Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win
Black WWII soldiers asked a White woman for doughnuts. They were shot.
About two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, French women were serving U.S. soldiers coffee and doughnuts in a Red Cross tent in France. Two Black soldiers went inside to get some.
This was a breach of norms: In a segregated army, many White American soldiers did not want Black men talking to French women.
The Black soldiers — Allen Leftridge and Frank Glenn — were challenged by a White sergeant, according to a witness. When a White armed guard arrived, he fatally shot the two men. A third soldier — a White man just released from a German prison camp who was not named in documents related to the incident — was caught in the crossfire and killed, a newspaper from the time reported.
These deaths, briefly touched upon in a 1984 oral history, were not widely chronicled at the time beyond Black publications. Documents in the Library of Congress archives — including pleas from civil rights advocates and responses from military officials — reveal details of the case and further evidence of how White U.S. soldiers fighting fascism abroad brought racism overseas. The consequences were fatal — and some victims of racial violence were robbed of compensation.
Two White soldiers were acquitted in a court-martial over the deadly incident. Leftridge’s widow was denied military benefits because her husband’s death was ruled not in the line of duty “due to his own misconduct.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/b...A16mIyh?cvid=214b2cf614d146839db3dcb0da3e8aa0
About two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, French women were serving U.S. soldiers coffee and doughnuts in a Red Cross tent in France. Two Black soldiers went inside to get some.
This was a breach of norms: In a segregated army, many White American soldiers did not want Black men talking to French women.
The Black soldiers — Allen Leftridge and Frank Glenn — were challenged by a White sergeant, according to a witness. When a White armed guard arrived, he fatally shot the two men. A third soldier — a White man just released from a German prison camp who was not named in documents related to the incident — was caught in the crossfire and killed, a newspaper from the time reported.
These deaths, briefly touched upon in a 1984 oral history, were not widely chronicled at the time beyond Black publications. Documents in the Library of Congress archives — including pleas from civil rights advocates and responses from military officials — reveal details of the case and further evidence of how White U.S. soldiers fighting fascism abroad brought racism overseas. The consequences were fatal — and some victims of racial violence were robbed of compensation.
Two White soldiers were acquitted in a court-martial over the deadly incident. Leftridge’s widow was denied military benefits because her husband’s death was ruled not in the line of duty “due to his own misconduct.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/b...A16mIyh?cvid=214b2cf614d146839db3dcb0da3e8aa0