Here's Where It Gets Interesting - 149. Momentum: The Ripples Made by Ordinary People, Part 4

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

On today’s episode of our special series, Momentum: Civil Rights in the 1950s, Sharon makes the connection between the desegregation of the United States military to the power or writing a letter. It can be hard to believe sometimes that writing a letter or contacting our representatives can make a difference, but that is exactly what one honorably discharged decorated Veteran did in 1948. The ripples of the letter written by Isaac Woodwards would contribute to a tidal wave in the Civil Rights movement.  We can’t talk about these waves of momentum, however, without talking about the Korean War. Often a time glossed over in history classes, the Korean war at its core was a conflict about Communism vs. Democracy. This eventually led to more than 50 arrests of black soldiers in Korea who were arrested on trumped-up charges and court martialed. Who later defended them and cleared most of the charges? You guessed it: Thurgood Marshall. The war was directly related to the court case he had recently argued before the Supreme Court. How does this connect to the warrenless wiretaps? And who later received the more than 20,000 pages of information the FBI had on the Supreme Court? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Whether you're helping that special person take their content up a notch or adding that extra quality to your own shoots, Canon's got you covered. Shop the Level up sales event today at canon.ca. Hello, friends. Welcome. So delighted that you're joining me for our fourth installment of our special series called Momentum, which is about ordinary people who did extraordinary things in the struggle for freedom. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. And I mentioned in a previous episode that Harry Truman issued an executive order in 1948 that desegregated the United States military. And one of the reasons he decided to do this was because

of the number of African American servicemen who wrote to him about their experiences. And I think this is so important to share because we often feel like writing a letter will do nothing. We're like, come on, who are we to write a letter to the president or our congressman? They're never going to listen to us. It's not going to do anything. But the letters to Harry Truman did make a difference. And one person who shared his story with Harry Truman was Isaac Woodard, who after World War II had been honorably discharged and hours after returning home was dragged off of a bus and beaten until he was blind by police officers in South Carolina. And in response to Isaac Woodard's attack, Truman said,

if a mayor and city marshal can take a Negro sergeant off a bus in South Carolina, beat him up and put out one of his eyes and nothing is done about it by state authorities, something is radically wrong with the system. And it was in part Truman's bold stance on civil rights that led to his reelection in 1948. He said to the American people, it is my deep conviction that we have reached a turning point in our country's efforts to guarantee freedom and equality to all our citizens. Recent events in the United States and abroad have made us realize that it is more important today than ever before to ensure that all Americans enjoy these rights. And when I say all Americans, I mean all Americans. But you can't talk about

civil rights or the 1950s without talking about the Korean War. Because in fact, the Korean War was a driving force behind integration efforts in the early years of the civil rights movement. So to give you a little context about the Korean War, many Americans feel like it's the forgotten war. You don't learn that much about it in school. But it was fought between the years of 1950 and 1953. And at its core, what it was a war about was communism. It was a war about whose belief system should control the world, Western democracies or the communist beliefs of leaders like Joseph Stalin. And Korea was separated into North Korea, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union,

Korea was separated into North Korea, which was under the influence of the Soviet Union, later became deeply authoritarian and still is to this day, and South Korea, which the United States sought to protect from invasion from North Korea. And so in 1950, Harry Truman committed to sending U.S. troops into combat. In the summer of 1950, just 12 days after the outbreak of the Korean War, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover presented President Truman with a plan. And his plan was to arrest 12,000 Americans, 97% of them were U.S. citizens, and detain them permanently in military facilities and prisons. and detained them permanently in military facilities and prisons. The names of the people came from lists he had been compiling for decades. Hoover said that eventually people who had been detained would be given the right to a hearing, but the hearings would, quote, not be bound by the rules of evidence.

In September of that same year, Congress passed a bill which Truman signed authorizing the detention of dangerous radicals if the president declared a national emergency. And in December of that year, he actually did declare a national emergency. The general public, though, had no idea. They had no idea that the head of the FBI wanted to arrest 12,000 of them. We didn't know this until it was declassified in 2007. The plan called for the FBI to round up political opponents and to conduct necessary searches and seizures for contraband as defined in the plan. And really what Hoover was calling for was a form of military dictatorship. It's unknown what kind of conversations went on in the White House with

President Truman and J. Edgar Hoover, but what we do know is that Truman never carried out Hoover's plan. And even though Truman had signed an executive order integrating the United States military, it didn't mean that what was happening on the ground was a reflection of that executive order. The Air Force and the Navy had made a tremendous amount of progress on integration, but the Army had not because of one man, General MacArthur. America's issues with race highlighted differences between what America said and what America did. The United States claimed to be the leader of the free world, but it was still unable to fully integrate its own military forces. Langston Hughes said that the shame of America has become a world shame. One historian

of the time period wrote that Negro soldiers found that many white Americans packed their prejudices as well as their clothes in their duffel bags when they went overseas. And so one day, a newspaper reporter from a Black newspaper in Baltimore contacted Thurgood Marshall and let him know that dozens of Black soldiers had been arrested in Korea, which was a number that was very out of proportion to the average number of arrests for white soldiers. And in 1951, the NAACP decided somebody needs to look into this. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey.

We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind the scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs. Guess who's sitting next to me? Steve! It is my girl in the studio! Every Wednesdaynesday we'll be sharing even more exclusive stories from the office and our friendship with brand new guests and we'll be digging into our mailbag to answer your questions

and comments so join us for brand new office ladies 6.0 episodes every wednesday plus on mondays we are taking a second drink. You can revisit all the Office Ladies rewatch episodes every Monday with new bonus tidbits before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you In an interview, Marshall said this, there were records of trials, so-called trials, in the middle of the night where the men were sentenced to life imprisonment in hearings that lasted less than 10 minutes. One death penalty case I remember in particular, this is again Thurgood Marshall speaking, the record showed that this man was charged with being absent in the presence of the enemy instead of being charged with being AWOL, which is absent without leave.

He was charged with cowardice in the presence of the enemy. Unfortunately for him, he produced two witnesses, a major in the medical corps and a lieutenant in the nurse corps, both of whom testified that he was in a base hospital the very day that he was supposed to be AWOL. But despite their testimony, he was convicted and given life imprisonment. Marshall went on to say that, I was given an audience with General MacArthur and I found it very interesting I questioned him about the continuation of segregation in the army and he said that he was working on it and I asked how many years have you been working on it and he said he didn't really remember how many I reminded him that at the very time we were talking, the Air Force was completely integrated and the Navy was quite integrated.

And the only group not integrated was the Army. And he said that he didn't find the Negroes qualified. And when he did find them qualified, they would be integrated. And when he did find them qualified, they would be integrated. And so the situation in Korea and the ongoing issues with the integration of races in the United States Army would have remained a secret if that reporter had never contacted Thurgood Marshall. The NAACP requested permission to send Thurgood Marshall to represent the rights of soldiers who had been convicted in military courts overseas. And General MacArthur tried to resist. He said no. And the NAACP countered back

and they spoke the language of General MacArthur when they said, we're certain that you would want to see the soldiers receive full justice, not only because they deserve it, but also to counter the inevitable propaganda about it. What they were saying to MacArthur was that we wouldn't want the enemy to look badly on us for these issues. So there was a small problem. Even after MacArthur agreed to host Thurgood Marshall, Thurgood Marshall applied for a passport and was denied. And a woman named Ruth Shipley, who was the head of the State Department's Passport Division, said no. She called J. Edgar Hoover, looking for a reason to deny Thurgood Marshall a passport. And when she couldn't come

up with one, she continued to say no. It wasn't until President Truman intervened and said, please issue him a passport, that Marshall received one in the mail. And by the time he got on the plane to Japan, he looked carefully at his passport as he was sitting there and noticed that the passport said, as he was sitting there and noticed that the passport said, no good for travel in Korea. And one thing that I think is important to note about Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP is that they knew that anti-communist sentiment was very popular in the United States and that it was very important to Americans. It was very important to Americans to draw a bright line between democracy and

communism. And so the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall sought to distance themselves from anybody who was communist, had been communist, espoused communist beliefs. They did not want the American people to believe that they were communist, and they weren't, but they did not want to give that appearance. So when Thurgood Marshall finally arrived in Korea, he found 39 Black servicemen who had been tried and convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. And Marshall said that even in Mississippi, a Negro would get a trial longer than the 42 minutes that some of the service members had received. What was going on? It was clear that the army's integration policy was opposed by white Southern officers and troops

and it provoked an outcry from white Southern soldiers who were serving in Korea. They brought the Confederate flag with them and brought it out and waved it in protest to show their dissatisfaction, not as a symbol of Southern pride, but as a race statement, which they said was about resistance to integration in the fall of 1951. Once Thurgood Marshall and the NAACP began to publicize what had been happening with Black service members in Korea, the NAACP requested a definitive end to segregation in the United States Army. They felt that it was important that the federal government make progress, take decisive action. And as a result of their request, 20 of the men who had been court-martialed and sentenced to long prison terms and some to death, 20 of them had their convictions overturned or

reduced by the Pentagon. So there's a book called When Worlds Collide, The Korean War and the Integration of the United States. It's written by a man named Dr. Gerald Early. And I found this quote very informative. He said, the Korean War was a major institution. It was a major sociological force. And by 1954, remember the war ended in 1953, by 1954, we could look back and say that the integration of the armed services, while not complete and not perfect, went better than most detractors and most critics thought it would. And the Korean War was directly related to the Supreme Court case that Thurgood Marshall had recently argued, Brown versus the Board of

Education of Topeka, Kansas. General MacArthur believed that African Americans were inferior to whites, and that was the biggest obstacle to desegregation in Korea. So when Truman fired him in 1951 and replaced him with General Matthew Ridgway, things changed rapidly. Within a few weeks, the U.S. Army was integrated. I want to tell you a quick story about a man named Daniel James who went by the nickname Chappy. Chappy was born in 1920 in Pensacola, Florida, and he was the youngest of 17 children. His mother was a teacher, and she decided when her children were young that she would teach her own children because she wasn't impressed with the quality of education that Florida's segregated schools were providing. She eventually, by the way, started her own school,

which attracted other neighborhood children, and she ran that school for 52 years until she was 82 years old. As a child, Chappie was not sure what kind of job he wanted to have. He wasn't even sure what was possible for him. Again, he was born in 1920. The Great Depression began in the end of the 1920s. He was not born during America's finest hour. But his mother always taught him to never give up. And he went on to attend the Tuskegee Institute and eventually trained to become a pilot. So when the Air Force began implementing its desegregation plan in 1949, Chappie was sent overseas. He said that almost no one spoke to him, but he persisted.

And he was sent to fight in the Korean War, where he flew 101 combat missions. He eventually worked at the Pentagon. He went to Vietnam. He flew dozens more combat missions, some of the most successful of the entire Vietnam War. He served at multiple overseas locations throughout his military career. And his peers always described him as steady under pressure. And so in 1975, the youngest of 17 children who was born just before the Great Depression hit, became the United States military's first black four-star general. Chappie, of course, was in the military during the Civil Rights Movement.

And I loved what he had to say when he was asked about the United States and her struggle for civil rights. Immediately following the assassination of Martin Luther King, riots erupted all around the country. And at a meeting for military officers, this is what Chappie had to say. In spite of recent events, and in spite of the resistance to progress, I'm not disgusted. I'm a citizen of the United States of America, and I'm no second-class citizen either. And no man here is unless he thinks like one and reasons like one or performs like one. He said, this is my country and I believe in her and I will serve her and I'll contribute to her welfare whenever and however I can. And if she has any ills, I'll stand by her until it, in God's given time, through her wisdom and her consideration for the welfare of the nation,

she will put them right. And so Chappie was still a young military officer when Earl Warren and eight other members of the Supreme Court began to consider whether separate could be equal in American schools. And over the course of 30 years, there were at least 106 recorded occasions when Supreme Court justices were subjected to warrantless wiretaps by an FBI with J. Edgar Hoover at the helm. The file that J. Edgar Hoover had on the Supreme Court was over 2,000 pages long. And declassified documents show that the FBI had three sources among high-level Supreme Court employees in the early 1950s and that it closely watched the political beliefs of justices and law clerks at that time. And there's also evidence that in response to Earl Warren being made Chief Justice, J. Edgar Hoover sought to influence the future Supreme Court and

gave wish lists to people like President Eisenhower, who ultimately acted on J. Edgar Hoover's wish list. Decades later, a reporter from the Washington Post filed a Freedom of Information Act request, a FOIA request, and received over 20,000 pages of information that the FBI had on the Supreme Court, including information about Chief Justice Earl Warren's cooperation with the FBI before he became a Supreme Court justice. Earl Warren and J. Edgar Hoover later had a falling out and were not particularly fond of one another. And the question remains, what would make Thurgood Marshall a secret FBI informant? I'll see you next time. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast.

I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe to this podcast, or maybe leave me a rating or review, or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend? All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon.

I'll see you next time.