Let Us Fight as Free Men: Black Soldiers and Civil Rights

Notes

N o t e s Introduction 1. Christine Knauer, ‘‘Grant Reynolds,’’ in African American National Biography, vol. 6, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 2. Quoted from Diagnosis of Grant Reynolds made by Anthony E. Coletta, Captain , Medical Corps, U.S. Army, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records, Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washington, D.C. (hereafter NAACP Records), Part II, General Office File, 1940–1956, Box A 503, Folder 1943–1950. 3. See letter exchange between Truman K. Gibson and Walter White, NAACP Records. 4. Resignation Letter Reynolds to Walter White, September 28, 1944, NAACP Records. 5. In his later testimony, Reynolds underlined his unwillingness to leave the armed services: ‘‘I was put out of the Army because the Army said I had migraine headaches. Yes, I did have them and still have them but I begged to stay in the Army because my services were needed and my report will show it.’’ Universal Military Training: Hearings Before Senate Committee on Armed Services, 80th Cong. 2nd sess., 686 (March 31, 1948) (hereafter Senate Committee Hearings 1948). 6. Grant Reynolds, ‘‘What the Negro Soldier Thinks,’’ The Crisis, November 1944, 352–53, 357. Reynolds went so far as to compare the armed forces to the ‘‘plantation system.’’ ‘‘What the Negro Soldier Thinks About the War Department,’’ The Crisis, October 1944, 316–18, 328. 7. Reynolds, ‘‘What the Negro Soldier Thinks About This War,’’ The Crisis, September 1944, 291. 8. Reynolds, ‘‘What the Negro Soldier Thinks About the War Department.’’ 9. See, e.g., Jennifer E. Brooks, Defining the Peace: World War Veterans, Race, and the Remaking of Southern Political Tradition (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), esp. 13–36. 236 Notes to Pages 2–4 10. On white supremacy and its defenders: Jason Morgan Ward, Defending White Democracy: The Making of a Segregationist Movement and the Remaking of Racial Politics , 1936–1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011); George Lewis, Massive Resistance: The White Response to the Civil Rights Movement (London: Hodder Arnold, 2006); Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and End of the Solid South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Keith M. Finley, Delaying the Dream: Southern Senators and the Fight Against Civil Rights, 1938–1965 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2008); Jason Sokol, There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945–1975 (New York: Vintage, 2006). 11. ‘‘It’s Later Than They Think,’’ Los Angeles Sentinel, April 29, 1948, Editorial Page. 12. Usually the terms ‘‘Jim Crow’’ and ‘‘Jim Crowism’’ are capitalized. When quoting sources, the spelling in the sources is reflected. 13. There have been a number of books on A. Philip Randolph’s activism: Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Paula F. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990); Cornelius L. Bynum, A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle of Civil Rights (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010). Pfeffer provides detailed information on Randolph’s civil disobedience, but she does not consider questions of gender. Bynum’s study covers civil disobedience only in his epilogue. Historian Eric Arnesen is currently writing a biography of Randolph. 14. John D’Emilio, The Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2003), 150. 15. Randolph’s protest for the integration of the military was a movement in the broadest sense of the word. 16. On diverse takes on Truman and civil rights in general: William C. Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970); Donald R. McCoy and Richard T. Ruetten, Quest and Response: Minority Rights in the Truman Administration (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1973); Michael R. Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002). See also Monroe Billington , ‘‘Civil Rights, President Truman and the South,’’ Journal of Negro History 58, 2 (April 1973): 127–39; Barton J. Bernstein, ‘‘The Ambiguous Legacy: The Truman Administration and Civil Rights,’’ in Politics and Policies of the Truman Administration, ed. Barton J. Bernstein (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1970), 269–314. In her challenging reevaluation of Truman, Carol Anderson questions the baseline on which Truman’s civil rights record is assessed. Although a look at Executive Order 9981 supports her argument, Anderson fails to consider this important but neglected...