The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

Friend of mine is trying to do some research into black American military units (with a focus on sailors) during WWI. She is looking for first person accounts if possible. Any ideas as to books or registries that would have some information?

Thanks.

I have such a story. Related to me by my ex FIL in regards to his father's experience in WW2. I won't be telling it, as it would not pass muster in our modern times.

Nevermind. I see you are asking about ww1. I don't think there were many/any blacks in the Navy then.

There is a pretty well known story of a black cook, who, during the attack on Pearl Harbor, took over a machine gun on a ship, after all of the regular crew had been killed. I do not recall the sailors name, but it should not be hard to research. I am sure there are other stories, but I personally can not recall any at this time. I applaud your friend's efforts and would love to see the finished product.

The sad facts are that, in the Navy, blacks were usually put in to service jobs, such as cooks or laundry operators, stewards, and laborers. White people, at the time, did not want to work, sleep or eat or socialize with blacks. It was institutional racism that was accepted as the natural order of the world. At the time, most whites believed that blacks were considered to be mentally defective, cowardly, untrustworthy, and lazy. (history, not my opinion) I just read an anecdote about some black sailors who were about to ship out to the Pacific, that were terrorized by their officers by being told, that if it came time to abandon ship, a black sailor would be thrown overboard to see if there were sharks in the area. I am sure the white sailors thought that was a great joke, but the blacks could fully imagine that that could happen.

There was not much chance for black sailors to shine, and if they showed great courage, or competence, it would not have been frequently recorded. When I was in the Navy, in the early 1970s, Filipino sailors (and there were a lot of them) in the USN had taken over those types of jobs and were also treated as inferiors.

The Tuskegee Airmen put a lot of those notions to bed with the aircrews they supported, but it would still be decades before they would be treated with some dignity in most of the services. During the battle of the bulge, when we lost so many soldiers, the Army began to request the voluntary transfer blacks from stevedores and truck drivers to combat jobs, most frequently under white officers and senior noncoms. There were a lot of black volunteers who accepted the combat jobs, but you hear the most about those who were NOT willing to volunteer. I do not know of a time, during WWII, when the Navy felt that it was in desperate enough personnel shape to have to work with blacks in technical or combat jobs in combat areas.

There is information about black soldiers in WWI, but most of it concentrates on the 369th Infantry Regiment (Harlem Hellfighters). This is understandable because as was stated, most blacks in the military at that time were regulated to support positions. The 369th spent the first couple of months in Europe being stevedores and build rail lines before someone decided that pairing them up the the French would be a good idea.

I figured the Naval information is going to even harder to find because of the nature of naval warfare. Maybe someone will remember a chapter in a book or a collection of letters in some archive. There seems to be information about blacks in the Navy from Revolutionary times up to the Civil War, then it picks up again for WWII.

There is John Henry ("Dick") Turpin, who served during WWI and maybe that will be the angle needed to find others that sailed during that time.

I believe many black US soldiers were sent to serve with the French to bolster their failing lines during the last German push. The French had black colonial regiments fighting in France

There were black Confederate officers in the Civil war, probably on the Union side too.Not many.