White Man's War?

In Philadelphia, Negro Harry Carpenter was held for treason* when he told a Negro Army sergeant: "This is a white man's war, and it's no damn good."

Negroes have fought ably in every U.S. war since the Revolution. In the Civil War, the Union had 170,000 black soldiers under arms. But when the first Negro leader, Frederick Bailey Douglass, asked why they were paid less than white soldiers, President Lincoln temporized. Negroes should be glad they could serve at all, said Mr. Lincoln. They had more to fight for than any white man.

Since World War I, the Negro's status as a U.S. fighting man has gone backward. Of the 1,078,331 Negroes registered for the draft in World War I, more than 34% were drafted (less than 27% of the white men registered were taken). Some 380,000 Negroes served as soldiers-10% of the whole Army. The 292,000 Negro troops the Army expects to have at the end of 1942 will come to 8% of the U.S. armed forces in World War II.

Some of the best U.S. soldiers in 1917-18 were black troops. The famed 15th Infantry (now the 369th Coast Artillery) from Harlem stayed longer under fire (191 days) than any other regiment, yielded no prisoners, gave up no ground, suffered casualties of 40%. Negro veterans still grin delightedly when they recall the "Battle of Henry Johnson," in which a pint-size onetime Red Cap from Albany, N.Y. killed, wounded and routed a party of 25 Germans singlehanded.

Barred Gates. In spite of the shortage of skilled labor, black citizens are unwelcome in many war industries. As the war boom got going last year, President Asa Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters planned to forestall discrimination in defense plants by a protest march of 50,000 Negroes on Washington. When he got wind of the plan, Franklin Roosevelt sent for Porter Randolph. After their conference, the President issued an executive order forbidding color discrimination in defense industries. Negroes thought the President had passed a miracle second only to Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The President followed up his order by setting up a Committee on Fair Employment Practice.

FEPC has held innumerable meetings, has sent field agents scooting about, has as yet got few results.

P:Of an estimated 3,900,000 unemployed, 800,000 are Negroes (20%), although Negroes constitute only 10% of the total population.

P:Last year the Federal Security Administration found jobs for 79,617 unemployed workers. Only 853 were Negroes.

P:In Belleville, N.J., 600 girl members of the Chemical & Oil Workers Union threatened to quit if Isolantite, Inc. hired Negro girls. (A.F. of L.'s Frank Fenton retorted by threatening to remove the union's charter.)

P:In the constitutions of 24 national and international unions (of which ten are affiliated with A.F. of L.) membership is barred to Negroes. But all C.I.O. unions accept Negroes.

P:In Detroit's boom center, Ford lifted a challenge to other defense plants, a hope to Negroes, by admitting Negroes to its apprentice school, distributing defense jobs proportionately.

U.S. Negroes last week, like all U.S. citizens, were deeply impressed by Japan's successes in Asia. They noted that Japs are not white men. But U.S. Negroes did no cheering for Japan. As individuals, U.S. Negroes were bitterly, resignedly or indifferently conscious that the realities of U.S. life still barred them from full equality of citizenship. Nevertheless, most of them would still prefer to be potential citizens of a fighting democracy than the slaves of a conquering dictatorship.

The 13,500,000 Negroes of the U.S. remained semi-citizens who wanted to be allowed to do their share of working or fighting to keep the U.S. free.

*The appropriate charge would have been sedition ("attempting to cause disloyalty" of a soldier in time of war).

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