German POWs Treated Better Than Black Soldiers
In 1944, Corp. Rupert Trimmingham, a Black soldier of the United States armed forces, wrote to Yank Magazine, to expound upon the racial discrimination that he and his fellow men had experienced during the war. In his letter, he upheld the notion that most Black soldiers had realized at the time: German prisoners of war were treated much better than the Black soldiers of the United States. He wrote of one specific instance in which he and a handful of other Black soldiers had to go to the back of a restaurant to purchase a sandwich and coffee, while “about two dozen German prisoners of war” and two white American guards “entered the lunchroom, sat at the tables, had their meals served, talked, smoked, in fact had quite a swell time.”
An Infantry of Black Soldiers Was Terrorized by Whites on American Soil
The tragedy of the 364th Army infantry stationed in Jim Crow-era Centreville, Mississippi, is rarely talked about. According to an entry released by the African American Registry, Black soldiers on the base were being killed left and right. Although the national high Army command “warned base and regimental commanders that they were to end racial violence or lose their jobs,” the violence still continued. Though there were originally 3,000 Black soldiers, only 1,000 were left on the personnel roster at the end of the war, with no official explanation.
