Black US Vets had to sit in back, let Nazis sit up front?

[Napier]

In a commentary on the CNN web site at Commentary: Race, faith and politics - CNN.com
Roland Martin says,
“While many white Americans will look at Memorial or Veterans Day as an opportunity to celebrate our armed forces, African Americans do the same, but also will think historically about black troops hung from trees, still in their uniforms. They will think of black soldiers returning home to America during World War II forced to sit in the back of the train, while German Nazis got to sit up front.”

Is this so?

I don’t mean to doubt him - it’s just so stunningly offensive it’s hard to place! Not that Americans didn’t do all kinds of other horrible things. Also I don’t mean to suggest that being hanged is less important than sitting behind the Nazi’s, but this isn’t completely new information.

I’d like to hear more, some context, what was said at the time, and so on.

Anybody know more about this?

[Duckster]

You might want to read this timeline from the Truman Library that led President Truman to issue Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948 desegregating the US military.

However, things don’t always move so fast …

Segregation in the military services did not officially end until the Secretary of Defense announced on 30 September 1954 that the last all-black unit had been abolished. However, the president’s directive put the armed forces (albeit reluctantly) at the forefront of the growing movement to win a fully participatory social role for the nation’s African-American citizens.

The true fulfillment of the entire scope of Executive Order 9981—equality of treatment and opportunity—actually required an additional change in Defense Department policy. This occurred with the publication of Department of Defense Directive 5120.36 on 26 July 1963, 15 years to the day after Truman signed the original order. This major about-face in policy issued by Secretary of Defense Robert J. McNamara expanded the military’s responsibility to include the elimination of off-base discrimination detrimental to the military effectiveness of black servicemen.

(Emphasis mine.) Source: http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/integrate/welcome.html

[griffin1977]

Well its seems pretty straight forward to me, that this would be the case. In 1945 Jim Crow laws were in place across America that (amoung other thing) restricted African Americans to certain parts of a Train or Bus (typically the back). Those same laws would not have applied to German ex-POWs.

[Napier]

>…this would be the case. In 1945 Jim Crow laws … restricted African Americans to certain parts of a Train or Bus … laws would not have applied to German ex-POWs.

Yes, when you say it like that, I guess it would have been so. It’s only through an unplanned historical sequence that Nazis get to ride in front and Black Veterans have to ride in back, not because this specific scenario was thoughtfully built into the law.

Thank you for some factual replies. This is useful information to keep in mind while forming opinions based on recent news stories.

[Annie-Xmas]

Yes, blacks had to sit in the back, while whites got to sit in the front. I doubt that anyone was taking a survey of their World War II status.

[hajario]

It seems like it was just an unintended consequence of a horribly unfair law. Who the fuck would want to sit with the Nazis anyway?

[Mr.Slant]

Would’t haved bothered me.
If I’m black and on a bus with folks that have engaged in racist genocide in the past, I’d rather be sitting where I can see them at all times. All I’m saying…

[griffin1977]

@Napier

Yes, when you say it like that, I guess it would have been so. It’s only through an unplanned historical sequence that Nazis get to ride in front and Black Veterans have to ride in back, not because this specific scenario was thoughtfully built into the law.
.

Quite. But I’m sure that was scant comfort for returning African-American vets who after years fighting the Nazis, saw Nazi POWs and ex-POWs shipped around the US in carriages they were not allow, by law, to occupy.

[Argent_Towers]

What I want to know is, what if there were Japanese POWs on the bus instead of Nazis?

Would they still get to sit in the front?

[Sigene]

When we say, whites got to sit up front; were they REQUIRED to sit up front, or could they sit in the back with the blacks if they wanted to. without breaking the law.

I guess its only a subtle difference, but coming from public school bus rides, I always found it odd that the back of the bus was somehow an inferior spot…we always fought to get to the back.

[griffin1977]

@Argent Towers

Would they still get to sit in the front?

Pretty sure as “non-whites” they would not (espicailly given how Americans of Japanese decent were treated) . Though presumably POWs were not shipped around on regular trains, that were in service as civilian transit ? Not sure about ex-POWs, were they just given a train ticket and told to get to wherever their embarcation point was ? I can’t imagine they were, but could be wrong.

[Mr.Slant]

@Argent Towers

What I want to know is, what if there were Japanese POWs on the bus instead of Nazis?

Would they still get to sit in the front?

Historically, Asian immigrants have been mistreated, terribly, on the west coast.
At the same time, on the east coast, the discrimination was an order of magnitude less… for them, at least.

[samclem]

@Napier

In a commentary on the CNN web site at Commentary: Race, faith and politics - CNN.com
Roland Martin says,
"While many white Americans will look at Memorial or Veterans Day as an opportunity to celebrate our armed forces, African Americans do the same, but also will think historically about black troops hung from trees, still in their uniforms.

I wonder if anyone can find a historical cite for this?

[Mongo_Ponton]

Unverifiable, perhaps urban legend, but I’ve heard stories about German POW officers able to use the officers club at Ft Meade (?) near Baltimore where as an African American officer would not be allowed entrance.
Also that they had dances for the German POWs with local girls, there certainly were no blacks there.
Baltimore as well as many other industrial cities at the time had a strong German American contingent and a good number of POWs remained after the war.

[aldiboronti]

@Napier

" … They will think of black soldiers returning home to America during World War II forced to sit in the back of the train, while German Nazis got to sit up front."

Abhorrent, certainly, but unsurprising. With a purely racist law, race is the deciding factor in who shall sit where, and race alone.

[Number]

@hajario

Who the fuck would want to sit with the Nazis anyway?

Yes, one quickly tires of their sitzkrieg tactics.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

They will think of black soldiers returning home to America during World War II forced to sit in the back of the train, while German Nazis got to sit up front.

Actually, Roland Martin commits a slight mis-statement in that sentence, because the “back of the bus” formula didn’t usually apply to trains. Trains were segregated in the Jim Crow south, but the “Negro coach” wasn’t always in back. Historian John Hope Franklin tells a story:

(Franklin) recalls an incident in North Carolina in the spring of 1945 when he took a train from Greensboro to Durham after commencement exercises at Bennett College in which all the blacks were crammed into half a car near the front of the train: “You could imagine after the commencement, the kids going home, parents, all that sort of thing. And there we were, all pressed up like sardines in that hot coach. Half the coach was for blacks, half for baggage, right up behind the engine where you get all the sparks and smoke and stuff.”

In exasperation, he appealed to the conductor to allow them to use the car behind, where four or five white men were lounging around in an otherwise empty car, but he was turned down.

As he tells it, the conductor looked at the blacks and looked at the handful of whites in the next car and announced: “I can’t do it. Those are German prisoners of war and they can’t be moved.” He continues: “They thought this was the funniest thing. They were laughing and looking up there at us, standing on top of each other practically. I said this is really something, you know. I wrote, whoever it was, the head of the railroad and never got an answer.”

About 400,000 German and Italian prisoners were transported to the United States during World War II. Because they were originally housed on military bases, most (but not all) were stationed in the South. For those who remained confined on base, racial segregation wasn’t an issue.

Some POW’s, however, worked off base or were moved to “satellite camps” to provide farm labor, and had at least some opportunity to mingle with the local population. And yes of course, when riding mass transit or using public accommodations, they were treated as white:

Some soldiers in El Paso, Texas, were denied entrance and service when they tried to enter a local restaurant. They ate cold food outside while watching “German prisoners of war seated in the restaurant and [eating] hot food”.

[Argent_Towers]

@griffin1977

Pretty sure as “non-whites” they would not (espicailly given how Americans of Japanese decent were treated) . Though presumably POWs were not shipped around on regular trains, that were in service as civilian transit ? Not sure about ex-POWs, were they just given a train ticket and told to get to wherever their embarcation point was ? I can’t imagine they were, but could be wrong.

OK, let’s say there’s a bus that contains:

Black soldiers
White soldiers

Japanese POWs
Nazi POWs

How would the seating arrangement on this bus work?

Would the Japanese and Blacks have to sit at the back of the bus together, while the Whites and Nazis sat together at the front?

Would the Japanese and Nazis have to sit in the middle, with the white soldiers at the front and the black soldiers all the way at the back?

Would the Japanese POWs be all the way at the back, then the black soldiers, then the Nazi POWs, then the white soldiers?

They should do a skit on SNL about this.

[griffin1977]

@Argent Towers

OK, let’s say there’s a bus that contains:

Black soldiers
White soldiers

Japanese POWs
Nazi POWs

How would the seating arrangement on this bus work?

.

It was a civilian bus operating under civilian law, in a southern "Jim Crow’ state (something that presumably never happen in terms of transporting POWs). Then I beleive the Japanese POWs woud have had to travel with the Black GIs, the German POWs with the white GIs. Of course the added complication is the Japanese interment laws…

As far as I’m aware the Jim Crow laws (unlike south african apartied laws, which deliberately tried to enforce a rift between Indians and "coloureds’, and Blacks) applied equally to all non-whites, and did not distinguish between them, but I stand to be corrected if someone knows different.

Though actually this brings up another question. Was there ever a situation in which German POWs objected to being guarded by African American GIs ? (Or did the Army simply not let African Americans perform this duty, due to their sensibilties over unarmed Whites being guarded by armed Blacks).

[Wendell_Wagner]

griffin1977 writes:

> Well its seems pretty straight forward to me, that this would be the case. In
> 1945 Jim Crow laws were in place across America that (amoung other thing)
> restricted African Americans to certain parts of a Train or Bus (typically the
> back). Those same laws would not have applied to German ex-POWs.

Jim Crow laws were only in the South (and some border states):

Jim Crow laws