Honoring Sergeant Carter (6 page)

In a letter from the French concession on July 29, Evangelist Carter reported that things were happening “thick and fast” in China. Radical students were holding demonstrations in the streets of Shanghai, and gunfire could be heard in many parts of the city. People were clearing out of the districts where trouble was expected. But in the French concession it was still peaceful. “Where we are living right now,” he reported, “we are able to have street meetings right in front of our door.” Moreover, Ailing Soong—Madame Kung—had offered help.

Recognizing that Mary Carter also had something to do with this door being opened, this is the first report home in which she is included as a cosigner: “Evangelist and Mrs. E. A. Carter.”

By December 1929, Carter, with the help his new wife, had further consolidated his influence with the Soongs. Through them he hoped to secure the conversion of Chiang Kai-shek to Christianity. This would be an enormous religious and political victory.

On December 16, 1929, Carter wrote:

Securing Chiang Kai-shek's conversion to Christianity was a prize hoped for by many missionaries. Evangelist Carter was uniquely placed to win the prize. Perhaps Carter believed that if Chiang Kai-shek, who controlled the Nationalist Army and the Kuomintang Party, were converted to Christianity, this would be an important step toward bringing peace to China and ending the suffering of the Chinese people. He could not know that even greater suffering was in store for the people in the next decade as Japan brutally tried to subdue China and all of Asia. As for Chiang Kai-shek, he had reasons of his own, beyond spiritual belief, to consider conversion. The United States was a largely Christian nation, and U.S. support was increasingly important in his campaign against Mao Tse-tung's Red Army and, later, the Japan
ese. To Chiang, Western missionaries were a part of the foreign influence that prostrated and humiliated China. But he understood that sometimes the support of the foreigners was needed in the fight against his enemies, and if the foreigners' God could also help him, then so much the better. And then, unexpectedly, Chiang was to witness a dramatic demonstration of the power of Evangelist Carter's God.

In his most remarkable report from China, Carter described an incident that occurred in January 1930, in which he prayed for the healing of Chiang Kai-shek's young niece, the daughter of Ai-ling Soong and H. H. Kung.

Carter said he was called to Nanking, the Nationalist capital, to pray for Jeanette Kung, who was desperately ill with what was thought to be pneumonia or pleurisy. “There were four of the best doctors that China affords, and yet they could do nothing for this little nine-year-old girl,” he wrote. Carter and family members began an impassioned and prolonged prayer session. The next day an X-ray picture revealed that the child's condition had cleared up. “I had the pleasure of witnessing then to these doctors that Jesus Christ, the Great Physician, had made the girl whole.”

The healing of Jeanette Kung had a great impact on her family, some of whom immediately sought Carter's help with their own ailments. More important, the episode gave Carter an opportunity to speak to Chiang
Kai-shek about Christianity. At one point in the conversation, with Minister Kung acting as translator, Carter said to Chiang, “Have you peace in your heart, Commander?” “No, not a little bit,” was the reply. “That is because of sin,” Carter responded. “You have sins in your heart and a sinner cannot have peace. He will be able to take away your sins; then you will find peace in your heart. China needs no more navy, or army, no more guns to kill, no more soldiers that will cause lots of trouble, and not more principles but the Lord Jesus Christ. He can save China from all these troubles.” Carter said the general reacted cordially to these admonishments, saying that he would begin to read the Bible.

It is not hard to imagine that the dramatic healing of Jeanette Kung would have deeply impressed Chiang Kaishek, who was already being lobbied by Madame Soong to convert to Christianity. No doubt he knew of Carter, who had married someone close to the Soong family. There is a story told in our family that Chiang Kai-shek would have preferred that Carter had married a Chinese girl. Chiang wanted to literally and figuratively wed the famous “Black Evangelist” to China, and more specifically the Chinese Nationalists. But in choosing Mary Westerhold, Carter, wittingly or not, achieved a valuable connection with, and yet independence from, a powerful man who demanded unquestioning loyalty. In any case, the meeting between the two men in the wake of the healing episode propelled Chiang to make his decision. In a
later report, Carter announced Chiang Kai-shek was baptized in the Soong family home.

Chiang became a practicing Methodist and an ardent reader of the Bible. He was not simply looking for its spiritual messages but also for justification of his actions against his enemies. Puritanical in his outlook, he and Madame Chiang founded the New Life Movement to encourage physical and spiritual cleanliness, and to discourage such practices as smoking, drinking, dancing, permanent hairwaves, gambling, and spitting in the streets. In the name of moral uplift, the New Life Movement concealed the deepening fascism of the Nationalist regime. Chiang would soon emerge as an admirer of Mussolini and Hitler.

W
hile his father was gaining notoriety, Eddie was growing into a robust teenager who loved fishing and hunting. Later he developed a love for sports, including baseball, football, track, and boxing. He had also learned to speak Hindustani, Mandarin Chinese, and some German. He felt at home with Indians, and during his adolescent years he developed a strong identification with the Chinese people. As for an American identity, he knew he was considered a black American, but African-American culture was something with which he would not become intimately acquainted until he lived in Los Angeles in the 1940s. From an early age Eddie displayed a love of adventure and a desire for excitement matched by personal courage that left little room for fear. Like other boys his age, he was in and out of trouble. Apparently in an effort to channel and discipline Eddie's rebellious spirit, his father enrolled him in a Chinese military academy. Chiang Kai-shek, who, of course, had direct ties to Chinese military institutions, including an academy in Shanghai, may have facilitated this transfer. In all, Eddie spent
five years in the military academy, learning military arts and becoming an excellent rifle marksman.

But Eddie could not be contained. A Japanese attack on Shanghai in 1932 found Eddie volunteering to join with Chinese and British forces in resisting the invaders. Pleading that Eddie was underage, his father intervened and got him out of the line of fire after a month on the front lines. Presumably Eddie returned to the academy.

Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 created another opportunity for Eddie to test the limits of his father's control and find another kind of life. Eddie went to the American consulate in Shanghai and requested to fight against the Italians in Abyssinia. By then Eddie's military academy training and brief combat experience had earned him the rank of lieutenant. The consul was taken aback, and refused this brash request, instead offering to obtain a merchant marine job for Eddie on a freighter. Eddie accepted, and the elder Carter voiced no objection. The boy with the guarded, wounded look in his eyes, the boy who sang in the mission choir, the boy who had been beaten and run away, who was also the boy who had lost the person he loved most dearly, was now a nineteen-year-old young man who would make his own way in the world and find a new life for himself.

 

E
ddie spent the next months on the high seas, traveling to Japan and the Philippines and eventually arriving in Los
Angeles. The United States was in the throes of the Great Depression and times were hard for black men seeking work. Eddie found little opportunity and nothing to spark his interest. What did get his attention was news of the civil war in Spain.

In 1936, a democratically elected Republican government in Spain was attacked by right-wing forces under the control of General Francisco Franco. A fierce and bloody conflict soon raged between Loyalist forces defending the republican government and Insurgent forces trying to overthrow it and restore the monarchy. Franco and his troops were heavily supported by German Nazis and Italian Fascists. The Soviet Union supported the republicans, while the United States adopted a noninterventionist stance. The Spanish Civil War, like the Chinese fight against Japanese imperialists, would be recognized by historians as a precursor to World War II.

The war in Spain was on the front pages of newspapers throughout the United States. Eddie, a young man in quest of a meaning for his life, was drawn to the embattled republicans. Using his merchant marine connections he found a ship that took him first to Africa, then to Spain. Soon after his arrival he joined the Loyalist forces.

Hundreds of other young American men volunteered to go to Spain to help the Loyalists, among them some ninety black Americans who fought in integrated units with white volunteers. Unlike Eddie, who was not recruited and who made his own way to Spain, these volun
teers arrived in groups and were organized into what became the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The volunteers were mostly inexperienced, idealistic youths. Given scant training, they were thrown into combat against seasoned troops.

Already trained in the military arts and experienced in combat in China, Eddie was better prepared than most of the volunteers to survive the horrendous conditions of the war. Many volunteers died, both from combat and the harsh conditions they encountered. Eddie himself was wounded. In the incident, which he recounted years later, Eddie was part of a small reconnaissance patrol, the only black person in the group. The patrol was moving fast when suddenly, coming over a rise of land, they ran into a German unit. The Germans opened fire, killing everyone but Eddie. Eddie was hit in the heel, but he managed to roll hand grenades down the slope toward the Germans and escape. Later in the war Eddie was not so lucky. He was captured by Franco's troops and held in a prison camp for several months. Never one to passively accept his fate, Eddie somehow escaped from the camp and rejoined the Loyalist forces.

In all, Eddie was in Spain for two and a half years, when his unit was finally forced to retreat into France. By early 1939 the Loyalists faced a bitter defeat as Franco's troops, backed by his Fascist and Nazi allies, overwhelmed the republican defenders.

 

F
ollowing the defeat of the Loyalists, Eddie returned to Los Angeles in 1940. By then Evangelist Carter and his wife were also in Los Angeles, having been forced to flee China because of the Japanese onslaught. By chance Eddie met his father on the street one day, but the two men had little to say to each other. Eddie steered clear of the old man and his wife. He was on his own now, supporting himself with odd jobs, and amusing himself with the vibrant night life to be found in the Central Avenue area.

Central Avenue was the heart of the rapidly growing Los Angeles black community. Day and night the streets were crowded with people, and for young men like Eddie there was no lack of exciting things to do. Jazz clubs like Club Alabam' were hotspots that throbbed with music and dancers every night. Lena Horne, Paul Robeson, and other top black performers entertained enthusiastic audiences at the Shriners Temple and other venues. Young NAACP activists met regularly at the YMCA at 28th and Central to organize a campaign for better parts for black actors in Hollywood films. Good food and good times could be found at Ella's Café and the many other thriving restaurants that lined the avenue.

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It was on one of his outings that Eddie encountered and quickly fell in love with Mildred Hoover, the widowed daughter of a black family well known in the community. They met at a restaurant that was popular with young people. A strikingly beautiful woman, Mildred dressed stylishly and gave the impression of being a cultured
young woman—which she was. She caught his eye right away. Eddie himself was very handsome with a youthful, debonair presence. Clean-cut and meticulous about his dress, he wasn't a tall man. He had a compact, athletic build, and he carried himself with the ease and confidence of someone who had seen much of the world. Using the charm that came easily to him, he introduced himself and they talked, each taken with the other. Mildred told him that her family ran a boardinghouse. Eddie
said he was interested in finding a nice place to stay. She took him to see the boardinghouse and meet her parents.

Mildred's mother, Maycola, came from New Orleans, where Mildred was born. Mildred never knew her father. Her mother had married James Jennings shortly after arriving in Los Angeles. Her mother was a maid for a white judge, and Jennings worked for another white family. Hardworking and frugal, they saved their money and soon acquired the boardinghouse where Eddie met them.

Eddie was in awe of Mildred. Not only was she beautiful, but she was a cultured person—a violinist who as a girl played at major churches and was well known in the black middle-class community as a parlor room performer. She went on to become the first black violinist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Eddie desired her, but she seemed unattainable to him. As he later wrote in a letter to her: “The first time I saw you, you scared the daylights out of me. You were what I wanted and didn't hope to get…. I was darn lucky to get you.”

Attracted not only by Mildred but by the warm atmosphere he found at her parent's boardinghouse, a modest frame house on East 22nd Street, Eddie took a room. Mildred's family became his family. Eddie especially adored Mr. Jennings, a sweet, gentle man. He was the father Eddie felt he had never had.

William, Eddie's brother, was living in New York but soon joined the Army. Eddie's sister, Miriam, who was
also living in Los Angeles, moved into the boardinghouse for a short time. Miriam worked at a drugstore and was something of a naughty party girl. Once when Eddie knocked on her door, she greeted him with “Hello fella. What's it going to be, tricks or treats?” Eddie was annoyed by what he considered her “wild” behavior. On the other hand, Mildred, an only child used to being the queen bee, enjoyed Miriam's boldness, and they became great friends.

Mildred had married very young, but her husband, an alcoholic, died of liver disease, leaving her with two small children, Iris and Charles. Although she was a parent, Mildred was also a young woman who enjoyed going out and having fun with her friends. In fact, her parents had once put her in a convent for a year to slow her down. She introduced Eddie to her circle of friends as the two of them began going out. So Eddie not only gained a girlfriend, he acquired surrogate parents, children, and a whole social world. Through Mildred's family and Mildred's friends he became intimately familiar for the first time with the culture and aspirations of middle-class African Americans. The stage was set and all he had to do was show up.

It wasn't long before nature took its course and Mildred became pregnant. Edward III, nicknamed “Buddha” for his rotund appearance and bald head, was born March 27, 1941.

Meanwhile, as the fighting in Europe and Asia spread,
calls for U.S. intervention were increasing. Ever since Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the black community had watched these developments with growing concern. Many black men were willing to heed the call to arms, but there was also a degree of skepticism. Black men had fought in World War I only to come home to renewed racism. For the black community, World War II would be regarded as a war on two fronts. Labor leader A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the country's largest and most powerful black labor union, set the tone in January 1941, when he and other civil rights leaders called for a march on Washington to protest discrimination in the war industries and the armed forces.

Faced with the threat of 100,000 black people marching on Washington, in June 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, ordering an end to racial discrimination in the defense industry. Although the armed forces remained segregated, Roosevelt's order represented an important step forward. The war itself would bring about more changes. In December 1941, Japanese fighter planes attacked the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor. A Navy messman named Dorie Miller became the first black hero of the war when he seized an antiaircraft gun on the stricken USS
West Virginia
and single-handedly shot down four of the attacking Japanese planes. Early in 1942, as the United States launched a full-scale war mobilization, the
Pittsburgh Courier,
an influential black newspa
per, gave symbolic expression to the feelings of black Americans when it proclaimed its immensely popular “Double V” campaign: victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home.

Eddie had decided to enlist in the Army well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. A veteran of the struggle against Japanese invaders in China and of the Spanish Civil War, he was acutely aware of the military threat presented by fascism. No doubt his familiarity with military life and his lack of a civilian career also contributed to his decision to enlist. He signed up on September 26, 1941. Shortly afterward, he found himself on a train headed for boot camp in Camp Wolters, Texas.

Eddie was shocked by the racial conditions he found in Texas. “Conditions down here are pretty bad,” he wrote to Mildred on October 6. “I mean the South. The rotten South. Only the damned live here.” He didn't give any details in the letter, but given his background and youth spent abroad, this was probably his first encounter with overt racial segregation and discrimination. In a letter on October 14 he mentioned that some of the other new recruits got into trouble and were jailed. Whether the trouble was due to racial incidents, youthful brawling, or problems with white officers was not made clear, but Eddie made it plain that he wanted to avoid trouble. “Everything I am told to do, I go ahead and do it for your sake,” he wrote to Mildred. “It seems to make life a lot easier when I look at it that way. I would be a pretty tough
guy down here if it were not for the thought of you. It goes to prove I think the world of you.”

Significantly, Eddie always addressed his letters to “Mrs. Edward A. Carter Jr.” and in his letters he often referred to Mildred as his wife and himself as her husband. They were not yet married, and in joining the Army Eddie wasn't running away from her. If anything, he wanted to do something to prove that he was worthy of her. Eddie sought always to keep his desire to be husband and wife before Mildred. Through his letters he continued his courtship. He wrote almost daily—sometimes twice a day—and in every letter he professed his ardor for her. In one letter he included a clipping from the First Platoon newsletter with an item reporting that “Private Edward A. Carter doesn't say much, he is so busy writing and receiving letters. Wonder if love could be the answer?????” He appended a handwritten comment: “It's the truth. See?” Eddie went so far as to get Edwin Kennedy, an Army friend of his, to write a note to Mildred avowing that “Your husband will not move from the barracks at all—all he does is write to you and talk of you.” Kennedy included some pencil sketches of Eddie in uniform, marching, writing letters, and reading a letter to Mildred to which she responds “No.” Eddie stopped at nothing to persuade Mildred of his love for her and his desire to marry her. When Mildred sent him a card, cigarettes, and other gifts at Christmas, Eddie responded with an eight-page letter expressing his gratitude. “You are my ideal,” he gushed. “I
am living only to be able to come back to your warm and beautiful love.” Eddie did not fail to express his affection for the children and Mildred's family. “I am dying to see little Buddha,” he wrote. In subsequent letters he asked about Buddha's development: Did he have any hair on his head yet? Had he taken a step or spoken a first word? Special greetings were often directed to Mr. Jennings, to whom Eddie felt very close. Eddie also included Mildred's two children by her previous marriage in his notion of their family, speaking of them as “my kids.”