Two Wars | The Road to Integration

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Joanne Martin: To think about people who were willing to die for this country, who fought to fight for this country; and at the same time to be treated as subhuman, that you can't be a soldier because you're not even a human being.

Krewasky Salter: African Americans have served this country from the beginning.

Steve Peraza: Black Americans were feeling like their humanity was more respected and accepted among allies than it was by the very country that they were fighting for.

So there's absolutely no way that you're going to ask me to risk my life for this country out there and then come here and I'm going to lose this battle to racism.

Krewasky: The two wars that African Americans are fighting for: fighting for the side they're serving with, but they're also fighting for freedom.

Edna Cummings: You're not allowed to integrate in the military 'cause of your skin color.

Krewasky: Two wars have been there before we were a country.

It was there after the end of slavery, and it was there after Executive Order 9981.

Kanasha Blue: You go downrange and bullets are flying, we're all the same color.

Roland Hayes: You're in combat, it didn't matter the color of your skin.

Paulette Woods: A bullet knows no race, rank, color, or creed.

Roland: I don't care what you look like when you're in combat.

Kanasha: You want the person next to you who I would have risked my life for Black, White.

Paulette: Red, Yellow.

Kanasha: Blue or Green to cover your back.

Paulette: We are all one on the battlefield.

Roland: The only thing I care about is you do your job and hopefully you coming back home.

Joanne: I don't know how you get the will to continue to fight, but they did.

Krewasky: African Americans have been serving in this country from the very beginning.

The participation of African Americans during that period is by law they were an enslaved population.

So not only were they fighting for the side that they were serving with, they were also fighting to prove themselves and fighting for freedom.

During the American Revolution African Americans served for the side that offered them the best chance of freedom, and that's why you have African Americans who served on the American side and also served on the British side.

Joanne: It was George Washington saying that enslaved people would not be allowed to serve in the colonial army and then finding first off Black soldiers were courted by the British that was willing to make them all kinds of promises if they joined that side of the-- British side of the American Revolution.

But as was often the case within the United States, sometimes necessity was the mother of invention just as in the Civil War.

Krewasky: Who was enlightening President Lincoln to what was going on around him?

And that would be Frederick Douglass.

Steve: Frederick Douglass is the former slave who runs away, buys his freedom while he's in England, comes back, writes a slave narrative that is then used on the stumps of abolitionist speaking tours until the Civil War.

Krewasky: He says the side that first arms the Black man will be the side to win.

President Lincoln was not an abolitionist.

He did not go into the Civil War to end this institution of slavery.

He wanted to preserve the union.

Joanne: So despite all of the effort of Frederick Douglass to get Abraham Lincoln to enlist Black soldiers, it was only when the north saw that it was in danger of losing the war their minds began to change.

But when they got the opportunity, they went above and beyond.

They understood that failure is not an option, that you cannot allow those people who want to define you as not mentally, morally, physically, psychologically fit to serve, that you can't allow them to win.

Saladin Allah: When you have the Emancipation Proclamation which ends slavery on paper because you can't legislate people's attitudes or change how people have felt about other citizens for generations, shortly after the end of the Civil War you had a period of reconstruction.

That's an era where this country was focusing on social and political change and reformation, but that didn't include people of African descent because simultaneously with the Progressive Era you have Black codes, you have segregation being established.

Krewasky: When the war was over, they were no longer a part of the military service.

They were a rise to help the cause, and then when it was over they were disbanded.

Steve: When we're talking about the Black liberation struggle, this historical movement that had a number of Black Americans fighting different discriminatory regimes, that's impetus enough.

You know, negative treatment, racism, racial discrimination.

The United States is now living up to its political values.

The United States is about freedom.

The United States is about equality.

The United States is about capitalism that allows everybody to compete fairly.

However, we know these freedoms and equalities are limited.

Steve: Jim Crow was the law of the land that says it's okay to forcibly separate the races.

Saladin: W.E.B.

Du Bois was born right in the time of reconstruction.

So he's born three short years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and he's right in the midst where segregation start, where people who are classified as White actively denying the opportunity for Black people in this country.

W.E.B.

Du Bois, because of his experience getting his bachelor's degree, getting his doctorate's degree and being an educator, writing books and teaching at a university, his experience was, "You're not going to deny me anything.

I am a man as equal to you and all of the rights of citizenry belong to me just like you."

And that's why he actually started the Niagara Movement.

In July of 1905, they actually called together a congress of like minds and they met right here in Western New York, and they called it the Niagara Movement because the falls itself symbolizes the currents of change.

Saladin: Their goal was to end segregation, that we need to assert ourselves and require this society to do what the constitution actually says.

Booker T. Washington and W.E.B.

Du Bois came together during the latter years of the Niagara Movement.

That is really the foundation which established the NAACP.

Steve: The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was established in 1909.

Their first major victory was fighting the grandfather clause which was preventing Black Americans from voting despite the 15th Amendment.

There were efforts to raise awareness about Jim Crow segregation and to push for better treatment of Black Americans in wartime industries and in the military.

That led to A. Philip Randolph.

Krewasky: A. Philip Randolph is one of my heroes.

Steve: A. Philip Randolph is an unsung hero in the African American Black liberation struggle.

Saladin: You have a person like A. Philip Randolph to see the possibilities for Black people in this country.

Joanne: A. Philip Randolph was so influential in the fight for civil rights.

Steve: A. Philip Randolph is as close to a statesman as you're going to get before Barack Obama.

I think A. Philip Randolph is one of the most forward-facing, forward-thinking Black American activists.

In the 1930s, he's assembling a union essentially for sleeping car porters who carry bags and carry goods and food to patrons in these luxury train rides while all the White people on the train call you George and throw their change at you when they want to tip you.

Joanne: A. Philip Randolph was a labor man.

That was his background.

Krewasky: You can go back to World War I because it was A. Philip Randolph as a young 28-year-old man who took on the sitting president, Woodrow Wilson, who said something to the effect make the world safe for democracy.

It was A. Philip Randolph who said, "We would rather fight to make Georgia safe for the negro."

So when you fast-forward into World War II, he threatens the first march on Washington.

Steve: A. Philip Randolph knows that the United States needs Black Americans to work in the factories because the White Americans have gone to fight the Fuhrer.

He knows that if the factories don't churn out widgets and bullets and guns, there's going to be an issue with the war effort.

And so now he's threatening.

He's threatening President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to have a mass strike of all Black workers who are working in military industries if they don't desegregate and also provide Black Americans with some of the jobs the White Americans were doing.

Krewasky: Their threat yielded a success, if you will, Executive Order 8802.

Steve: Franklin Delano Roosevelt does something wise.

He disaggregates military industries.

Steve: Franklin Delano Roosevelt's executive order is the desegregation of military industries, and that's one thing.

That's Black Americans working in the factory on the war effort.

But World War II, Black Americans are still fighting in separate units.

They're fighting racism, fighting Jim Crow at home and fighting racism abroad.

Krewasky: During World War II, the majority of African Americans who served were in segregated units to serve in the Six Triple Eight and the Montford Point Marines.

Janice Martin: As one of the children of the Six Triple Eight I never know what she went through being in the military.

Edna: Charity Adams was selected to lead a group of 855 African American women overseas on an unknown mission, and she was hand-picked by an advisor to the president.

After doing great things to improve the morale of the troops there came home to Jim Crow America.

Steve: The war effort looks really good for the United States.

It's really easy when you've got a Hitler who's putting people in working camps and concen--and death camps.

We are fighting against racism, genocide, but we're still committing evil against our own citizens.

Paulette: Daddy fought against Hitler, man's inhumanity to man.

Daddy fought for our freedoms, for our country, for liberty, justice for all.

Paulette Ross: My father going over there fighting for this country, and when they come back, they're fighting to survive.

Paul Woods: You couldn't use the bathroom.

You had to go on the outside of the house to use the bathroom.

He said n--s couldn't use no bathroom.

You don't got nobody in that bathroom.

Edna: They're being spat on, court-martialed, beaten for standing up for civil rights.

Janice: They left their homes, they left their families to go do a job they had no idea they were going to be doing.

Steve: We're being treated like dogs.

We fought for this country.

We nearly died for this country.

We came back.

We survived only to die in the United States because of Jim Crow.

Joanne: A person like my father fighting for this country and fighting against Jim Crow laws.

Steve: Germans treat us like humans.

The French treat us like humans.

Why are we coming home and being lynched in our uniforms?

Krewasky: This is our American history.

Saladin: What Black people in this country actually went through-- Theron Ross: What our father went through is American history.

Paul: I served in one of the powerful armies in the world.

It had Whites on this side and Blacks on this side, and we're all saluting one flag.

Paulette: My father is a great, great leader.

He taught us stand for this country.

He taught us that a bullet knows no race, rank, color, or creed.

We are all one on the battlefield.

When we went to the World War II monument, he stood in front of this plaque that said, "We all stand here as brothers and we honor those who died."

And he just instilled in me we did--we fight for our country, yes, but we fight for each other.

The person who lays on a grenade to save the unit, the people who get those purple hearts, they did it to save their brothers because you become--you're family.

You're one.

Krewasky: President Truman was from Missouri, which was a slave state.

His parents had been Confederate sympathizers.

You know, his mother really didn't care for President Lincoln, and we know now that, you know, he used some choice words in the way he described African Americans.

Krewasky: When you become the commander-in-chief, when you become the chief executor of the United States of America, things change.

Maybe you begin to view the country as a whole, what is the best for the country; and now on that role he understands these are American citizens.

They have served, having survived the war and coming back to the United States and being brutalized and some of them losing their lives.

Krewasky: After World War II, he was legitimately outraged at the way that the United States was treating an African American soldier.

Harry Truman: I should like to talk to you briefly about civil rights and human freedom.

It is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in the long history of our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens.

Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights.

Steve: President Truman's Executive Order 9981 disaggregates the military, disaggregates fighters.

What Truman does is set the stage for Black Americans and White Americans to fight in the same units, part of the same battalions, to literally bleed together.

Krewasky: Yes, Executive Order 9981 overnight does not end segregation and discrimination in the military, but it is a beginning.

Truman had a past which had a lot of prejudicial views, but he is the president that stood up to sign Executive Order 9981.

Krewasky: When you think about 1954, the military is head and shoulders in front of the rest of America, but African American soldiers still experience discrimination.

Joanne: Segregation existed up until after the Korean War in one form or another.

Saladin: There's always been this capitalistic model since this country has been founded.

And even though during the time of chattel slavery we saw what it actually was, you just saw that it transformed in a lot of different ways but you still have people even today that may not be a physical slave but they may be a mental slave.

Ross: The reality was there was more segregation.

The reality is that there was more separation of people.

Roland: In the year 1966, I decided to join the military.

For me, that was a way of life.

Kanasha: I joined the military in 2005.

I was a junior in high school, and it's just something that I felt like I needed to do.

I've had an opportunity to be a part of something.

Paulette: My mother was terrified.

I'm her civil rights activist daughter being a African American well-educated woman thinking she was equal or better.

Roland: When I was in the military, there was a lot of segregation.

You know, here I am fighting for this country.

When we were coming in, we were receiving fire from the enemy.

And then when the fire fight was over, they asked me, say, "Anybody hit?"

I go, "I'm hit."

Patch me up, and then I found out that my unit was in heavy-duty combat and I told the doctor to let me go 'cause I need to get back to my men.

And I told him, "If you don't let me go, sir, I'm going to go AWOL 'cause I got to get back."

Roland: Things changed when I went to airborne school at Fort Benning, Georgia.

They took me to a--the bus station that's going to take me to jump school, and I got off the bus and the first thing I saw was Whites only, and I said, "Wait a minute.

Here I am in a military uniform getting ready to fight for this country, and I can't drink out this fountain?"

And I went to do that, and they snatched me up.

Now, here I am.

I'm in the military uniform and you have a civilian call me a n--and tell me, "You can't drink from that.

You got to go around the back."

That was my first experience with that, and I didn't like it.

When I see people who are being discriminated against because of the color of their skin and their living conditions that they're in because of the color of skin and I'm saying, "Hey, you know, here I am fighting for this country and we still got to live in these conditions like this, people still have to go through conditions like this?"

Kanasha: It wasn't an easy experience.

There have been many times where I've felt like I'm not an American, felt like I'm not welcomed but done things for this country that other people wouldn't dream off.

I was deployed in 2012, and I that-- I remember this, like, distinctly.

It's the night President Obama won reelection.

I've never been so scared for my life ever.

When the results come in, people just start flipping tables and just starting, "Oh, I can't believe this beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, explicit is going to be our president again."

And remember, we're in the military.

He's our commander-in-chief.

He's still our commander-in-chief and the way people are describing him, calling him a monkey and that kind of stuff--and if that's what they say about the president of the United States of America, what do they say about me when I turn my back?

Kanasha: When I retired from the military, I decided to go back to school.

I just got my doctorate.

I just defended my dissertation, and I'm super excited.

Like, I'm a brand new doctor, and some people say congratulations and then I hear the conversation down the hall, "I'll never call her a doctor.

I don't care how many degrees she has."

As a Black woman who has overcome things like dyslexia and gotten their doctorate, I came from a very small town that didn't have running water or electricity and now I have a doctorate.

I've served my country, but yet I still don't get that same respect only because I am a Black woman.

Paulette: I believe in the American dream.

I believe this--the principles this country was founded on.

I would still put my life on the line and die for this country.

African American soldiers love this country, defend this country; and we are proud Americans.

Roland: Few of the guys we fought with, they changed their mentality about everything and right now we still having reunions after 50 years.

We gather and we enjoy each other's company.

Kanasha: I would never want to change my experience in the military.

It has made me the individual I am today.

It has inspired me to continue to want to serve my community.

Joanne: Having the will to keep fighting, and I feel that that's something that my father and all of those--and A. Philip Randolph and all of them, they passed along to us; that you cannot give up, that it was worth the struggle and the effort for the future.

Theron: The whole message with the history that the White person, the White man is the bad guy, that's not true.

I never think that way of history.

There are villains.

There are heroes.

Some happen to be White, some happen to be Black.

But it's history.

Kanasha: To the men and women who came before me, who fought for this country even when they were considered three-fifth of a person, thank you.

Thank you for paving the way so I can serve in the military, so I can serve my country, and so my daughter can have a home and be a part of this country.

Paul: The best I can tell my children, take care of yourself and you'll make it.

Roland: I wasn't discouraged.

It didn't make me second-guess it, it made me want to fight harder.

This country is still worth fighting for, and I'm still going to fight for this country.

Kanasha: There are great people no matter where you go who I would have risked my life for.

Paulette: On that battlefield you say, "Cover me, brother," and that brother who covers your life, protects you may be Black, Blue, Red, Yellow.

We're all one.

That's who protects you.

I think that's what makes our nation great, and I think that's what the army and the military means to me.

We fought for humanity.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness.

Only light can drive out darkness.

We're going to make it.

Joanne: The potential and the promise and the hope of America--the ideal of America, not what it was but what it had the potential to be.

Steve: Has everything to do with Black military activists and White American allies who are willing to see that Jim Crow, racism are relics of the past and they're not going to benefit the United States moving forward.

I'm grateful for that.

Kanasha: Even though we don't do everything right, we're still a great country.

speaker: Worth fighting for?

Kanasha: Worth fighting for.

Paul: It ain't over yet, but we're going to keep moving like we've been moving.

Forward.