Honoring Sergeant Carter Read online

  When I pried the trunk open it was filled with dozens and dozens of letters—mostly letters from Eddie to Mildred. They included love letters, letters about plans they were making, letters about his experiences at various military bases and in the war. It was hard to put the letters down; they told a beautiful story of the love between Eddie and Mildred. Here were things I had never heard talked about in the family. There were also many photographs of Eddie in uniform, sometimes singly, sometimes with other soldiers. The pictures showed him in various locales, most of which I couldn’t identify. I found photos of Eddie and Mildred together and pictures of them with Buddha and Redd as children. There was also a collection of old newspaper clippings and articles. I was thoroughly entranced. That trunk was a treasure chest.

  So much material was crammed in the trunk that I decided to organize it chronologically so that I could identify and follow the sequence of Eddie’s own account of his military experiences. I also wanted to reconstruct the rest of his story and find out why his success seemed clouded to his family.

  I found references to Eddie having been raised by missionary parents in India and China, and having fought with both the Chinese Nationalist Army and the Spanish Loyalists. That he was recognized as a war hero when he returned from the service was quite evident: several articles published in the 1940s described his exploits in glowing terms. There were also some disturbing references. One undated article claimed that Eddie had been denied the right to reenlist, that he was barred by the Army in Fort Lewis, Washington. Apparently, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was urging the Army to allow him to reenlist. There was also a letter he wrote to Mildred in 1948 telling her not to worry about the CIC, that his record was clean and they had nothing to fear. I worried about what all this meant, especially when I learned that CIC had to do with the military Counterintelligence Corps. Was he under investigation? For what? Did it have something to do with his reenlistment problem? Whatever happened, could it reach through time and adversely affect his candidacy for the Medal of Honor?

  To my relief, there was nothing in the Shaw University report to suggest that Sergeant Carter had any problems while he was in the service. Interestingly, the report mentioned a 1945 news item from the Omaha Star, a black newspaper, claiming that Sergeant Carter was originally recommended by his superior officers for a Medal of Honor but was denied it because of his race. According to the report, “It is possible that Carter’s award recommendation began as a Medal of Honor and was then changed to a Distinguished Service Cross. Research for this study, however, has found no evidence to support such a hypothesis.”

  The report was going to be published as a book, under the title The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in World War II, and Professor Gibran, one of the authors, called to ask if I could send him a photograph of Sergeant Carter to be used in the forthcoming book. We also talked briefly about their research in the National Archives and the Army personnel files that had been destroyed in the 1973 fire in St. Louis. It occurred to me that the National Archives might have more information on Eddie that would be useful in my research for Gloria Long and the White House, and helpful in putting my mind at ease. But a trip back east seemed a remote prospect.

  In the meantime, I tried my hand at doing research closer to home. Joe Wilson, a military historian I had met, referred me to two important books: The Hellcats, about the Twelfth Armored Division’s activities during the war, and The Employment of Negro Troops, by Ulysses Lee. Both books contained mentions of Sergeant Carter (although his name is incorrect in The Hellcats). Lee’s book contained a one-paragraph description of the action at Speyer and Sergeant Carter’s role in it. The context of this account was a visit on April 19, 1945, to the Twelfth Armored Division by General Benjamin O. Davis, the top-ranking black officer in the Army.

  In addition to these books, William told me that Mildred once had an issue of Ebony magazine that contained pictures and a big story about Eddie. I wrote to the offices of Ebony in Chicago and was able to get a copy of the January 1947 issue, which included an article about black soldiers who won medals for bravery. The article, “Where Are the Heroes?,” included two wonderful photographs of Eddie with Mildred and their young sons in Los Angeles after the war.

  The tone of the article was critical. It pointedly stated that many black veterans, including those praised for heroism, returned to an America that continued to discriminate against them. It quoted Eddie as saying, “The war helped race relations by proving to America and the world that Negroes and whites could live, produce and fight a common enemy together…. The Negro gainedmuch from the war but there is room for improvement, a whole lot—about 99 percent.”

  Congress had voted to set aside the statute of limitations on awarding the Medals of Honor to the seven soldiers. The ceremony was set for January 13, 1997. Time was pressing. In September 1996, I made arrangements to fly back east to visit the National Archives at College Park, Maryland.

  Making a trip to the National Archives was not a simple thing. I had to arrange for some time off from work; I needed to make sure that Mildred’s and the rest of the family’s needs were taken care; and, of course, there was the expense involved. I worked as a supervisor of the 911 emergency dispatch center in Los Angeles County. With enough advance notice I could get a colleague to cover for me or arrange some vacation time. With some preplanning and meals cooked in advance, the family could survive for a few days without me. My husband was supportive. He wasn’t altogether sure why I needed to make this trip, but he knew I was doing it to help his father. We would somehow squeeze the money needed out of the budget.

  That it fell to me to make the trip made sense in terms of family dynamics. When the initial call came from Gloria Long, I took it and dealt with it. I had to—Buddha and Mildred were too distraught over of William’s stroke and Iris’s death. The family was in crisis. If there was one thing I knew from my five years of experience as a 911 dispatcher and fourteen years as a supervisor, it was to remain calm and take things one step at a time. First, help Buddha and Mildred deal with their grief and worry. Then, gather information for the White House as best I could. Once I started the research, Buddha and Mildred, and later William, encouraged me to follow through, although with all of them there seemed to be a lingering reticence, an almost palpable uneasiness. They wanted Eddie to get the Medal of Honor, but they seemed apprehensive about where my research might lead. Mildred could no longer tell me what had happened. Buddha and Redd never really knew; they only knew the bad feelings that Eddie’s military experience had left in the family. The feelings were painful and they didn’t want to talk about them. Their inner conflict made it impossible for them to probe, to uncover what might be hidden in trunks or archives.

  I was met at the National Archives by Kenneth Schles-singer, an archivist. I told him of the upcoming Medal of Honor event and explained that I was trying to get information for the family and for public dissemination. I wanted to see anything that might be helpful in understanding Sergeant Carter’s experiences and the general situation of black soldiers in the Army during the war and any problems they might have encountered there. Mr. Schlessinger directed me to the materials used by the Shaw University researchers and other important record groups. These included several sets of records and memos from Eddie’s unit, the Fifty-sixth Armored Infantry Battalion, that detailed the battalion’s movements in March 1945 at the time of the attack on the German town of Speyer. Sergeant Carter was not mentioned, but the maps, handwritten notes, and memos made the whole thing more real for me. Here were firsthand documents that recorded actions where Sergeant Carter was present. I leafed through the fading papers and tried to imagine what it was like for him. I realized that I could never know what he went through, but holding notes and messages that had been written while the fighting was actually going on made me feel close to Eddie.

  I also found War Department press releases that praised the bravery and fi
ghting spirit of black troops in the all-black Ninety-second Infantry Division in Europe, the Ninety-third in the Pacific, the 761st Tank Battalion, and the 332d Army Air Force Fighter Group—the famed Tuskegee Airmen—stationed in Italy. One press release applauded the hundreds of black troops originally assigned to service units who, like Eddie, had volunteered for combat duty as riflemen.

  The other documents I found with Schlessinger’s help were more disturbing. For example, there was a series of reports assessing the use of Negro rifle platoons in the Army during the war. Although the reports generally concluded that the black infantry units, composed of volunteers, performed well in combat, almost all of the authors recommended against forming racially integrated fighting units. Instead they recommended continuation of the policy at that time of limited use of all-black units under white (or possibly black) officers within larger white combat units. In other words, black troops might be allowed into combat, but only in segregated units.

  Evidence of discrimination against and mistreatment of black soldiers was plentiful in a file of letters and reports that had been sent to William M. Hastie, a respected black judge who was dean of the Howard University Law School. In 1940 he was appointed Civilian Aide on Negro Affairs by Secretary of War Henry Stimson. Among other things, Hastie tracked racial incidents in the military. The material in the file was chilling. It included a report of the lynching in 1941 of a young black soldier, Felix Hall, at Fort Benning, Georgia. There was also a report of what Hastie called the “wanton slaying” of an unarmed black soldier, Albert King, by a military policeman at Fort Benning in the same year. The military policeman was acquitted; Hall’s slayers were apparently not found. In June 1942, Eddie was a sergeant in a service battalion at Fort Benning. Did he know of these killings?

  Schlessinger recommended that I review some additional files that proved to be equally troubling. These were military weekly intelligence reports for 1944–1946. I was surprised to see that the Army collected detailed information on the involvement of black soldiers in so-called racial situations around the country, and special attention was given to the reaction of the Negro press to these incidents. The situations commonly involved acts of racial discrimination, mistreatment, or violence against black soldiers, including incidents on military bases, or black citizens in general. The activities of the NAACP and other civil rights groups were also closely monitored. The reports were organized under headings such as “Organizations Fomenting Racial Agitation” and “Potential Racial Disturbances.” Black soldiers or sailors observed speaking out against or actively resisting discrimination were described as “attempting to create racial unrest.”

  No part of the country seemed exempt from the prying eyes of military intelligence. Some areas, however, were described as “sensitive.” Los Angeles, where Eddie and his family lived before and after the war, was often high on the list of “sensitive” areas because, as a report on January 5, 1946, stated, “of the heavy concentration of Negro workers, unrest in the Los Angeles Harbor Area and current government cutbacks.” Other cities in California, and sometimes Washington state, were occasionally identified as sensitive for similar reasons.

  Some of the weekly intelligence reports included sections on “communists and fellow travelers.” Reading these I came across a reference to the Daily World, the Communist Party’s newspaper. I remembered that one of the news clippings about Eddie’s heroism that I found in Mildred’s trunk came from the Daily World. Now, a few pages further on in the intelligence report, I found a reference to a “Welcome Home, Joe” dinner held in Los Angeles and sponsored by an organization called American Youth for Democracy. A parenthetical comment in the report described this group as a “CP [Communist Party] organization.” I felt a cold shiver: this dinner was mentioned in the same Daily World clipping I had found in Mildred’s trunk. The intelligence report went on to quote an unidentified Negro newspaper as writing that “embittered” World War II veterans honored at the dinner denounced the “so-called democracy for which they fought.” These veterans said that they returned “to find America more prejudiced than before and intolerance at an all-time new high.” Having just read of the “racial situations” encountered by black soldiers and civilians, I didn’t find the views expressed by the veterans at the dinner very surprising. But it was disturbing to find an event that Eddie attended alluded to in these intelligence reports. His name was not mentioned specifically, but I knew his attendance had been mentioned in the newspaper coverage.

  An FBI report I examined did not relieve my worry. Entitled “Foreign Inspired Agitation Among American Negroes in the Los Angeles Field Division,” the November 21, 1944, report stated that white homeowners protective associations were “becoming more active against negro encroachment” and were trying to establish restrictive covenants to prevent blacks from buying homes. Anonymous literature was being circulated, it continued, advocating the boycotting and disenfranchisement of Negroes. The U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles had advised that circulation of such literature did not constitute a violation of civil rights. However, the black press and civil rights groups had “expressed considerable concern over the circulation of such literature.”

  As I browsed through the seventy-eight-page report, a subhead that read “Eastside Chamber of Commerce—Negro” caught my eye. The name rang a bell. Again I remembered clippings from Mildred’s trunk, articles published in May 1946 reporting some upheaval in the leadership of the Eastside Chamber of Commerce in Los Angeles, resulting in Eddie being appointed director of public relations for the organization and chairman of its veterans committee. The FBI account seemed innocuous enough. An informant described the organization as “vitally interested in improving health conditions among the negroes, especially wiping out venereal disease, which, according to military and naval authorities, was showing an alarming increase among the servicemen.” Then I came to the lines: “There are certain members of the organization which might be considered ‘striped.’ By striped he [the FBI informant] meant radicals whom some people might consider as Communists. These members, however, kept their activity on such a plane so as not to reflect on the chamber or the community as a whole and were therefore allowed to maintain their membership.” Of course, Eddie was in the war in 1944, but was the Eastside Chamber of Commerce still under surveillance in 1946? Was Eddie suspected of Communist Party involvement?

  I returned from the National Archives with more questions than when I left. I worried that perhaps Eddie did have some connection with communists, and that this was the source of his problems. There seemed to be a fear in the family that Eddie’s problems with the Army might have been his own doing. Could those problems rise again to be his undoing now? For the most part all that the government’s extensive spying on black soldiers and the black community turned up was a determined refusal by African Americans to any longer accept segregation, discrimination, and mistreatment. The government was treating civil rights activism as criminal. Anytime black people voiced or acted out their objections to racism, both the military and the FBI saw this as subversive. Eddie was not the kind of man to meekly accept mistreatment. He was not belligerent, but he would have voiced his objections. He would have said that the country needed some serious improvement, as he did in the Ebony magazine article. Was this what they had against him? I didn’t know. I had questions, but I hadn’t found any answers.

  Earlier in the spring of 1996 a scandal broke in Los Angeles about cemeteries. Remains reportedly were being dug up and other bodies buried in the graves. We heard a news report about it, and Mildred started pressing me to go to the cemetery to make sure Eddie’s body hadn’t been dug up. To my surprise, she described exactly where the grave was located in the cemetery, in a corner by a big tree. She said, “I know this because I used to go there after work, and I’d lay on his grave and cry. I would say ‘Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?’ I did that many a night.”

  When I visited the place, it turned out to be an old vete
rans cemetery and not very well maintained. I found the gravesite where Mildred said it would be. The place was somewhat unkempt but Eddie’s headstone was there and the grave appeared to be undisturbed…except for what looked like a plastic bag lying next to the headstone. Thinking it was trash, I picked it up. Inside I discovered a newspaper article about Eddie being nominated for the Medal of Honor. Who had put this here? There was no note or name, only the clipping. I was mystified. I tucked the clipping in my purse. I had brought a camera so I took a photo of the grave and the headstone to reassure Mildred. The headstone read: “Edward A. Carter, Jr. SFC, U.S. Army, World War II, DSC, BSM, PH & 2 OLC. May 26, 1916–January 30, 1963.”

  I made my way out of the cemetery, occasionally nearly tripping over gopher holes, and feeling increasingly annoyed that this neglected site was Eddie’s final resting place. As the grave of a soldier about to be honored with the highest award his nation could give, it seemed sadly inappropriate. It was not a hero’s burial place. For weeks I couldn’t get the image of Eddie’s grave out of my mind.