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WWII was a pivotal event in African American history. From 1940 thru 1946 the amount of violence aimed at Black Americans had been unprecedented since the time of the Red Summer in 1919 when violent racial clashes broke out in twenty-six cities across the United States. Now that’s saying something because they were hanging more black folks during the Red Summer than ornaments on a $5.00 Christmas tree from Walmart. The nexus between these two periods in time was the fact that they both occurred during and after the deployment of Black troops in WWI and WWII. WWI started in 1914 and ended in 1918. Acting up started in 1919. WWII started in 1940 and ended in 1945. Acting up started in 1946. The reason for these stepped-up attacks against blacks was that black troops coming from and fighting in these wars were demanding an end to the racial caste system that had been in place since the end of Reconstruction. That caste system which eventually lead to Jim Crow. Nowhere were these attacks more concentrated than in the deep mud backwater racist towns of the black flag South. Hoisting a black flag means that you would rather die than surrender. Racist: “The only way you gonna take my nigras is over my cold dead body!!” Of course, after a couple of them got shot through the chest with a cannonball, they were giving up nigra’s left and right. Anywho, so yeah, down south it was really bad.
(Excerpt from the “Hate” Organizations of the 1940s by J. Wayne Dudley.)
The Christian Century
“Before the war ended, fears were being expressed by citizens who still held the antebellum convictions on the necessity of keeping Negroes in their place. They feared that “those nigg@rs” were coming back with the idea that since they fought for their country, it owed them the same rights as white soldiers, and that being accustomed to violence, they would use it. (“they” meaning the black soldiers.) It is notorious that the “poor whites,” the very people who suffer the same discriminations and denials that Negroes do, cherish the most unreasonable prejudices and are the readiest to resort to violence.”
The Christian Century is a religious magazine founded in 1884. This article appeared in their magazine in September 1946. So the author of the article uses the word “notorious” to describe the mindset of poor whites at that time… and I’m going to extend that into this time… but “notorious” is not quite the word I would use. Faqued up, and dangerous are probably more accurate words to describe that kinda thinking. It was also during this time that the beginning of the third Klan resurgence started. I touched on the three eras of Klan activity somewhere in the articles I’ve written, but I think I set fire to the hard disk it was on… anyway, the first era started just after the Civil War in the late 1860s. It ended after President Grant issued the Enforcement Act of 1870 and 1871, which basically said that if they saw any black man hanging from a tree anywhere, there was going to be a white man hanging from a tree right beside him. That shat cooled them down for about fifty years. The second era started in 1915, just after WWI started. This era really took off after D.W Griffith’s “Birth Of A Nation.” Birth Of A Nation was one of the most racist propaganda movies ever produced. James Weldon Johnson, a prominent black journalist wrote in 1915 that The Birth of a Nation did “incalculable harm” to Black Americans by creating a justification for prejudice, racism, and discrimination for decades to follow.” Not that they need a justification, but to put it in perspective… “Birth of A Nation” was to them like the “Black Panther” was to us. They were fired up! The second era ended after the head Kluxer named D.C. Stephenson kidnapped, raped, and murdered a woman in 1941 in Indiana. He was paroled in 1956 and told to leave Indiana and never come back. He moved to Missouri. In 1960 at the age of seventy, he was arrested again for “locker room talk” and sexual assault on a 16 year old girl. Because of a lack of evidence, he was fined $300 and told to leave Missouri immediately! Sheriff: “And I mean before I load my gun!!” Stephenson died in 1966 and because he was an honorably discharged veteran, he was buried in the Veterans Cemetary in Johnson City, Tennesee. People were so faqued about having a rapist buried next to honorable veterans, that Congress later passed a law barring sex offenders or those convicted of capital crimes from burial in Veterans cemeteries. Really.. huh…? I should say… “Why don’t ya’ll dig up some of them confederate generals then?”, but I don’t feel like sleeping next to the window with Mr. Nasty tonight. After the second era ended in 1941, the third and final era started in the mid-1940s after black troops returned from WWII wearing knee-high mud stompers, some with the blood still on them wishing a %$$# would. This era would end in the mid-1960s. That’s one of the reasons why the Civil Rights era was so successful. A lot of those people marching were WWII veterans. If you look closely at those old 1950s and 1960s civil rights films, you will notice that most of the people being attacked by police are women, old people, and teenagers. Look closer still and you will see that service-aged black men were fighting back and that it took a gang of racist police to arrest one of them. Fighting a black vet one on one meant that somebody was going to probably end up as a contestant on “Name That Shoe.” So before we move on, remember when I told you the Grant administration had passed the “Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871”? Those laws are still on the books. The last time it was used was in 1964, when Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were killed in Philadelphia, Mississippi for black voter registration activities. Mississippi had refused to prosecute the perpetrators for murder which was a state crime, however, they were given lengthy prison terms by the federal government for civil rights violations. In 1968 the death penalty was added as a punishment for certain violations of civil rights.

Now You Done Did it

So one of the primary reasons that there was a lot more lynching down South during the world wars, was because a lot of black troops from the North were being sent to bases down there. Heck, there were four military bases less than 20 miles from Stone Mountain. For those who are not familiar with Stone Mountain, Stone Mountain was where the official second era of the KKK started, when on November 25, 1915, William J. Simmons along with a small band of other Kluxers lit a burning cross on the mountains 800 ft summit after the release of “Birth Of A Nation.” The cross could be seen for miles. On that mountain in front of that burning cross, the former history professor declared himself to be the “Grand Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan!” Millions joined after the spectacle. Simmons died in blackity black, Atlanta, Georgia, in 1945…. some people think there was foul play involved… I don’t know… but I mean it ain’t every day you see an afro pick sticking out somebody’s back… okay, Ima stop… Anyway, those troops from the North were not use to the shenanigans and pettiness of the superior race. Racist: “Those nigras are a bad influence coming down here stirring up our blacks. Dagnabbit… I was standing unda the Confedit flag and Black Joe yelled out my gawd-given name like he knew me instead of calling me Suh!! Stupid nigra didn’t even know how to pronounce it!! MY NAME IS MONTE FICKER IDIOT!!” Racist 2: “I think we need to have a conversation..” Anyway, they were right, Southern black soldiers and Southern blacks were being influenced by their northern counterparts. By 1940, the character of lynchings began to change. Previously lynchings were a community affair. In some cases they would even advertise it in the local paper: “Black Joe To Be Guest Of Honor At Special Event In Front Of The Courthouse At Noon Today.” Beginning in the 1940s, you started finding bodies in landfills, rivers, and other out-of-the-way locations. One of the reasons for the change was that lynching a serviceman was a very serious offense in wartime. So while the instances of attacks on black soldiers by the local hillbillys went down, they increased on the local black citizens. Meanwhile, attacks on black servicemen increased through interactions with the military police and other white soldiers. In April 1941, shortly after the first blacks began to enter the Army, the first major event in the long line of racial violence occurred. In a wooded section of Fort Benning, Georgia, the body of a Negro soldier, Pvt. Felix Hall, “his hands tied behind him,” was found hanging from a tree. The Army said it was a suicide… but everyone else was like, “Okay, whateva…,” the murder was never solved. At Fort Jackson in South Carolina, a month later somebody wanted to know, why were Negro’s using the diving board at the YMCA lake on the base? Black troops were like, “Because we wanna!” White troops were like, “Wait until tonight nigg@*!” Between the afternoon and evening, stories of the clash spread through Fort Jackson. At about 9:30 P.M., the Fort Jackson Military Police Company learned that a disturbance was underway. White soldiers from the 30th Division, some in civilian clothes and some in uniform, were assembling in groups, planning to rush the Negro area. Shots were fired as the mob headed toward the black enlisted men’s barracks. History does not record who fired the shots, but it does say that “both” groups were dispersed before anyone was injured. So we can infer that there was a white group of soldiers, and there was a black group of soldiers getting ready to meet them, and that both groups had guns. Anyway, from that day on, tensions remained high between Fort Jackson’s military police, the civilian community, and black troops.

If Not Now… When?

There are far too many instances of racial violence in the military during these periods to name in just one article. The Fayetteville Incident, where a group of unarmed black military police tried to arrest a group of disorderly white soldiers on a bus, the Port Chicago Disaster, the Issac Woodard Story… and so many more, just to name a few. If you decide to check out any of these references, I want to warn you that the Woodard story will probably be one of the most gut-wrenching and emotionally draining stories you are liable to read on this topic. I still can’t believe it happened. Earlier I mentioned something about Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War between 1865 and ending in 1877. In a dissertation by James Albert Burran, III, called “Racial Violence In The South During WWII”, he says, “the Second Reconstruction did not begin in the South until the fifth decade of the twentieth century.” It never occurred to me that there was a Second Reconstruction until now… and he is right. There were almost 100 years of racial intolerance and violence between 1877 and 1950. The same thing blacks had faced before the Civil War. So we owe a debt to those black men and women who fought and served in the great First and Second World Wars. They helped to usher in the “Second Reconstruction”… Civil Rights. In time future black leaders will usher in the Third Reconstruction… the one which says… “That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Thanks for reading ©HIll1news

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