Researching my ancestry recently, I discovered my grandfather’s draft card.
I wasn’t looking for anything more than the names and birth dates of his parents, but I happened to notice the lower left hand corner, which instructed as follows:
If person is of African descent, tear off this corner
I had not known about that before, but I saw it confirmed here:
The American military was entirely segregated during World War I. Although the military training of black Americans was staunchly opposed by white supremacist politicians such as Sen. James K. Vardaman (D-Mississippi) and Sen. Benjamin Tillman (D-South Carolina), the decision was nevertheless made to include African-Americans in the 1917 draft.[9] A total of 290,527 black Americans were ultimately registered for the draft during the two calls of June 2 and September 12, 1917 — 9.6 percent of the total American pool for potential conscription.[9]
Draft board officials were given the instruction to tear off the lower left-hand corner of the Selective Service forms filled out by black registrants to tag these for segregated units.[9] The August 1917 Houston Riot of armed African-American soldiers spurred by racist behavior by some Houston police officials additionally shaped the War Department’s decision-making, and the great majority of black soldiers were delegated to the building of roads, unloading of shipping, and other forms of common labor.[10] Only two combat units of African-Americans were ultimately established — the 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions.[11] Blacks were entirely excluded from the United States Marine Corps and consigned to menial labor in the United States Navy for the duration of the world war.[12]
Imagine, having a federal government that cared so much about race!
Comments
13 responses to “When race mattered”
Hi Eric,
I find it instructive that the Progs like Hillary still worship the Wilson era and do their level best to evade the fact that he expelled blacks from the Civil Service for the sake of segregation and segregated the Federal Army for the first time since before the Civil War. But the Republicans are racist and don’t you forget that!
African-americans have died fighting for america since the boston massacre. Their are many movies showing what they had to put up with for the honor of fighting and dying for their country. Japanese americans were drafted out of manzanar concentration camp to fight for america in italy.
andrew some years ago the republican party kicked out lincoln and brought in storm thurmond. Reagan gay his first speech after he was nominated in 1980 in philadelphia mississippi where the three civil rights workers were murdered in 1964, welcoming the southern white racists into the republican party.
Japanese americans were drafted out of manzanar concentration camp to fight for america in italy.
CapAss, you ignorant propagandist/leftist tool, Japanese American men were never drafted during WW2. They enlisted when permitted after 1943.
Thomas Sowell points out how the US government went from discriminating against blacks to discriminating in favor of blacks
over a relatively short period.
I see cap hasn’t stopped, sniffing glue.
Just to be clear, I think cap has the right, to sniff glue.
Who glorified the klan? Wilson. Who put the Japanese in camps? FDR.
good thing there are movies showing, what blacks have done for this country, or you wouldn’t know anything about it!
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[…] hard to imagine anyone in the United States actually being tired of race, but […]
I’m thoroughly sick and effing tired of all these liberal issues.
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race
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campus rape scare
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and so on
The U.S. government cared about race in World War 2 as well. Military units were still segregated, and most black soldiers were restricted to the kind of jobs that they were allowed to do in the South before the war: cooking, cleaning, driving trucks, and serving as personal servants for officers.