Honoring Sergeant Carter (10 page)

 

I
try to imagine a distraught Eddie coming home that day to Mildred. She would have tried to comfort him, but I'm sure that Eddie was inconsolable. They both knew that Eddie didn't deserve this unjust dismissal. On the contrary, Eddie was held in high regard by every officer who had ever had Eddie in his unit. Sitting at the kitchen table together, they would have resolved to fight this underhanded action by the Army's high command. Mildred, I'm sure, offered to do whatever she could to help Eddie get Witsell's directive reversed.

As befits a man of action, Eddie decided to go straight to the top, and to make his case in person. The day his discharge was formally issued Eddie purchased a round-trip ticket to Washington, D.C. He left the next day from Tacoma.

Eddie presented himself at the Pentagon and asked for the opportunity to defend himself. He asked the Inspector General for a hearing. This was refused. Adjutant General Witsell refused to see him, as did Army intelligence. As a last resort he went to Clarence Mitchell, labor secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Mitchell was encouraging, saying that he would look into the matter. He also suggested that Eddie write to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York. The LDF was
experienced in handling cases of mistreatment of black soldiers in the military. Still, Eddie left Washington feeling that he had not accomplished his mission. He had filed a written complaint with the Inspector General's office stating his willingness to undergo any test and to submit sworn statements to clear up any suspicion of alleged disloyalty, but in the end he felt that his trip to the Pentagon had been in vain. Eddie's son Redd remembered his father's return from Washington. “He had gone there to talk to the generals,” Redd recalled, “but they wouldn't see him. That broke my father's heart. They were killing him slowly.”

For his part Mitchell, immediately fired off a telegram to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson inquiring about Sergeant Carter's case. Mitchell's telegram was passed through channels, eventually arriving on the desk of Adjutant General Witsell, whom Sergeant Carter had been unsuccessful in seeing during his visit. Witsell replied to Mitchell on November 4, stating his position that Carter's records had been carefully reviewed by competent Department of the Army agencies, and it was determined that his reenlistment could not be authorized.

The same nonexplanation was made in a separate letter from Witsell to Eddie. In October, Eddie had written to President Harry Truman about his plight, affirming his loyalty and willingness to defend the United States. He wrote that the Army had left him and his family stranded in Tacoma, and he asked for prompt action, as the family's small funds were growing smaller. The White House
passed the letter to the Army, where it came to Witsell's desk for acknowledgment. Witsell's reply might as well have been a form letter. Apparently, all inquiries about Eddie were being forwarded routinely to Witsell for reply.

Mitchell, meanwhile, employed his lobbying skills and made sure the Pentagon knew that others were interested in Sergeant Carter's plight. Among those who took an early interest in Eddie's situation was Helen Gahagan Douglas, a staunch liberal and member of Congress from California. Mrs. Douglas asked for a hearing for Sergeant Carter. She said that surely someone who had served his country so bravely deserved to know the basis of the decision against him and should have the right to be heard in his own behalf.

A barrage of letters, calls, and telegrams was orchestrated by Mitchell. Another letter from Mitchell himself to the secretary of defense drew a rambling reply from James Evans, assistant to the secretary. Sounding peeved, Evans twice alluded to the many communications and telephone calls he had received as a result of Mitchell's efforts. These included, Evans wrote, White House Committees, members of Congress, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the Office of the Adjutant General, the Federal Security Agency, and various members of the press. Evans admonished Mitchell that, despite suggestions to the contrary, his office had yet to find a direct racial factor in the difficulties encountered by Sergeant Carter.

Evans said the Carter case first came to the attention
of the secretary of defense's office in August. “It was recited that former Sergeant Carter wished to reenlist in the Army,” Evans wrote, “and wanted to make the Army a career.” What is interesting here is that the plans of a first sergeant to reenlist should be brought to the attention of the secretary of defense's office the month before his present enlistment ended. It seems that a rather high level of consultation was invoked in the process of deciding to bar Eddie from reenlisting.

 

W
hile this correspondence was going on, Eddie and his family moved to an apartment on Vancouver Avenue in Tacoma. The family had to scramble to keep afloat. As soon as he returned from Washington, Eddie began looking for work. Here his old problem—lack of civilian job skills—confronted him again. Eddie tried his hand at various odd jobs to make ends meet. Mildred got work as a cleaner in a restaurant. Soon the family moved out of Tacoma to a small farm they rented in nearby Orting.

Although it was a difficult time for the family, the boys found life on a farm exciting. Redd remembers Eddie teaching them about farm life, while raising pigs, rabbits, and turkeys to supplement the family's income. “He also brewed a little beer on the side,” Redd recalled. For Buddha, a high point was when his father, an expert marksman, taught the boys to shoot. While their parents worked, the boys attended the local elementary school. “My father wasn't a very affectionate person,” Buddha
recalled, “at least not toward us. But we knew he loved us. We knew it from the way he would talk with us and the things he taught us. He spent a lot of time with us. Ours was not a family with a lot of hugging and kissing, but everybody was comfortable, and we knew he really cared for us.”

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A
lthough initially disheartened, Eddie grew more determined to fight the Army's refusal to let him reenlist or grant him a hearing. In November, two months after his denial, Eddie wrote to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York for help. Jack Greenberg, then assistant to special counsel Thurgood Marshall, passed Sergeant Carter's request and materials on to the ACLU, saying “as far as we can determine there is no factor of racial discrimination present in this case. Carter's predicament seems to be of the customary loyalty species.”

It fell to Herbert Levy to reply. Levy, a young graduate of Columbia University's law school and former ACLU legal volunteer newly appointed as staff counsel, asked what information Sergeant Carter had from the Army regarding the basis of their action. He said he would let Eddie know what the ACLU could do to help.

In reply to Levy's request, Eddie and Mildred sent the letter of December 5 giving details of his situation with the Army. The letter recounted Eddie's background, his service in three wars, his medals, his honorable discharge and reenlistment, and his service in the California National Guard. The seven-page letter, apparently dictated by Eddie but written in Mildred's flowing penmanship, continued: “Sir, from my second enlistment until my recent discharge I was constantly hounded by our ‘Secret Police.' I was questioned about attending a ‘Welcome
Home, Joe' dinner given under the auspices of the ‘American Youth for Democracy.' At the time I was definitely ignorant that the above organization was a ‘Red Front.' I was constantly shadowed by two C.I.C. agents wherever I went.” Eddie told Levy of his sudden severance from the Guard, the comment by General Clark, and his transfer to Fort Lewis. Eddie added, “Sir, I have never belonged [to] or been a member of any organization that advocates the overthrow of our government through force or violence.”

Summing up his military career to that point, Eddie wrote that he was an excellent soldier who was consistently selected to instruct other soldiers. “Soldiering is my profession,” he said.

In the last two pages of that letter Eddie could not contain his anger. “During World War II, I believed that I was fighting a ‘Holy War.' I believed and fought in defense of the democracy I now find myself denied. According to the laws of our democracy, an individual is innocent until proven guilty. According to the powers that be, that law has been interpreted in the opposite [way]. Should that be the case, I ask for the right in the name of democracy, that so many profess, to prove my loyalty and establish my innocence. I am not afraid to face any board of inquiry, in fact, I invite a hearing or trial.”

The many decorations he had received were meaningless, an insult to one's intelligence, he wrote. More meaningful were the scars of battle that he would carry to his
grave, scars received in defense of the democracy he was now denied. Instead of attempting to export democracy, Eddie wrote bitterly, the United States should try importing it.

Eddie ended his letter with a scathing denunciation of the police state he saw rising in the United States. Coming as it did on the eve of McCarthyism's cancerous flourishing, Eddie's letter was prophetic. “Sir, I believe that the people of our country do not realize how much the United States has become a ‘Police State.' The very evils that we fought against in World War II were not destroyed. We have captured and adopted many of these evils. Sir, I shall continually fight for redress. I wish to be charged with whatever charges the Department of the Army has. Once again, I repeat, I invite any hearing or trial.”

Eddie and Mildred were grasping for some way to confront an opponent who would not show his face or present any evidence of Eddie's wrongdoing. Instead, the Army preferred to use innuendo to smear Eddie's reputation and destroy the career of a person whose only crime was that he was a proud black man and a superb soldier. By the time I finished reading Eddie's letter I was angry myself.

Arthur Garfield Hays, Levy's boss at the ACLU, wrote to Army Adjutant General Edward Witsell on February 15, 1950, asking why Sergeant Carter was denied permission to reenlist despite his distinguished service record.
Hays said Carter thought it was because he attended a meeting of an alleged subversive nature. “Mr. Carter advised me that he had no information at the time that the meeting was of such a nature, and he further advises me that he never has had and does not now have any connection whatsoever with any organization on the subversive list.” Hays ended his letter with a request for a hearing for Sergeant Carter.

Witsell's reply to Hays, if any, was not in the file. However, in a collection of materials I obtained later through the assistance of Kenneth Schlessinger at the National Archives, I found a draft of a letter from Witsell written in response to a November 15, 1950, follow-up query from Herbert Levy. Witsell acknowledged that the Army had received many requests from individuals and agencies asking that Sergeant Carter be allowed to reenlist. Witsell again repeated his assertion that a careful review of the case led to the determination that reenlistment could not be authorized. His letter ended: “I am obliged to advise you that the information in this case is classified investigative material, and that for this reason your request must be respectfully denied.”

There would be no reenlistment, no further explanation or information, no hearing. Witsell's draft letter was passed on to the secretary of the army and the White House as the suggested reply to any future inquiries about Sergeant Carter. No inquiry would be allowed to get beyond this stonewalling form-letter response.

For Eddie and his family, conditions had worsened. On May 2, he wrote to Levy that after word got around that he had been kicked out of the Army as an alleged communist he had lost two jobs. Eddie was angry. “I find it hard to make a living for my wife and four children. The only profession that I am familiar with is that of a soldier. How to kill and not be killed. Perhaps military tactics will prove successful against a bank or two.”

Instead of robbing a bank Eddie took a more heartbreaking step. After seven months of waiting, he was losing hope of gaining redress, he wrote. He had lost faith and was disappointed in American democracy. Politicians could get hearings, he said, but he, an ordinary citizen, could not. Enclosed with the letter was Eddie's Distinguished Service Cross. He asked Levy to return the medal to President Harry S. Truman. In his country's hour of need, Eddie ended, he was in the front lines with a submachine gun in his hand. “My reward? A stab in the back.”

Levy was deeply disturbed by Eddie's letter, with the enclosed medal. “I was stunned,” he later recalled. “This man had more than earned this medal, I thought. He should keep it, not give it back.” In his reply to Eddie, Levy sought to give the matter a positive spin. He said he would keep the medal in case a direct appeal to the President and a full-scale publicity campaign became necessary. For Levy, Sergeant Carter's case was a matter of common decency and justice.

After more unsuccessful appeals for help to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, politicians, and the press, Levy sensed that that his efforts were not going to succeed. Eddie, too, was feeling despondent.

Levy appealed for help to David Niles, administrative assistant to President Truman. Niles replied on February 26, 1951, that he had been familiar with the case “for some time,” having queried James Evans in the secretary of defense's office in response to a call on Eddie's behalf from Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. “I received the answer,” Niles wrote, “that Carter had been denied the right of reenlistment on security reasons, which were based on confidential information that could not be disclosed. The Army is, of course, entirely within its rights in setting conditions for reenlistment—in this case, for security reasons.”

Two years later, in March 1953, Eddie wrote to ask if Levy thought there might be a better chance under the new administration of Dwight Eisenhower. With McCarthyism in full swing, Levy was not optimistic. Nevertheless, he said he would take the issue up with the new administration.