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We may be mediocre, but at least we ain’t Black.”
That mindset did not just happen. It was engineered.
In early America, poor white indentured servants and enslaved Africans often worked under the same brutal conditions. The people in power saw the danger in that unity.
So they created a new social status. Whiteness.
Not wealth. Not power. Just the promise that no matter how poor you were, you were still above someone else.
Divide and conquer has always been the strategy.
Red Ball Express soldiers (L-R) Sherman Hughes, Hudson Murphy, Zacariah Gibbs, Office of War Information, NARA ID 535533.
Gangway image, Am. Legion Magazine, Army Transp. Museum, online here.
From Army “Teamwork” film, Red Ball Express soldier bravely drives through treacherous terrain. NARA ID 36078.
Hollywood’s 1952 film “whitewashed” this story. More info below.
USPS first-day cover (issued 6/6/1994), from the "1944: Road to Victory" series.
By Miriam Kleiman, Program Director for Public Affairs
“KEEP ‘EM ROLLING!“ – THE RED BALL EXPRESS
"Red Ball trucks broke, but didn’t brake."
The legendary Red Ball Express – a truck convoy of drivers, 75% Black – played a major role in the Nazis' defeat, providing supplies for Patton’s Third Army after D-Day as Allies chased Nazis through and from France. This Black History Month, we remember and honor those soldiers:
“We often refuel and rearm even while fighting. That takes guts. Our Negro outfits delivered gas under constant fire. Damned if I’d want their job. They have what it takes.“ – Stars and Stripes, 8/31/1944
"The spectacular nature of the advance [through France] was due in as great a measure to the men who drove the Red Ball trucks as to those who drove the tanks. Without it the advance across France could not have been made." –Colonel John S.D. Eisenhower.
The Allied victory at Normandy produced a logistical nightmare described by war correspondent Ernie Pyle as “a tactician’s hell and a quartermaster’s purgatory.” Huge amounts of fuel and supplies had been sent to Normandy but remained there while the American units pursued the German Army. Just weeks after D-Day, they were critically short on ammo, food and fuel.
The Army hastily set up a convoy, mobilizing 23,000 drivers and mechanics –75% of them Black soldiers–to assembled thousands of trucks, tankers, and escort jeeps and drive the supplies from Normandy inland to Allied units that were pushing the Nazis back to Germany.
With few exceptions, the Army was segregated during WWII and Black soldiers were barred from combat duty, instead assigned to service/transport units and often given menial tasks. Thousands of Black soldiers volunteered to serve with Red Ball Express, risking their lives by jumping into the midst of warfare. Many learned to drive for the first time!
The Red Ball Express ran 24/7 for nearly 90 days, delivering nearly half a million TONS of vitally needed supplies. To expedite the convoy, trucks emblazoned with red balls followed a similarly marked treacherous 700 mile route with hidden mines, constant flat tires from shell fragments and barbed wire, wandering livestock, and starving civilians standing in the roads begging for food. Top-heavy trucks loaded with supplies often tipped, flipped, and even sank into the muck of country roads.
Another challenge? Pervasive racism that continued long after the military was officially integrated in 1948. Hollywood’s Universal Studios “whitewashed” the story in the 1952 action-packed film The Red Ball Express. With the exception of a young Sidney Poitier in a minor role, the leads are white.
The New York Times noted this dichotomy, trashing it as a “completely stereotyped and shoddy war picture” (emphasis added):
[S]ince most of the soldiers in the real Red Ball Express were Negro Quartermaster troops led by white officers, the authors had to pay lip service to better race relations and did it in a patronizing and superficial fashion. There is nothing in this film to recommend, with the possible exception of Sidney Poitier...
Getty image online here.
MORE (non-Hollywood) IMAGES OF THE RED BALL EXPRESS:
Red Ball Express soldiers repair a truck while a crewman at a machine gun keeps watch for the enemy. Army Transportation Museum, online here.
M.P. Waves Red Ball Convoy headed to the Front, NARA ID 169139288.
Soldiers load ammo onto Red Ball Express trucks, 1st Div. Museum online here.
Charles H. Johnson, 783rd Military Police, cheers the Red Ball Express rushing priority supplies to the front, NARA ID 531220.
Stuck Red Ball Express truck, US Army Transportation Museum, online here.
See also:
82 Days on the Red Ball Express, Tyler Bamford, Natl. WWII Museum.
Logistics History: The Red Ball Express, Logistics Officer Association.
On the Road to Victory: The Red Ball Express, David Colley, HistoryNet.
Remembering the Red Ball Express, M. Todd Hunter, Disabled American Veterans. Red Ball Express: The Legendary Lifeline, Warfare History.
Riding Along the Red Ball Express, National History Day lesson plan.
Soldier of Supply pledge, Office of War Information, NARA ID 515188.
We couldn’t let the day go by without wishing a Happy Veterans Day to those who have selflessly served our country! ✊🏾 #BlackVeterans #BlackExcellence #VeteransDay #HappyVeteransDay https://www.instagram.com/p/B4vveeRnWab/?igshid=1a89fgtpbhu09
On this day - February 12, 1946
Police Chief in South Carolina Beats Black Veteran Isaac Woodard, Leaving Him Blind
On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a Black World War II veteran, boarded a Greyhound bus in Georgia heading home to his wife in North Carolina. He had been honorably discharged from service just hours earlier. When the bus stopped outside of Augusta, South Carolina, Sgt. Woodard, who was still in uniform, asked the driver if there was time to use the restroom. The driver cursed at him and resumed driving. “Talk to me like I am talking to you,” Sgt. Woodard told him in response, adding: “I am a man just like you.” After a brief argument, Sgt. Woodard returned to his seat. At the next stop in Batesburg, South Carolina, the bus driver exited and called Lynwood Shull, the local police chief, who arrived soon after. Officer Shull removed Sgt. Woodard from the bus and began brutally beating him with a blackjack. Sgt. Woodard, who was unconscious and badly injured, was then left in the Batesburg jail overnight. The next morning the city court fined him for disorderly conduct. When Sgt. Woodard was finally transferred to a VA hospital in Columbia, South Carolina, doctors determined that the beating and delay in medical treatment had permanently blinded him. In October 1946, President Harry S. Truman ordered his attorney general to bring federal charges against Chief Shull. The trial began a month later and was presided over by Judge J. Waties Waring, whose father was a Confederate soldier. After deliberating for less than 20 minutes, the all-white jury in the trial acquitted Officer Shull. To learn more about the racial discrimination and violence experienced by generations of Black veterans, read EJI’s report, Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans.
We couldn’t let the day go by without wishing a Happy Veterans Day to those who have selflessly served our country! ✊🏾 #BlackVeterans #BlackExcellence #VeteransDay #HappyVeteransDay https://www.instagram.com/p/B4vveeRnWab/?igshid=9hosta6hhldz
The way this country has treated me, a veteran, I am NOT standing for anything. Those are my rights as a CITIZEN!
Senator Charles Schumer speaking at Black History Month Celebration by Grester NY Chamber of Commerce @ Hard Rock Cafe NYC , 2/25/22 See more in our WorldLiberty TV Political Channel @ www.worldlibertytv.org #SenatorCharlesSchumer #greaternychamberofcommerce #WorldLibertyTVPoliticalBlog #SupremeCourtHonoree #blackveterans #BlackHistoryMonthCelebration https://www.instagram.com/p/CaafKV4AFpmzRsgPHJm9t4dn8-z4AHESmuqxzY0/?utm_medium=tumblr
#blackveterans #veterans respect to black veterans and their service and sacrifice. Thank you @colorofchange for posting and sharing and educating https://www.instagram.com/p/CWOrg99vYpM/?utm_medium=tumblr
