STRUGGLE for EQUALITY--A COMMUNITY VIEW.

Museum of the Great Plains (Lawton, Oklahoma)

from Humanities InterView, Spring 2003, vol.21, no.2, pp.8-10

Exhibit script written by OHC Board Member Lynn Musslewhite

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When sixteen year old Albert Johnson got on the bus which ran from Fort Sill into Lawton one afternoon in 1943, he found it packed. The crowding did not surprise him, for the military buildup for World War II was nearing its peak, and thousands of soldiers, both black and white, trained daily at the post. Nationwide, over 12 million Americans served in the Armed Forces during the war; about one million of those serving were African-Americans. Throughout most of the war, African-Americans remained segregated in all-black units, and they were often restricted to non-combatant duty. In 1940 the Army had only five black officers; three were chaplains. This pattern of segregation had a long history at Fort Sill.

African-American soldiers had served at Fort Sill since its creation, helping build the post and fighting as "Buffalo Soldiers" during the wars against the Plains Indians. In the years preceding World War II, many of the black troops specialized in caring for the animals vital to a horse-drawn Army. Black soldiers ran the blacksmith shop where they shoed horses and mules and made repairs to horse-drawn equipment. Because of the Army's policy of segregation, these troops belonged to the 4^th (Colored) Detachment, an all-black unit with white officers. When the build up for World War II began, incoming black troops trained in the 349th Training Squadron.

As World War II progressed, the role of blacks in the military slowly began to shift. Some of the black troops who trained at Fort Sill headed to Europe or the Far East to engage in combat. The Army formed two black combat divisions, and the 761st Tank Battalion went into battle under General Patton in Normandy. The [Army] Air Force [Corps] eventually consented to train black fliers, including the 99th Pursuit Squadron, known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Phail Wynn, who later served as the first African-American on the Lawton school board, flew with that group. The Navy inched toward integration, and by December 1945 had officially ended segregation altogether.

On occasion, black troops flashed the "Double V" sign, signally that they were fighting not only for victory over racism in Europe and the Far East, but also for a new era in race relations at home. The military service performed by African-Americans both increased the militancy of many veterans and pushed American society toward greater acceptance of changed roles for blacks in American life.

Young Albert Johnson experienced first hand the growing militancy the war encouraged in black veterans on that day in 1943 when he got on the crowded bus. He started toward the back, for social custom dictated that all blacks must sit at the back, even surrendering those seats if any white person needed a seat. Several whites were sitting in the black section that day, but Albert noticed a vacant seat at the front near the driver. As he stood near the seat, he noticed a highly decorated black soldier staring at him, telling him with a look to take the seat. Finally, he said to Albert, "Sit down." Having been raised in a military family, Albert did as he was told and took the seat. The white Army major sitting next to him said, "Nigger, get up." When Albert did not respond quickly enough, the major repeated the command, saying that in Arkansas, "Niggers don't sit by whites." Albert stood up. At this point the black veteran intervened. Pointing to his decorations and the service stripes on his arm, he said he had been defending his country so that everyone could have the right to sit where he pleased. "Sit down," he commanded. So Albert sat back down and remained seated for the rest of his trip.

Service by blacks in World War II did not end segregation, but in Lawton, as in the rest of the nation, cracks in the old Jim Crow system began to appear. Within a few years, Rosa Parks would challenge segregation on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, and help launch the civil rights movement.

Jim Crow was the name of the racial caste system which operated primarily, but not exclusively in southern and border states, between 1877 and the mid-1960s. "Jim Crow" laws mandated that blacks have separate facilities for traveling, lodging, eating and drinking, schooling, worship, housing and other aspects of social and economic life. Jim Crow was more than a series of rigid anti-Black laws. It was a way of life. Under Jim Crow, African Americans were relegated to the status of second class citizens. Jim Crow represented the legitimization of anti-Black racism.

Many cities and towns with defense industries or military bases experienced substantial growth in their black populations. Such growth occurred in Lawton. During the l940s the city's population most doubled, and the non-white population grew more rapidly than the white. About 3,500 blacks lived in Lawton in the years just after the war. Many of the newcomers had been drawn to the city by the prospect of work at Fort Sill and in the businesses which supported the fort and its troops. Prior to the war economic opportunities for blacks in the city were very limited. Men worked as day laborers, mowed lawns, pumped gas and changed tires, or shined shoes. They served as porters or waiters at hotels and restaurants, cut hair in black barber shops, or worked as agricultural laborers. Jobs in the Post Office, the fire department, and most other departments of city government were closed to them.

Many black women served as domestics in the homes of whites, while others worked in black businesses as beauticians, cooks, or waitresses. At times entire black families would leave Lawton in the summer to work in the cotton fields, not returning until after the harvest in late fall. After the war began, construction work on Fort Sill and service jobs provided decent salaries, and the number of business owners and professionals in the black community began to grow.

Opportunities for black professionals remained very limited, even in the years after the war. For most ambitious and talented young blacks, teaching was the only feasible profession. Often, Lawton youth would leave the city, attend Langston or another black college or university, such as Lincoln, Hampton, or Winston-Salem, then return home to teach at Douglass or Dunbar [schools]. For graduate education, blacks had to travel outside the state to schools such as the University of Denver or UCLA. Teachers and other professionals, along with ministers and businessmen, provided the leadership for the black community.

For most African-Americans in Lawton, community life revolved around the churches and the schools, for those institutions provided them educational and spiritual resources. What became Douglass School had been founded very early, with classes probably beginning in 1902. Until the 1930s, it remained essentially a primary school, offering classes only through junior high. Lawton's black youth who wanted to attend high school had to travel to Chickasha or some other community. After the appointment of W.R. Patterson as principal, the school began a period of substantial progress. With the aid of a $27,350 grant from the Julius Rosenwald Fund, a new facility was constructed on a five-acre tract. The brick building housed ten classrooms, and a new gymnasium stood next door. Patterson pushed hard for academic improvements, and high school work was added to the curriculum.

By the 1940s, Douglass had received accreditation for its high school department, and the school boasted of its athletic teams and its band. At the end of the war, its graduating class of eleven sent five of its members to college. Douglass students who did move on to higher education often found that they had been well prepared for academic work at college. Because of the large number of pupils from military families brought to Lawton by the war, the school received some federal funding which supplemented its always inadequate budget.

Although the school existed because of the legal doctrine of "separate but equal" facilities, the equipment at Douglass and Dunbar was anything but equal to that at the white schools. Black schools received different funding from white schools, and they often received athletic equipment, band uniforms, laboratory supplies, and other needed items only when those items were discarded from the white schools. Resourceful administrators often borrowed items from Fort Sill which they could not acquire otherwise.

School segregation existed by state law; other forms of segregation in Lawton, although based on social custom [de facto], were inflexible. Blacks who made the bus often encountered a sign in the front indication that they must sit at the back; those who tool a cab rode in the cabs provided by the company owned and operated by black owners for the black community. No restaurant which served whites would serve blacks except in the kitchen or at the back door. When Mildred Lee worked at a tailor shop, she could go into the front of a restaurant to pick up sandwiches for her white employer; however, if the food was for herself, she had to go to the back door.

Treatment of blacks in retail establishments varied; most stores wanted the dollars which black customers could provide but stopped short of treating them equally. Some stores, such as Kresses, had separate white and "colored" water fountains, and stores often refused to allow blacks to try on clothing they wished to purchase. Clerks would wait on white customers first, abandoning black customers if a white customer appeared. Generally, however, black customers were treated fairly, and some stores allowed blacks to have charge accounts. "White" and "Colored" signs hung over the water fountains and restroom doors at the courthouse. Most in the African-American community accepted these restrictions, with children being taught, "That's just the way it is."

For Lawton, one of the first fissures in the wall of segregation opened in 1948. Inspired partially by the record of black service personnel in World War II and partially by political considerations. That rear, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981. The order declared that "There shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin." The Navy and the Air Force began to move ahead with integration plans, but the Marine Corps (which had only one black officer among its 8,200 officers) and the Army resisted the policy. Almost a year later, the Army insisted that it would continue to maintain segregated units and set an enlistment quota of ten percent for African Americans. The Army's resistance gradually broke down partly because of pressure from President Truman and the Secretary of the Army.

An even more potent factor was the outbreak of the Korean War. In Korea, white units suffered from depletion of their numbers while large numbers of African American recruits could not be absorbed into all black units. By early in 1951, the Eighth Army in Korea had begun to integrate, and the Department of Defense announced that all basic training in the United States had been integrated. By October of 1953, the Army could declare that 95% of African-American soldiers were serving in integrated units.

Although training at Fort Sill had been integrated with relatively little friction, segregation remained the order of the day in Lawton. But in Oklahoma, as in American society as a whole, progress toward greater equality continued to move forward. In public higher education, Oklahoma blacks led the assault on segregation. Ada Lois Sipuel applied in 1946 for admission to the University of Oklahoma law school. Her application was denied solely on the basis of her race, for state law forbade the mixing of the races in the classrooms of state institutions. Sipuel sued the university, and Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel for the NAACP, came to Oklahoma and argued the case before the Oklahoma Supreme Court. While in Oklahoma, Marshall visited Lawton. When the state court denied Sipuel's appeal, Marshall appealed to the US Supreme Court where Sipuel won a limited victory. After a series of unsuccessful maneuvers by the state, Sipuel finally gained admission to the law school in 1949.

In the meantime, George McLaurin, a retired black professor, had applied for admission to the university to pursue a Doctorate in Education. In October 1948, a Federal court forced his admission, hut the university required him to sit in an anteroom to the room where his classes were held. He bad to sit at a designated desk on the mezzanine of the library, and eat at a different time than the white students in the cafeteria. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that because of such restrictions, McLaurin was "handicapped in his pursuit of effective graduate instruction." The state had to provide McLaurin with the same opportunities as other students. By the early 1950s, a small number of black students were enrolled at OU.

After the McLaurin decision, few doubted that school segregation as justified by the "separate but equal" doctrine would last. In 1954, the Supreme Court moved to strike down all segregation in public schools with its ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case. In that decision, the Court declared that "Separate is inherently unequal." School districts were told that they must desegregate "with all deliberate speed."

The Lawton public school administration moved quickly to comply with the letter of the law. Like many districts across the Upper South, it adopted a "freedom of choice" plan. Under the plan, a minority student could attend either the school within his or her attendance district or a predominantly white school. A few black students in Lawton took advantage of the opportunity to change schools, choosing to go to Central Junior High, Tomlinson Junior High, or Lawton High School instead of Douglass.

The plan did not affect elementary school attendance. Students who were academically, musically, or athletically gifted were recruited by faculty or coaches in the white schools. For the most part, black students in the white schools encountered few problems, and teachers and fellow students did not seem to be hostile toward them. However, racial barriers did exist, little social interaction occurred, which kept black students isolated outside classroom or athletic events. No black teachers or coaches were on the faculty of white schools. System-wide integration scale awaited further federal pressure.