Image description: A Black soldier sits on a motorcycle. He wears a service cap, holster, and tall boots with his uniform. A sign on the building behind him reads, “MILITARY POLICE / COLORED.”
[illustration of Black troops performing mechanical work]
170
Note to Discussion Leader:
This ARMY TALK consists of three parts:
Part I - Negro Manpower in the Army
Part II - Negro Platoons in Composite Rifle Companies - World War II Style
Part III - What About Minorities?
This Talk is designed for discussion on three separate days as directed in section
V, WD Circular 76, 1947.
Before conducting the series, the discussion leader should read carefully section
V, WD Circular 76, 1947 and WD Circular 124, 1946, which are reprinted on the
last pages of this Talk. Circular 124, 1946, gives the general provisions of a revised
Army policy about the use, training, organization, and assignment of Negro personnel,
together with a reprint of the approved Gillem Board Report upon which
the revised policy is based.
In Part I of the Talk stress should be laid upon the threefold objective of the
policy:
1. An immediate objective - a more varied use of the Army’s Negro manpower
than has been peacetime practice hitherto.
2. An ultimate objective - the effective use of all available manpower, should
war come again, without regard to antecedent or race.
3. An over-all objective - increasing the effectiveness of the Army.
In all the Talks it should be borne in mind that the discussion of “race” is likely to
touch off sparks from individuals who have deep-seated beliefs, convictions, or
prejudices in one direction or another. Such discussions, however, may be handled
constructively if the group is kept aware that while differences in personal opinion
are to be expected and respected, the basic purpose of the Troop Information
Program is to bring information to troops and to develop understanding through
discussion.
These Talks, then, should inform troops about War Department policy and stimulate
discussion.
Part One
NEGRO MANPOWER IN THE ARMY
How to use its manpower best is always one of the Army’s problems.
How to use its Negro manpower best is in some respects a special
problem. It is of significance to the entire Army. To this special
problem several factors contribute:
(1) The “general run” of Negro soldiers have had considerably less
civilian schooling than the “general run” of white troops; they are
much less likely to have had civilian training and experience in highly
skilled mechanical fields; they make much lower scores on the Army
General Classification Test.
[sidebar] The most effective use of its
Negro personnel is of concern
to the Army.
WD Circular 124, 1946, and section V, WD Circular 76, 1947, appear on the last pages of this TALK
[page 2]
How did the Axis method work? It was simple. Get your victim to squabble with his friends instead of with his enemies. Play on his fears and resentments to make him hate groups of his own people. Start him quarreling at home. Break down his unity and strength. Thus you’ll weaken him so much that you can destroy him easily. It’s just an application of the old story of the bundle of twigs: when tied together they can’t be broken, but separately they are easy. United, they win; divided, they fall.
It’s no secret now that Hitler hoped to crack the United States wide open by driving wedges between the many groups on our population as he had done in some of the countries of Europe. It’s no secret that Japan tried to make the war in the Pacific a race war, with every person whose skin was “darker” united in a holy war against every person whose skin was white. That neither of these attempts got to first base in the United States or in our fighting forces means that in a time of national crisis the ideas that held us together as a nation were stronger than the differences that might have divided us.
Even at that, although , a public opinion poll made at the height of the war revealed that 85 percent of our population accused one or more of the following American groups of profiting selfishly from the war:
Farmers
Negroes
Jews
Foreigners
Protestants
Catholics
Business Men
Labor Leaders
Working People
That’s a pretty big list, isn’t it? How many Americans can you think of who don’t fall into one of those groups?
[sidebar] But the dangers of serious group antagonism are always with us.
And now that the fighting is over, now that we are trying to get back to peacetime status, and especially when the almost sure-to-come economic troubles begin to show up, the tendency to break up into groups, to point fingers, and to build up resentment against minorities can set in strongly without any pressure from the outside. We do not wish to use the Axis method on ourselves.
STOP How do scientists describe attitudes toward minorities?
[sidebar] A scientific view of group attitudes:
Not long ago a number of scientists at an American university, studying the matter of group attitudes, developed a chart they called “A Continuum of Relationships Among Human Groups." [superscript 1] For "Continuum” in this discussion we can substitute the word “scale.”
This scale or chart of how groups feel and act toward each other ranged all the way from persecution at the bottom of the scale to cooperation at the top. And on the way up it listed such attitudes and acts as discrimination, prejudice, preference, tolerance, and respect, in that order.
———————
[superscript 1] From The ABC’s of Scapegoating, published by the Central YMCA College, Chicago 6, Ill.
The following statement of Navy policy on racial minorities was made binding on the whole service in an order of the Secretary of the Navy (Allnav-No. 423) on December 12, 1945. It was transmitted to me by phone by Capt. Stickney, of Planning and Control, the Bureau of Naval Personnel:
Attention of the Navy Department has been called to a recent incident in which a question arose concerning accommodations aboard naval vessels for Negro Army personnel returning to this country for demobilization. In order to avoid any future misunderstanding on this subject the Navy’s policy regarding various racial minorities is re-stated and summarized for information and guidance.
In the administration of naval personnel no differentiation shall be made because of race or color. This applies also to authorized personnel of all the armed services of this country aboard navy ships or at navy stations and activities.
In their attitude and day-to-day conduct of affairs naval officers and enlisted men shall adhere rigidly and impartially to naval regulations, in which no distinction is made between individuals wearing the navy uniform or the uniform of any of the armed services of the United States because of race or color.
Image description: President George W. Bush hands a display box with the Congressional Gold Medal in it to Dr. Brown. Several other Tuskegee Airmen look on, as does Laura Bush.
Over 100 years before RuPaul was telling us to “sashay away”, William Dorsey Swann, who had been born into slavery in 19th Century America, was making a name for himself as the world’s first self-described “drag queen”.
LGBTQ+ historian Channing Joseph, author of House of Swann, explains how he discovered this forgotten history of one of the earliest efforts at queer resistance and liberation in America.
Josephine & Jazz : Maquette. ca. 1930. Paul Colin.
8 3/8 x 11 in./21.3 x 28 cm
Oh yeah. That’s Josephine Baker dancing on top of a piano while the musicians cluster below, and the Eiffel Tower itself swings in syncopation. Classic Paul Colin, it’s also got a little bit of Chagall in it, n'est ce pas? An absolute treasure of the Jazz Age.
These stunning images are a preview of the first special exhibition at our @nmaahc, which explores the stories behind more than 150 photographs and related objects from their collection.
The images, by established and emerging photographers from the 19th century to the present, show a range of American experiences. They challenge you to look beyond the surface to consider their significance in history, their cultural meaning, and your own perspective.
Photo: Photograph of Mae Reeves and a group of women standing on stairs, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift from Mae Reeves and her children, Donna Limerick and William Mincey, Jr.
African American women have been wearing fancy hats for generations to church. In 1940, Mae Reeves started Mae’s Millinery Shop in 1940 in Philadelphia, PA with a $500 bank loan. The shop stayed open until 1997 and helped dress some of the most famous African American women in the country, including iconic singers Marian Anderson,Ella FitzgeraldandLena Horne.
Reeves was known for making all of her customers feel welcomed and special, whether they were domestic workers, professional women, or socialites from Philadelphia’s affluent suburban Main Line. Customer’s at Mae’s would sit at her dressing table or on her settee, telling stories and sharing their troubles.
Photo: Pink mushroom hat with flowers from Mae’s Millinery Shop, Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
In our Power of Place exhibition, we recreated a portion of Reeves’ shop to showcase this African American tradition. Our shop includes its original red-neon sign, sewing machine, antique store furniture and hats.
View artifacts from Mae’s Millinery Shop in our collection: s.si.edu/2oVlbFj
We love this history (and the word millinery) from our @nmaahc.
Sarah Parker Remond: African-American Orator and Physician Remond was born 1826 in Salem, Massachusetts, into an abolitionist family who supported her efforts to become an anti-slavery orator. She and her brother Charles Lenox Remond were two of several abolitionists chosen by the American Anti-Slavery society to tour the country in 1856, giving speeches in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, often travelling without a male escort. Prominent abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison praised her "calm, dignified manner, her winning personal appearance and her earnest appeals to the conscience and the heart.“
Remond was also responsible for one of the earliest recorded acts of the very same civil disobedience that became central to the Civil Rights Movement a century later. In 1853, Remond bought a ticket for the opera, Don Pasquale, at the Howard Athenaeum in Boston. She refused to accept segregated seating, however, and in response she was forced to leave the theatre and pushed down several stairs. Remond took action, sued for damages, and was found to be wronged by the theatre, winning an award of $500 for damages.
When the Civil War broke out, the American Anti-Slavery society, recognizing Remond’s skills, asked her to continue her oratorial career in Britain. In the early stages of the war, the Confederacy was hopeful for British support - because most goods were manufactured in the North, trade with Britain was crucial. Remond lectured on the cruel treatment of slaves in the Confederacy and helped raise support for a trade blockade with the Confederacy.
An excerpt from an 1859 speech shows how strong and poetic her speeches were, and her attempts to appeal to the morality of her British audience:
"I ask you, raise the moral public opinion until its voice reaches the American shores. Aid us thus until the shackles of the American slave melt like dew before the morning sun. I ask for especial help from the women of England. Women are the worst victims of the slave power. I am met on every hand by the cry, "cotton! cotton!” I cannot stop to speak of cotton while men and women are being brutalised [x].“
After the war, she continued to give speeches, soliciting mass funds to help feed and clothe the millions of freed slaves that had come out of the war.
Remond’s accomplishments did not stop there. In 1866, at 42, she moved to Italy, where she studied medicine at Santa Maria Nuova Hospital. Upon graduation, she became a doctor and practiced medicine in Rome for twenty years, where Frederick Douglass visited her in 1887. She married an Italian man in 1877, continuing her career after marriage. Remond seems to have found a home in Italy, as she never returned to the United States [x].
Original caption: “arriving in Australia, the first Negro nurses to reach these shores try bicycle riding near their quarters in Camp Columbia, Wacol, Brisbane.” 2nd Lts: L-R: Beulah Baldwin, Alberta Smith, and Joan Hamilton. 11/29/1943. NARA ID 178140880.
“First Negro WAVES to enter the Hospital Corps School at Nat'l Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, MD.” L-R Ruth C. Isaacs, Katherine Horton and Inez Patterson. 3/2/1945. NARA ID 520634.
BLACK (military) NURSES ROCK!
By Miriam Kleiman, Public Affairs
ForNational Nurses Day we highlight Black nurses who served with courage and distinction in WWII.
“In the European Theater… are the first units of Negro nurses and WACS to go overseas… They are described by their Commanding Officer as being the equals of any nurses in the area…”—Truman Gibson, Jr, chief adviser on racial affairs to Secretary of War Henry Stimson
Statement by Truman Gibson, Jr., Aide on Negro Affairs to Secretary of War Stimson, 4/9/1945. NARA ID 40019813 (full doc below). Gibson was the 1st Black awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit, for advocating for black soldiers during WWII.
Capt. Della H. Raney, Army Nurse Corps, head of nursing at hospital at Camp Beale, CA, “has the distinction of being the first Negro nurse to report to duty in the present war…” NARA ID 535942.
“American Negro nurses, commissioned second lieutenants in the U.S. Army Nurses Corps, limber up their muscles in an early-morning workout during an advanced training course at a camp in Australia. The nurses will be assigned to Allied hospitals in the southwest Pacific theater.” 2/1944. NARA ID 535782.
Commissioning ceremony: Phyllis Dailey, 2nd from right, became the 1st Black nurse in the Navy Nursing Corps 3/8/1945. NAID 520618.
Remembering 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered on this day, August 28, 1955, by white supremacists in Mississippi. Rest in peace, Emmett.
Remembering 14-year-old Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered on this day, August 28, 1955, by white supremacists in Mississippi. Rest in peace, Emmett.
“I wonder if our white fellow men realize the true sense of meaning of brotherhood? For two hundred years we had toiled for them; the war of 1861 came and was ended, and we thought our race was forever freed from bondage, and that the two races could live in unity with each other, but when we read almost every day of what is being done to my race by some whites in the South, I sometimes ask, “Was the war in vain? Has it brought freedom, in the full sense of the word, or had it made our conditions more hopeless?…
There are still good friends to the negro. Why, there are still thousands….Man thinks two hundred years is a long time, and it is, too; but it is only as a week to God, and in his own time…the South will be like the North, and when it comes it will be prized higher than we prize the North to-day. God is just; when he created man he made him in his image, and never intended one should misuse the other. All men are born free and equal in his sight.”
Elizabeth Keckley was born enslaved and lived in Dinwiddie County and Petersburg as a young girl. She purchased her freedom working as a seamstress after moving to Missouri. With her freedom, she became the most sought after dress maker in Washington D.C. Her talents as a seamstress, both before and during the Civil War, led to her being chosen as the personal dressmaker of Mary Todd Lincoln. Over the years, both women became good friends and Mrs. Lincoln looked on Elizabeth as one of her closest confidantes during the White House years.
![War Department Pamphlet, Army Talk, Number 170 [cover and page 24], 4/12/1947This pamphlet discusses](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a008781338adc9cdedd215ae00881eea/d166b24b0c160c9c-de/s1280x1920/6caf802cfb6427b45f2047a28808ac20796ee5b1.png "War Department Pamphlet, Army Talk, Number 170 [cover and page 24], 4/12/1947This pamphlet discusses")
![War Department Pamphlet, Army Talk, Number 170 [cover and page 24], 4/12/1947This pamphlet discusses](https://64.media.tumblr.com/ed92bfa5cd526e6240e8f722bcccbc45/d166b24b0c160c9c-02/s1280x1920/9b1071ca700295d04c932e0fa6689de20ab931a2.png "War Department Pamphlet, Army Talk, Number 170 [cover and page 24], 4/12/1947This pamphlet discusses")
