The men were forced to take some exams a second time. Their marks were so good, in fact, that some in Washington did not believe they could be real. The men, who ranged in age from 23 to 36 years old, mastered in only a few weeks what many white candidates studied for years.Īs their training drew to a close in March 1944, the group was posting grades like no other officer class in history. They were intent on proving that their “selection was justified,” Sam Barnes said, during the group’s first reunion in 1977, “and that we weren’t a party to tokenism.” They draped sheets over the windows so no one outside would notice the light. They were supposed to be in bed with the lights out at 10:30 p.m., but well past that hour, they sat together in the bathroom, flashlights in hand, studying seamanship, navigation, gunnery, naval regulation and naval law. They were ordered to tell no one but their families what they were attempting. They were segregated from white officer candidates and separated from other black enlisted men.
Their persistence led to 16 African American men being escorted to a Great Lakes barracks, which had 16 cots, 16 footlockers and one long table with 16 chairs. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter Branham, a realtor from Cleveland, wrote Navy Secretary Frank Knox. “It seems to me that that is a very cold and ugly situation,” J. Ordinary citizens wrote their congressmen, senators, the President and his cabinet to protest a policy that deemed their sons - who were eager to enlist in the Navy - fit only to wash dishes or scrub floors. The black press, a formidable political force whose influence in the African American community was rivaled only by the church, launched the Double V campaign, telling millions of readers that a true victory for democracy would only be gained if it was won both overseas and at home. “We want democracy in Alabama, Arkansas, in Mississippi and Michigan, in the District of Columbia, in the Senate of the United States,” the NAACP editorialized in 1940.Įven after Pearl Harbor and the formal declaration of war, many African Americans found that the calls to defend democracy rang hollow, while the German talk of a superior race sounded strikingly familiar.
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