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C H A P T E R 3 Citizen Activist A New Era UNLIKE MANY SERVICEMEN who found they liked the wider world they had seen in the service,Wiley Branton gladly returned to his hometown of Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He was ready to settle down. As was the case with most veterans, there had been many changes in his life. He had fallen in love for the first time and become engaged to a girl he met while he was posted in Boston.Unfortunately,the romance did not survive the war. His Pine Bluff family was reduced. His beloved grandmother, Effa Wiley, had died in March , while he was on his way to Okinawa.1 The two brothers closest in age to him, Leo and Sterling, survived the war but never returned to live in Arkansas.Wiley’s third brother, Paul, remained in Arkansas until the early s, but then moved his family to Chicago, where his daughter could obtain special education classes. Paul Branton was a teacher and, ultimately, became a high school principal of some note.2 Wiley’s baby sister, Julia, attended a boarding high school in North Carolina and then obtained her B.A.atAM&N College in Pine Bluff after three years at Taladega College.After marrying, she spent most of her life in Mississippi, returning to Pine Bluff in .3 Only the taxi business seemed the same.Although his paternal grandfather , J. L. Branton, was long retired and would die within two years, Wiley’s parents, Leo and Pauline Branton had been able to keep the business going due to some farsighted planning before war was declared. They anticipated the likelihood of war shortages and stocked up on tires and other automobile supplies.In addition,they made a point of carrying soldiers and officers stationed at the Pine Bluff Arsenal to and from Little  1KILPATRICK_pages_i-108.qxd 6/27/07 10:17 AM Page 23 Rock during the war.As a result,they were able to obtain access to scarce gas rations.4 Wiley plunged into improving the business rather than returning immediately to college.5 He had been thinking about expanding the taxi business while he was still in the service. By , a newcomer to Pine Bluff would be told that Branton cabs“[took] care of the Blacks around here.”6 That care took on meaning beyond simply providing transportation from one place to another. On at least one occasion, one of his drivers was in an accident and being threatened by a group of whites. Wiley apparently grabbed his service revolver, jumped into a cab, drove it into the middle of the mob, stepped out holding the gun, and took the driver away. No one attempted to prevent Wiley from leaving.7 Wiley’s personal desire to settle down and just live his life competed with the fact that segregation and discrimination against Negroes meant he never could live normally within the existing system. He was determined to carry on his grandmother’s example and make changes in “the way things were.”The Negro press that had kept him informed during his service about discrimination against soldiers, the “double-V” demonstrations for equality,and the pressures brought by Negro organizations in all aspects of American life continued to provide information following the war’s end. Branton recalled reading local and national publications like “the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, the St. Louis Argus, the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch, and of course later,the Arkansas State Press.”8 Branton immediately joined the NAACP,which had been vocal and active in pursuing civil rights and equal treatment for Negroes throughout the war.9 Branton was convinced that education and the ability to vote were the best vehicles available to the Negro community for achieving self-determination. Branton had learned to hate segregation.While these limitations had not seemed like hardships to a child,they were anathema to the returning army veteran.Having risked his life for his country, he was not willing to continue as a second-class citizen.His wartime politicization was not unique. In Arkansas alone, there were at least two postwar organizations created by Negro veterans—the Veterans Good Government Association in Little Rock10 and theVeterans and Citizens League for Better Government in Pine Bluff.The Pine Bluff group nominated a slate of reform candidates for office in the  elections and won all but one of the offices.11 Nationally, there was similar activity.  CITIZEN ACTIVIST 1KILPATRICK_pages_i-108.qxd 6/27/07...

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