The list of WWII crimes committed against black American soldiers by white MPs is as long as the military’s intransigence to compensate the widows and families of the victims. Forced to serve almost entirely in segregated units, black GIs often had far more to worry about from their own side than the Germans.
For example, there was the Battle of Bamber Bridge in June of 1943. Black soldiers of the 1511th Quartermaster Truck Regiment stationed in the English Town of Bamber Bridge were prohibited by top brass from patronizing white pubs. So locals, who had taken a shine to the regiment and were incensed by the injustice they were dealt, deemed all three of the town’s watering holes for “black troops only.”
On the evening of June 24th two white MPs, who claimed they were called to the Ye Olde Hob Inn about some trouble, tried to arrest a black soldier for being “out of uniform” because he still wore the field jacket he had on when carrying out his duties earlier that day. Witnesses all agreed the MPs were simply harassing the man, using racist language, and really most focused on the fact that blacks were getting too friendly with white women.
Tensions were already high after news filtered in earlier in the week that 6000 federal troops were needed to restore order in Detroit during a race riot that left 34 dead, 25 of them black. So when sympathetic townies sided with the black soldiers and essentially refused to allow the MPs to detain the GI, they headed back to their HQ but promised to return. Nobody doubted they would.
The MPs did come back with more men and intercepted a group of the 1511th as they were returning to their barracks. Things escalated and the MPs opened fire, killing Private William Crossland, who was shot in the back, and wounding several other black soldiers. This encounter convinced the rank and file of the 1511th that the MPs were intent on killing them, and they armed themselves accordingly. By nightfall the specter of a race war between American troops was real and playing out in front of horrified British townspeople, who openly sided with the black soldiers.
By the time order was fully restored seven men had been wounded. Even though a high-echelon review of the episode blamed vitriolic racism and poor leadership as the principle causes, a court martial convicted 32 black soldiers of mutiny and related offenses with sentences as high as 15 years before they were later reduced as the facts came to light and mostly black newspapers back home publicized the entire story.
Now, who was ever taught of this incident in high school history segments about WWII? Me, neither. Good thing, too, I suppose, lest we have suffered the ravages Critical Race Theory (CRT) can bestow on the fragile self-esteem of youth. Needlessly highlighting such a blemish on America’s otherwise pristine Nazi-pounding exploits… what kid needs that? Wasn’t the fact that the entire US military was segregated in full deference to Southern Jim Crow sensibilities small potatoes when considered within the more essential narrative of selfless America liberating Europe to replace fascism with democracy? Why ruin a good story? What patriot wants our children or grandchildren’s national identity besmirched by peripheral events from 80 years ago?
It was a tale of two inaugurations earlier this month, befitting a country cleaved by militant retrograde grievance toward dealing with its past. Wes Moore, Maryland’s first African-American Governor, took time in Annapolis during his swearing-in festivities to lay a wreath at the docks to commemorate thousands of slaves abducted in Africa and auctioned in the state capital’s public square, now formerly recognized as the Kunta Kinte-Alex Haley Memorial.
Keynote speaker Sherrilyn Ifill, the former president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, underscored the importance of tying shameful past to hopeful present: “…we stand here in triumph because the journey from Kunta Kinte to Frederick Douglass was just the beginning of a long line of extraordinary Marylanders who improbably worked to overcome the shackles placed upon them to become great leaders, not only of this state, but of this country and even the world.” Seems reasonable.
In Arkansas, things were quite different. Newly minted Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Donald Trump’s favorite story teller during her days as White House Press Secretary, freshly elected In November as a true MAGA darling, hardly had her hand off the Bible as she got right to doing the people’s business with a flurry of executive orders.
The inaugural parties had yet to commence but Sanders was determined to demonstrate to constituents she had their back on the priorities they cared most about. In her first hour as Governor, Sanders mandated the state education department to vigorously assure that Arkansas schools “educate, not indoctrinate students.” Specifically, she ordered the department to:
“Review the rules, regulations, policies, materials, and communications of the Department of Education to identify any items that may, purposely or otherwise, promote teaching that would indoctrinate students with ideologies, such as CRT…”
Facing even Fox News incredulity about why banning an esoteric higher education paradigm that’s never been taught in her state’s schools was so high on her list of priorities, Sanders stuck to the script:
“It’s incredibly important that we do things to protect the students in our state…We have to make sure that we are not indoctrinating our kids and that these policies and these ideas never see the light of day.”
It takes almost no imagination to envision how that will play out on the ground, what will confront Arkansas public high school teachers who even mention The Battle of Bamber Bridge. Of course, Arkansas doesn’t have to go clear across the big pond to suppress unpleasant memories it wants to “protect” its children from discovering. Plenty of that much closer to home.
Like The Elaine Massacre of 1919 – which the Library of Congress still referred to as a “riot” until last year – where white mobs, aided by federal troops requested by the Governor, lynched as many as 853 blacks after sharecroppers and their families complained once too often about being completely disenfranchised and forced to abide a near slave existence. White authorities, abetted by a fully compliant state and even national press, concocted the lie that the killings were merely a proactive response to plans by blacks to “murder every white they saw.” How many Arkansas kids through the decades, including Sanders herself, were fed that fiction is anybody’s guess, but it’s a certainty the term “massacre” was seldom uttered.
These days it’s a fair question to ask America First stars like Sanders, or her counterpart in Florida, Ron DeSantis, who spends inordinately large chunks of time looking for “Woke Left”academic and public health outrages to prohibit in order to burnish his political brand, what really gets them so irate about looking under the rocks of America’s past. Is it actually teaching kids about the Battle of Bamber Bridge or the Elaine Massacre that is so bad, or conveying the idea that there was really anything so wrong with what happened? Something to ponder while assessing the ruin of MAGA bigots in statehouses. BC