morris rode his bike to the general’s office. Had he done something wrong? Was he in trouble? He had taken it upon himself to completely restructure what his men were doing with their time — and had not asked anyone for permission. This was not the Army way.

  “When I walked into the office, I was scared to death.”

  Morris was well aware of Gaither’s reputation for being “tough as nails and just as straight.”

  “Explain to me what I saw,” Gaither ordered.

  Morris told Gaither about his men’s morale problem and the scheme he had cooked up to fix it.

  “It occurred to me that if I could get my men to go through that same calisthenics [exercises] as the white students, it might inspire them.” As Morris spoke, he calmed down. He could tell from Gaither’s reaction that the general was not angry.

  In fact, he seemed impressed. Excited, even.

  “Now,” Gaither confided, “I’m going to tell you a secret — a top secret.”

  Gaither revealed that orders were on the way authorizing him to create a new, all-black unit of paratroopers: the 555th Parachute Infantry Company. He asked Morris to serve as first sergeant.

  “You’ll have black officers and black men,” Gaither told Morris.

  “It was such a shock to hear that — such a feeling — oh, my goodness.” Morris was almost giddy at the remembrance. “My head was in the clouds. . . . My heart almost burst right there.” He has told this next part of the story many times over, the significance of it never failing to make him chuckle. “I don’t have any idea how I got [back] to my office. I don’t know if I rode my bicycle or flew!”

  Ruby and Walter Morris

  There was something else Morris didn’t know: his timing was perfect. Little by little, things had been happening behind the scenes to improve the status of blacks in the military. These changes had created the climate that led to Gaither’s orders being possible. Morris had made his move in the right place at the right time.

  Remember how Roosevelt’s October 9, 1940, statement about the Selective Training and Service Bill did not satisfy enough of the requests made by black leaders? When that statement was released to the press — including the black newspapers — it upset a lot of people. With the presidential election coming up, the Democrats were worried that Roosevelt would lose the black vote. In part to make amends, in the weeks leading up to the election, the White House and the War Department announced that black aviation units would be formed, as well as new black combat units in the Army. Roosevelt promised that blacks would serve in all branches of the armed forces. A historic promotion was announced as well. Colonel Benjamin O. Davis Sr. — the highest-ranking black officer in the Army — was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the first African American to hold that title. The Republicans had already pointed out to black voters that one hundred white colonels had been promoted before Davis, so anyone paying attention to the news had a good understanding of the importance of this particular promotion.

  Brigadier General Davis conducted inspection tours of bases that trained African-American soldiers, investigating discrimination and advocating for better treatment when needed, both in the United States and overseas. He also served on the Advisory Committee on Negro Troop Policies. Davis urged the military to create more combat units and utilize black soldiers properly. When he discovered combat units that were continually passed over for overseas assignments, he put pressure on the War Department to send them.

  The reason for the timing of Davis’s promotion was the same as the one behind Roosevelt’s appointment of the distinguished black scholar William Hastie to serve as Secretary of War Stimson’s civilian aide. Stimson, who seemed to support segregation of the military, was annoyed by the appointment. He wrote in his diary, “The Negroes are taking advantage of this period just before the election to try to get everything they can in the way of recognition from the Army.” In spite of Stimson’s attitude and Hastie’s realization that he “was not really welcomed by the military,” over the next few years Hastie continued to try to persuade the War Department to improve conditions for African-American soldiers. He faced a lot of resistance but was proud of what was accomplished during his tenure, saying, “We were able to get significant numbers of black soldiers admitted to officers’ candidate schools . . . who theretofore would have found their application for one reason or another, pigeonholed or rejected. . .
. We were able to get a great many improvements in the conditions which blacks experienced on military bases.”

  Some of Charles Alston’s cartoons highlighted important black figures, such as this one of William Hastie, done in 1943.

  First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt had also been making waves with her opinions about racial equality, both in civilian life and in the military. She was so outspoken that she became hated in the South. She asked the FBI to investigate whether it was true that black servants had formed “Eleanor Clubs” to fight for their rights. While the FBI did not discover any of these clubs, it did report that southerners thought of Eleanor as “the most dangerous individual in the United States today.”

  It was partly due to Eleanor’s close relationship with NAACP director Walter White that she pushed her husband about the Selective Training and Service Bill amendment requests. This in turn led to some of President Roosevelt’s concessions after his October 9 press release. Secretary of War Stimson seemed to be just as irritated with Eleanor’s efforts to improve conditions for African Americans as he was with Hastie’s, implying that the president’s actions were in part due to “Mrs. Roosevelt’s intrusive and impulsive folly.”