Of Times and Race: Essays Inspired by John F. Marszalek

6. Black Soldiers and the CCC at Shiloh National Military Park

115 6. BLACK SOLDIERS AND THE CCC AT SHILOH NATIONAL MILITARY PARK timothy b. smith the civilian conservation corps (ccc) camp at shiloh national Military Park in Tennessee looked the same as any other camp of the era. The living quarters were neatly arranged. There were latrines, cooking areas, parking areas for wheeled vehicles, commissary, quartermaster, and medical facilities. The men milled around, going about their business under watchful supervision of the officers.Above it all flew the United States flag. Nothing was out of the ordinary except the men themselves. This camp, situated near Pittsburg Landing on the battlefield of Shiloh, was for African American veterans.1 The year was 1934, and the federal government had just sent more than four hundred black World War I veterans to Shiloh to work in two CCC camps.2 Over the course of eight years, the men improved the park and aided in the battlefield restoration that the park founders had so dearly desired. These black veterans who had risked their lives for their country in the Great War now worked to preserve a battlefield of an earlier generation. Shiloh had special meaning for these men: The Civil War battlefield played a major role in the Union’s eventual victory over the Confederacy. Sadly, even as they restored one of the very spots where their freedom had been partially won, they faced Jim Crow segregation and other forms of racism.3 Their story is one of many such paradoxes,of honorable work that benefited the nation, and of prejudicial treatment in the national parks. It offers valuable insight into the nature of race relations, government New Deal work, and the management of cultural resources in the United States during the Great Depression. timothy b. smith 116 Shiloh and the Civilian Conservation Corps Among the chief beneficiaries of the New Deal’s job creation programs were Shiloh and other national parks, to which thousands of laborers were sent to construct, rehabilitate, and restore. In the case of Shiloh, the Civil Works Administration (CWA) employed several hundred local men from Hardin and McNairy counties on erosion control projects, road maintenance , and excavations at Shiloh’s Indian mounds. The Public Works Administration (PWA) also provided money for new visitor, employee, and administrative facilities and funded several writers who studied and wrote about Shiloh’s history. The Bureau of Public Roads surveyed the park and funded road modernization projects. By far, however, the CCC was the dominant New Deal program at Shiloh.4 Normally, the CCC employed young men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five.5 Although World War I veterans were much older, they were allowed to work in the CCC because of the efforts of the “Bonus Army.” Wanting to cash in their congressionally appropriated service bonuses, the unemployed veterans marched on Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1932 to demand their money. What they received instead was a rough handling by Douglas McArthur and the army, along with an offer to join the CCC. Some 200,000 World War I veterans ultimately joined the CCC, 30,000 of them black veterans.6 Daily Life at the Shiloh Camps The first of the two black CCC camps at Shiloh, Tennessee, Camp MP-3 (Camp Young), was established on July 15, 1933.7 Made up of men from Company No. 2425, Camp Young was situated at the southwestern corner of the park. The earliest enrollees lived in tents “deep in the shade of the large white oaks,” as one eyewitness described it, while they built permanent quarters on the other side of Shiloh Branch.8 Ultimately, the camp boasted eighteen buildings, with the four barracks aligned in two rows with a “beautiful green carpet of grass” in between, a mess hall and recreation hall on opposite ends of the green, large oaks, and numerous flowerbeds. The camp had an initial enrollment of approximately two hundred men from across the South.9 Black Soldiers and the CCC at Shiloh National Military Park 117 The second camp, Tennessee Camp MP-7 (Camp Corinth), was established nearly a year later on June 14, 1934, approximately twenty-two miles southwest of the park.10 Enrollment at Camp Corinth fluctuated more than at Shiloh, with numbers ranging between one hundred and fifty and two hundred enrollees, most coming from the South also.11 The two...