“Enabled Courage”: Race, Disability, and Black World War II Veterans in Postwar America
2003; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 65; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/1540-6563.00047
ISSN1540-6563
Autores Tópico(s)Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes
ResumoClick to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes1. The Huachucans Veterans Organization was started in 1941 by the first draftees and volunteers from Cleveland, Ohio. Created by members of the Ninety‐third Infantry division's 368th Infantry Regiment, the interest in starting the organization grew out of their collective military experiences at Fort Huachuca, Arizona and continued sixty years after their discharges from the army.2. Henry Williams, interview with author, Cleveland, Ohio, 7 February 1993.3. For recent discussions on disability, social welfare, and veteran politicization in the context of early twentieth‐century wars, see the essays in Disabled Veterans in History, ed. David A. Gerber (Ann Arbor, 2000); K. Walter Hickel, “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare: The Politics of Disability Compensation for American Veterans of World War I,” in The New Disability History: American Perspectives, ed. Paul Longmore and Lauri Umansky (New York, 2001), 236–67; David Gerber, “Blinded and Enlightened: The Contested Origins of the Egalitarian Politics of the Blinded Veterans Association,” in The New Disability History, ed. Longmore and Umansky, 313–34; Richard Scotch, “American Disability Policy in the Twentieth Century,” in The New Disability History, ed. Longmore and Umansky, 375–92; and Doris Zames Fleisher and Frieda Zame's excellent essay, “Disabled Veterans Claim Their Rights,” in The Disability Movement: From Charity to Confrontation (Philadelphia, 2001), 170–83. On the relationship between black GIs, segments of American society, and the state during the post‐World War II period, see William Adkins, “Changing Images: The G.I. Bill, the Colleges, and American Ideology,” Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians 17 (1996): 18–40; Jennifer E. Brooks, “From Hitler and Tojo to Talmadge and Jim Crow: World War II Veterans and the Remaking of Southern Political Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1997); Dennis Onkst, “ ‘First a Negro . . . Incidentally a Veteran’: Black World War Two Veterans and the G.I. Bill of Rights in the Deep South, 1944–1948,” Journal of Social History 31 (spring 1998): 517–43;Jennifer E. Brooks, “Winning the Peace: Georgia Veterans and the Struggle to Define the Political Legacy of World War II,” Journal of Southern History 66 (2000): 563–604; Robert Franklin Jefferson, “Making the Men of the 93rd: African American Servicemen in the Years of the Great Depression and the Second World War, 1935–1947” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1995).4. Deborah A. Stone, The Disabled State (Philadelphia, Pa., 1984); Richard K. Scotch and K. Walter Hickel, “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare: The Politics of Disability Compensation for American Veterans of World War I,” passim.5. Hickel, “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare,” 256.6. Douglas C. Baynton, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American History,” 39.7. Philip A. Coxe to NAACP Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 7 December 1948, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (microfilm, University of Iowa Law Library).8. For example, see Susan M. Hartmann, “Prescriptions for Penelope: Literature on Women's Obligations to Returning World War II Veterans,” Women's Studies 5 (1978): 223–39; Susan M. Hartmann, The Homefront and Beyond: American Women in the 1940s (Boston, Mass., 1982); Sonya Michel, “American Women and the Discourse of the Democratic Family in World War II,” in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, ed. Margaret Randolph Higonnett, et al. (New Haven, Conn., 1987), 154–67; Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York, 1988); David A. Gerber, “In Search of Al Schmid: War Hero, Blinded Veteran, Everyman,” Journal of American Studies 29 (Spring 1995): 1–32;David Gerber, “Heroes and Misfits: The Troubled Social Reintegration of Disabled Veterans in The Best Years of Our Lives,” American Quarterly 46 (December 1994): 545–74.9. For works that advocated such points of view about returning World War II veterans, see Willard Waller, The Veteran Comes Back (New York, 1944); Dixon Wector, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (Boston, Mass., 1944); George K. Pratt, Soldier to Civilian: Problems of Readjustment (New York, 1944); Irvin L. Child, Marjorie Van de Water, et al., Psychology for the Returning Veteran (Washington, D.C., 1944); Charles Bolte, The New Veteran (New York, 1945); Roy R. Grinker and John T. Spiegel, Men Under Stress (Philadelphia, Pa., 1945); Herbert Kupper, Back to Life: The Emotional Readjustment of Our Veterans (New York, 1945); Edward A. Strecker and Kenneth E. Appel, Psychiatry in Modern Warfare (New York, 1945); Alanson H. Edgerton, Readjustment or Revolution? (New York, 1946).10. Robert A. Nisbet, “The Coming Problem of Assimilation,” American Journal of Sociology 50: 4 (January 1945): 261. 11. Pittsburgh Courier, 17, 24 November 1945; 8, 22 December 1945; 9 February 1946; 9, 30 March 1946; Baltimore Afro‐American, 13 October 1945; 1, 8, 22 December 1945; 2, 9 February 1946; 9, 23 March 1946; 6 April 1946; Chicago Defender, 28 July 1945; 19, 26 January 1946; 9, 23 February 1946; 23 March 1946; 6 April 1946; Los Angeles Tribune, 19 January 1946; 6, 13, 20 April 1946; Amsterdam Star News, 14 April 1945; 19 May 1945; 25 August 1945; California Eagle, 17 January 1946; 28 February 1946; A Monthly Summary of Events and Trends in Race Relations 2:4, 6 (November 1944; January 1945); James A. Burran, “Racial Violence in the South During World War II” (Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1977), 218–21; Rayford Logan, ed., What the Negro Wants (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1944).12. Robert C. Weaver, “The Negro Veteran,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 238 (March 1945): 130. 13. Alphonse Heningburg, “The Negro Veteran Comes Home,” Opportunity 23 (winter 1945): 3; Campbell C. Johnson, “The Unforgotten Man: The Negro Soldier,” Opportunity 23 (winter 1945): 20–23, 54. 14. Willard Waller, “Why Veterans are Bitter,” The American Mercury 61 (August 1945): 147. 15. Harold Wilke, “Greet the Man Returning Home, Not the Wound; Tips for Welcoming the Wounded,”Baltimore Afro‐American (20 January 1945): 5.16. George W. Franklin, “An Evaluation of Counseling and Employment Activities of Disabled Negro Veterans” (Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 1955), 2–6.17. Ambrose Caliver, Postwar Education of Negroes: Educational Implications of Army Data, and Experiences of Negro Veterans and War Workers (Washington, D.C.: Federal Security Agency, 1945), 13.18. Created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in response to A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement in June 1941, Executive Order 8802 banned employment discrimination based on race, creed, color, and national origin in defense plants, labor unions, and civilian agencies of the federal government. In addition, the president created the Federal Employment Practices Committee to investigate complaints of discrimination in the war industries during the war. But passage of permanent Fair Employment Practice legislation failed to materialize following World War II due to noncompliance by employers and AFL unions and filibuster challenges from southern congressmen. While historians disagree over the accomplishments of the legislation, the legislation paved the way for civil rights reforms in other areas of employment during the post‐World War II period. For more on the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practices and its activities during the 1940s, see Merl E. Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement: The President's Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1941–1946 (Baton Rouge, La., 1991); Andrew E. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941–46 (Urbana, Ill., 2000); Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue, vol. I: The Depression Decade (Oxford, 1978); Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996); Neil Wynn, The African American and the Second World War, 2d ed. (New York, 1993).19. On the postwar reintegration of black veterans after World War II, see, for example, Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst, Mass., 1988); Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York, 1997); Gerald Horne, Communist Front?: The Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956 (Rutherford, N.J., 1988); Onkst, “ ‘First a Negro . . . ,’ ” passim; Manning Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990, 2d ed. (Jackson, Miss., 1991).20. “Atlanta Officers Beat Colored Vets,”Michigan Chronicle (8 December 1945): 13; Marable, Race, Reform, and Rebellion; John Morton Blum, V Was For Victory (New York, 1976).21. Frank A. Reister, Medical Statistics in World War II (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 396; Administrator, Annual Report of the Administrator of Veterans’ Affairs for the Year 1945 (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), 58.22. Reister, Medical Statistics, 726–27; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 Part Two (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), 1150.23. Shelby L. Stanton, Order of Battle: U.S. Army, World War II (Novato, Calif., 1984), 168; Department of the Army, Order of Battle of the U.S. Army Ground Forces in World War II: Pacific Theater of Operations (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1959), 613–15.24. Philip A. Coxe to NAACP Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 7 December 1948, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (microfilm, University of Iowa Law Library); Philip A. Coxe to NAACP Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 14 December 1948, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (microfilm, Willard Boyd Law Library, University of Iowa).25. J. C. Lee to NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White, 27 October 1948, Group II, Box G 18, VA Hospital Discrimination, 1945–1948, Veterans Affairs File, 1940–1950, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.26. Leotha Daniels to Jesse O. Dedmon, 5 March 1946, Papers of the NAACP, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.27. Philip A. Coxe to NAACP Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 14 December 1948, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (microfilm, Willard Boyd Law Library, University of Iowa).28. “Amputee Auto: Crippled Negro Vet Gets New Model ‘Legs on Wheels,’*T*”Ebony Magazine 2 (April 1947).29. “Vasco D. Hale of Bloomfield Connecticut: The World's Most Courageous Man,”Sepia Record (December 1953): 22–25.30. Nimrod Calhoun to NAACP Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 14 July 1945, Papers of the NAACP, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.31. Ibid., 22–25; “Sight and Hands Gone, His Fighting Spirit Still Lives,”Baltimore Afro‐American (8 April 1944): 7.32. “Ninety‐third Vet Gets 2 Japs at Front; Hurt Behind Lines,”Baltimore Afro‐American (18 November 1944): 7.33. Mary Penick Motley, ed., The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II (Detroit, Mich., 1975), 95; telephone interview with Freida Bailey‐Greene, Phoenix, Arizona, 19 March 1998; Walter R. Greene Clipping File (in author's possession).34. Marilynn Phillips, “Oral Narratives of the Experience of Disability in American Culture,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1984); Marilynn Phillips, “ ‘Try Harder’: The Experience of Disability and the Dilemma of Normalization,” Social Science Journal 22 (October 1985): 45; Gelya Frank, “Venus on Wheels: The Life History of a Congenital Amputee,” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1981); For more on Goffman's influential thesis and recent critiques of the conceptual framework, see Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1963); Fred Davis, “Deviance Disavowal: The Management of Strained Interaction by the Visibly Handicapped,” Social Problems 9 (1961): 120–32;Gelya Frank, “On Embodiment: A Case Study of Congenital Limb Deficiency in American Culture,” Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 10 (1986): 189–219;Michelle Fine and Adrienne Asch, “Disability beyond Stigma: Social Interaction, Discrimination, and Activism,” Journal of Social Issues 44 (1988): 3–21.35. Gelya Frank, “Beyond Stigma: Visibility and Self‐Empowerment of Persons with Congenital Limb Deficiencies,” Journal of Social Issues 44 (1988): 97. 36. Charles Rabb, transcribed interview with author, Cleveland, Ohio, 3 August 1991.37. Jerome Frank, “Adjustment Problems of Selected Negro Soldiers,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 105 (June 1947): 651. 38. Herbert S. Ripley and Stewart Wolf, “Mental Iliness among Negro Troops Overseas,” American Journal of Psychiatry 103 (January 1947): 499–512; Also see Isidore I. Weiss, “Psychoses in Military Prisoners,” Journal of Clinical Psychopathology 8: 5 (July-October 1947): 801–15;Morris H. Adler, “The Management of the Maladjusted Soldier at the Basic Training Center,” Journal of Psychopathology 7 (April 1946): 713–29. However, others attributed the problems of reintegration that black disabled veterans faced to the presence of segregation and discrimination in American society during the period. For example, see Rutherford B. Stevens, “Racial Aspects of Emotional Problems of Negro Soldiers,” American Journal of Psychiatry 103 (January 1947): 493–98.39. Henry Williams, transcribed interview with author, Cleveland, Ohio, 7 February 1993.40. U.S. Statutes at Large, 1943, 43.41. Davis R. B. Ross, Preparing for Ulysses: Politics and Veterans during World War II (New York, 1969), 49; “Government Pensions for Disabled Veterans,”Baltimore Afro‐American (April 1944): 5; John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory (New York, 1976), 333–40.42. U.S. Statutes at Large, 1946, 319; United States Veterans’ Administration, VA Proposed Revision to the Schedule for Rating Disabilities, November 1975 (Washington, D.C., 1975).43. “VA Denies Discrimination at Veteran's Hospital,”Baltimore Afro‐American (16 November 1946): 7.44. “See New Hope for Negro in New Veterans Post,”Chicago Defender (1 September 1945), Tuskegee Institute Clipping File, microfilm, reel #93, frame # 0037 (hereafter cited as TCF).45. Harold Blackwell to NAACP Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 27 October 1945, NAACP Papers, Manusrcipt Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.46. Percy G. Hamlin, “Camptocormia: Hysterical Bent Back of Soldiers,”The Military Surgeon (March 1943), 295–300; For more on these beliefs, see James H. Jones, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York, 1981), 16–29; Hickel, “Medicine, Bureaucracy, and Social Welfare,” passim.47. Philip A. Coxe to NAACP Secretary of Veterans Affairs, 7 December 1948, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (microfilm, University of Iowa Law Library).48. Lemuel Shiver to Curtis Smith, 28 July 1948, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (microfilm, University of Iowa Law Library).49. Joseph H. Maddox, “Veterans’ Administration Cheats Wounded Veterans,”Baltimore Afro‐American (28 October 1944): 7.50. CIO Veterans Committee, Veterans’ Organizations (CIO Veterans Committee, 1946), 6.51. “Survey of Veterans’ Organizations Show Only Few Open to All Minorities,”Baltimore Afro‐American (22 December 1945): 7.52. For more on these organizations, see Congressional Quarterly Service, Congress and the Nation, 1945–1964: A Review of Government and Politics in the Postwar Years (Congressional Quarterly Service, 1965), 1347; Charles Bolte and Louis Harris, Our Negro Veterans (New York Public Affairs Committee, 1947); Howard Johnson, “The Negro Veteran Fights for Freedom,” Political Affairs 26 (May 1947): 429–40; and Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York, 1994).53. Edward McE. Lewis, “Educational Benefits for Veterans,” American Journal of Nursing 45 (November 1945): 889. 54. James Dailey to NAACP Director of Veteran's Bureau, 28 July 1948, NAACP Papers, Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (microfilm, University of Iowa Law Library).55. Henry Williams, transcribed interview with author, Cleveland, Ohio, 7 February 1993; Charles Rabb, transcribed interview with author, Cleveland, Ohio, 3 August 1991; “New Veterans Organization Seeks to Help in Soldiers Rehabilitation,”Cleveland Call & Post (5 January 1946), 5.56. “Allied Veterans Plan Mass Meet,”Cleveland Call & Post (27 April 1946), 11.57. “Woodard Greeted by Blinded Veterans,”New York Times (9 August 1946), 15; “20,000 Raise a Fund for Blinded Veteran,”New York Times (19 August 1946), 10.58. “Blinded Veterans Form Association,”Baltimore Afro‐American (30 June 1945): 7; Richard Dier, “Blind Veterans Organization to Solve Special Problem,”Baltimore Afro‐American (7 July 1945): 3; Robert Brown and Hope Schutte, Our Fight, A Battle Against Darkness (Washington, D.C.: Blinded Veterans Association, 1991), 33; My analysis of the Blind Veterans Association has been greatly influenced by David Gerber, 's “Memory of Enlightenment: Accounting for the Egalitarian Politics of the Blinded Veterans Association,” Disability Studies Quarterly 18 (fall 1998): 257–63.59. “Warns on Giving GI Cars,”New York Times (9 May 1947), 23; “Asks Limits on Gift Cars,”New York Times (13 May 1947), 3; “Blinded Veterans Silent on Defeat,”New York Times (8 August 1948), 20.60. Kendrick was selected as honorary president of the organization because although he was not blind, he had done so much to aid the struggles of blinded veterans during the period while working as an instructor at the Army Convalescent Hospital for Blind Veterans at Avon, Connecticut. There he worked with more than 700 blinded World War II veterans, assisting them as they attempted to re‐enter civilian life.61. Richard R. Dier, “Blind Veterans Organize to Solve Special Problem,”Baltimore Afro‐American (7 July 1945): 3.62. John Jasper, “Lights Out,”Baltimore Afro‐American (9 March 1946): 5; Thomas M. Pryor, “Happy, Happy Author: Baynard Kendrick Expresses Delight over Film Version of His ‘Lights Out,’ ”New York Times (28 January 1951), 5; David A. Gerber, “Blind and Enlightened: The Contest Origins of the Egalitarian Politics of the Blinded Veterans Association,” 317–19.Additional informationNotes on contributorsRobert F. JeffersonRobert F. Jefferson is an assistant professor of history at Xavier University.
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