The Double V Quotes

“THE YEAR AFTER THE WAR ENDED, white mobs lynched eleven black veterans. Seventy-eight African Americans were lynched in 1919, including fourteen who were burned alive.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“It was not until eight years later, on December 1, 1950, that the War Department and the American Red Cross would stop separating the blood of black and white American donors.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“No struggle better exemplified the War Department’s bureaucratic obduracy than its 1941 decision to use only blood collected from white donors.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“To hate the Negro or to hate the Jew is to hate humanity.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“Anyone who mistook Harry Truman for a pint-sized [famously segregationist Mississippi senator Theodore] Bilbo was making a big mistake.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“The president of the Missouri Farmers’ Association seethed, “For this bellhop of Pendergast’s to aspire to make a jump from the obscure bench of a county judge to the United States Senate is without precedent. When one contemplates the giants of the past who have represented Missouri this spectacle is not only grotesque, it is sheer buffoonery.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“Journalists and editors for the county’s local newspapers wrote approvingly of African Americans’ being lynched, with one going so far as to predict that a black man soon would be tortured and murdered in Independence because “the conditions are favorable at this time. There are a lot of worthless young Negro men in town who do nothing.”9”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“Roosevelt’s administration ensured that African Americans were hired both by the New Deal agencies and by government contractors. The Work Projects Administration employed 350,000 African American workers, who accounted for 15 percent of the WPA’s workforce. African Americans comprised more than 10 percent of the National Youth Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the Public Works Administration issued contracts only to companies that agreed to hire a certain number of African American workers.41”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“In July 1919, France hosted a Bastille Day victory parade in Paris. The United States was the only Allied nation to forbid its black soldiers from marching in the parade.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“About a half hour after his safe arrival, the daring private learned that several of his fellow soldiers of the 369th lay wounded in the mire back in no-man’s-land. McCowin gathered his gear and again climbed out of the trench into the torrent of German fire. He carried back wounded soldier after wounded soldier. It seemed as if the bullets could not hit him. Finally, he was severely gassed, but he still refused to fall back. Instead he crawled out again and carried back another wounded soldier. For his awe-inspiring bravery, Private McCowin was awarded the Croix de Guerre. In relaying the private’s story, one of his commanding officers stressed that McCowin did “all this under fire. That’s the reason he got the Distinguished Service Cross,” one of the army’s highest honors.38”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“French soldiers who served alongside black Americans all but ignored Pershing’s directive. The Frenchmen saluted African American officers and shook hands with black enlisted personnel.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“Pershing responded by reassigning the Fifteenth to serve alongside French soldiers. The French Army desperately needed troops. If Hayward’s men were so anxious to fight, they could exchange their American-issued weapons for French ones and fight under French commanders.22 Hayward and his soldiers reported to Givry-en-Argonne, where they were taught to use French grenades, rifles, and machine guns. The New Yorkers also learned sufficient French in short order. The French high command renamed the Fighting Fifteenth le 369 ième Régiment d’Infanterie États Unís.23 “We are now a combat unit,” Hayward excitedly wrote, “one of the regiments of a French Division in the French Army, assigned to a sector of trenches.”24 Because the black soldiers seemingly had been abandoned by their own army, the French called them les enfants perdus— the lost children.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“Contrary to the Post’s reporting, a significant number of stevedores held college degrees.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“In an effort to prove his physical fitness, Young mounted his best horse and rode it from Ohio to Washington, D.C. His ride received widespread press coverage and the War Department faced even more criticism. The department responded by promoting him to full colonel, but did not change its order that he be forcibly retired. Charles Young would receive a larger pension but would serve no longer in the active military.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“Once Charles Young became America’s first black general, there would be no way to avoid assigning him to command white officers. For this reason, Secretary Newton decided that the lieutenant colonel would not see combat in the Great War. Instead, the army declared Young medically unfit for active duty and forcibly retired him.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“The commanding officer at Camp Upton in New York, General F. Franklin Bell, took it upon himself to quell an escalating dispute between a group of black soldiers and a regiment of white Southern servicemen who had attempted to remove the black soldiers from a recreational facility. General Bell dismissed all the soldiers except the Southern white officers. “Now, gentlemen,” he said to them, “I am not what you would call ‘a Negro lover.’ I have seen service in Texas and elsewhere in the South.” The fact was, however, that the Southern whites had “started this trouble. I don’t want any explanation. These colored men did not start it. It doesn’t matter how your men feel about these colored men. They are United States soldiers. They must and shall be treated as such. If you can’t take care of your men, I can take care of you.” If the Southerners instigated another racial incident, Bell assured them, “you will be tried, not by a Texas jury but by General Bell, and not one of you will leave this camp for overseas.”16 After Bell delivered this message to the white officers on his base, Camp Upton quickly developed what one contemporary historian called “the finest atmosphere surrounding Negro soldiers in America,” which was due primarily to “the high stand and impartial attitude taken by the late Gen. Franklin Bell, commander.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“For publishing Threadgill-Dennis’s letter, G. W. Bouldin, the editor of the San Antonio Inquirer, was tried and convicted of violating the Espionage Act. Bouldin was sentenced to two years in the Leavenworth federal penitentiary for making “an unlawful attempt to cause insubordination.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“In the wake of the Houston mutiny, white Southerners were not alone in calling for black troops to be trained henceforth at camps in Northern states. The New York Times recommended this remedy, urging the government to show “no sign of leniency” toward the mutineers.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“An Illinois National Guard unit of African American soldiers stationed in Houston succeeded in turning back the horde.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“The future executive director of the NAACP, Walter White,”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“The influential writer and activist James Weldon Johnson, who later became a national leader of the NAACP,”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military

“From 1914 through 1916, white mobs lynched 126 black Americans, often in spectacularly gruesome fashion.”
― Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military