Honoring Sergeant Carter (13 page)

Examiner Petty asked me for documentation to support the validity of these requests. This is where all my research and legwork paid off. I now had hundreds of
pages of documents, letters, photographs, and other materials. I had organized it all into binders. I knew it all intimately, and I lived with it every day. To every query raised by Petty I was able to present copious documentation of what had transpired using the Army's own records, or correspondence sent by Army officials to others, such as the ACLU.

As it turned out, the Board for Correction met on August 26 to make a decision on our application. In September I received a copy of the report of the Board's proceedings and conclusions. The report made for the most satisfying reading that I had done in a long time. Several awards that Sergeant Carter had won during the war were not reflected on his discharge. This was corrected. The Board went further. Sergeant Carter was eligible for additional awards—a fact unknown to us—that were never granted, including the American Campaign Medal and Army of Occupation Medal. This was corrected. His discharge after World War II listed his race incorrectly as “white.” This oddity was corrected.

Finally I came to the conclusion of the Board's proceeding: “The denial of reenlistment at the conclusion of the former service member's second enlistment was unjust. The allegations of interests by the former service member in conflict with those of the United States are determined to be unfounded based on a review of all evidence available. The denial of reenlistment should be rescinded with apologies.”

It was such a bittersweet moment. I felt elated and emotionally exhausted at the same time.

I was pleased to get the Board's decision, but Buddha and I were clear in insisting that there must be a public apology. The falsity of the charges must be publicly stated, and Eddie's name cleared before the world. This idea was not warmly embraced, but the Army finally agreed to a public acknowledgment of what had happened.

On November 10, 1999, we found ourselves once again in Washington, D.C., at the Pentagon's Hall of Heroes. This time we were there for a ceremony at which an official apology was made by the Army for its banishment of Sergeant Edward Carter. Mildred was with us, although she didn't really understand what was happening. Eddie's sons Buddha and Redd sat with her as honored guests at the front of the room. Also present was Eddie's old commanding officer, Russell Blair. The room was filled with military and civilian guests, including Woodfred Jordan and Herbert Levy. Of course, our children Corey and Sandy and Redd's wife, Karen, were in the audience. Most of the major media sent reporters, and the ceremony was widely covered.

General John Keane, the Army's vice chief of staff, spoke for the Army. He told the story of Eddie's heroic action against the Germans at Speyer. Then he continued: “I recount Sergeant Carter's incredible story of bravery and determination because it reveals the depth of the
injustice done to this great soldier after the war. We are here today to set the record straight,” he said, “to acknowledge that a man of great personal courage, who served his country with honor and dignity, was denied the opportunity to reenlist, without explanation and without the opportunity to defend his good name and preserve his honor. Sergeant Carter…was an American hero who was denied the recognition he deserved and the opportunity to serve because of racial prejudice and the wave of
anticommunist hysteria that engulfed our nation after World War II.

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“No words can right the wrong or undo the injustice that was done to Sergeant Carter. We must, however, acknowledge the mistake and apologize to his family and continue to honor the memory of this great soldier.”

Later in the day we were transported to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath and unveil the new headstone for Eddie's grave. It read:

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EDWARD A. CARTER JR.

Medal of Honor

Sergeant First Class, U.S. Army

World War II

May 26, 1916–Jan. 30, 1963

Distinguished Service Cross, Bronze Star Medal

Purple Heart

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Mildred's face lit up with recognition when she saw Eddie's name on the marker. She had a dignified, almost regal, presence.

There was one last step I needed to take. Following the ceremony of apology in Washington I went to Sacramento to the office of General Paul D. Munroe Jr., adjutant general of the California National Guard, to make my case for restoring Eddie's name to the history of the Guard. As General Munroe, an African American, reviewed the documentation I had brought with me, I thought how it would have pleased Eddie to know that a black man could now rise to a top position in the California National Guard. General Munroe said he took pride in knowing the history of the Sixth Engineer Combat Group, but he was unaware of the story of Sergeant Carter. He was very agreeable, he said, to correcting the official records and doing something to honor him.

General Munroe kept his word. On February 18, 2000, at a ceremony in Long Beach, he presented our family with a certificate correcting the National Guard's records. Subsequently, Sergeant Carter was honored by having the firing range at Camp Roberts at San Luis Obispo, where he trained the young black National Guardsmen, named for him. General Munroe also committed to having a new National Guard Armory being built in Azusa named for Sergeant Carter.

 

I
had grown to love Eddie, and I felt great compassion for him. He was a hero, but he was first of all a man. I thought of the small boy growing up in Asia, hurt and
angry, but who, as he matured into a man, transformed those feelings into a strong identification with other people who were victims of violence and injustice. He was a warrior, true, but he was a natural internationalist who always fought against injustice no matter where it might be found. I thought of the young man who forged his unhealed grief over the loss of his mother into passionate love for his wife, Mildred—a love that might have continued to flourish had they not been so battered by the Army, to which he was also wed. I thought of the hero, a man who fought courageously for a country he both loved and felt estranged from, who was then betrayed and banished because he refused to be cowed or intimidated. His vindication was long overdue.

A
lthough Tuesday, June 12, 2001, was a hot, muggy day in Norfolk, Virginia, for Allene Carter it was the finest day of the year. Allene was in Norfolk, along with members of her family and more than three hundred guests and media representatives, to take part in the christening of the M/V
SSG Edward A. Carter, Jr.,
an enormous military ammunition ship being named in honor of her deceased father-in-law. It was one of only a handful of military ships in U.S. history named for an African American. For Allene the occasion was a triumphant vindication after her years-long campaign to clear Sergeant Carter's name of unjust accusations used to hound him out of the Army. In this struggle Allene Carter also emerged as a hero, and she, too, was being honored on this historic day.

I first met Allene Carter in November 2000, when I was considering a proposal to collaborate with her on a book about Sergeant Carter's life. A tall, striking woman with a powerful presence, it soon became apparent that she was also possessed of enormous energy and a keen
intelligence. We began to discuss the immense amount of research she had already undertaken and her hopes for the proposed book. Several thousand pages of documents, photographs, and news clippings were meticulously organized into three-ring binders, each carefully labeled and stored in chronological order. She had duplicate copies of some files organized into binders by subject areas. In addition, she had a small library of books and articles about World War II and the role of African Americans in the war. It is no exaggeration to say that in the quality and volume of her research, Allene Carter had accomplished the equivalent of what a Ph.D. graduate student would do in researching material for a dissertation—and she had done this with no formal training in academic research. I was impressed. Driven by a burning desire to learn the truth about Sergeant Carter, she had taught herself, with the help of mentors along the way, to do the necessary research work. Equally impressive, she had confronted the government with her findings and gained apologies—from President Clinton on down—for the military's unjust treatment of her father-in-law.

In a sense, Allene Carter had been preparing for most of her life for this great confrontation. The daughter of Jesse Vaughn, a staunch union organizer in the Chicago stockyards, she was raised to believe in fighting against injustice. Her father imbued her with a sense of the need for strong, militant unions. On her job she became a union steward in the Communications Workers of Amer
ica. With mentoring from union colleagues Bill Falcon, Bill Demers, and Michael Hartigan, she learned how to methodically fight and win grievance cases. One might say that her courageous campaign for justice for Sergeant Carter has been for her the ultimate grievance case.

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Little did I suspect when we met in November and began working together that just over six months later we would be meeting again in Norfolk to celebrate the naming of a ship.

And it was a moving ceremony. Allene christened the
ship in the traditional way with a bottle of champagne, and then gave a short speech. The struggle to vindicate Sergeant Carter wasn't just about one family, she said. It was about changing our understanding of a generation. “When we go back to our respective communities,” she told the audience, “we can take back a legacy with us. We can change history. We can reopen the history books to make corrections. I would ask that you hold on to what the Carter family has started, and continue on with us as we make a journey to ensure that the truth is recovered and preserved.”

A warm round of applause greeted the Carters as they rose and stood proudly with Allene. Her face was radiant as the audience got to its feet and the applause continued in tribute to this remarkable African-American family.

Later in the day, as the festivities were ending, I joined a group of guests who were invited to tour the M/V
SSG Edward A. Carter, Jr.
Our guide told us that the ship was originally built in 1984 in Korea. At 950 feet in length it is longer than three football fields placed end to end. Under other names it operated as a container cargo vessel until it was brought to the Norfolk Shipbuilding & Drydock yard for conversion to an ammunition carrier for the U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command. With a civilian crew of twenty and operated by Maersk Line, the ship will carry 2,500 containers in climate-controlled holds. As an ammunition carrier the mission of the M/V
Carter
will be to preposition ammunition supplies at sea for the U.S.
Army. In effect, the ship will serve as a floating ammunition depot available to supply U.S. military forces on short notice, at sea or in a developed port. It will join thirty-five other Military Sealift Command ships already deployed. The ship was scheduled to set sail to a loading port in North Carolina the morning after the naming ceremony.

As I toured the ship I couldn't help but recall the Port Chicago explosion during World War II. My book
The Port Chicago Mutiny
told the story of that disaster at a U.S. Navy base in California. At the racially segregated base, only black sailors were assigned to the dangerous work of loading ammunition onto transport vessels under the supervision of white officers. The black sailors had no training in ammunition handling, and the white officers, most of them untrained in the work, allowed unsafe working conditions. Because of racial discrimination, no black sailor could become an officer or gain advancement to other ratings. On July 17, 1944, a terrible explosion occurred killing 320 men, two-thirds of whom were African Americans, and wrecking the base. It was the worst home front disaster of the war. In the aftermath, when the surviving black sailors balked at returning to handling ammunition, fifty were singled out, tried, and unjustly convicted of mutiny. It was ironic, I thought, that the Port Chicago book was about the explosion of an ammunition ship and the mistreatment of black sailors in World War II, and now I was working on a book about the discrimination and mistreatment faced by an African-
American war hero who, half a century later, was being honored by having an ammunition ship named for him. No doubt the sailors who suffered at Port Chicago would be proud of Sergeant Carter and the vindication won for him by Allene Carter. The Port Chicago men would be pleased to see that the unionized workforce at the Norfolk shipyard was well trained and racially integrated, as was the crew of the ship.

But misfortune struck the M/V
Carter
within weeks. While the men were loading ammunition on July 14 at the Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal in North Carolina, a fire broke out in the engine room. One man was killed in the fire and another drowned when he fell from the ship. Fortunately, the crew was able to confine the fire to the engine room and none of the ammunition exploded. An explosion aboard the M/V
Carter
would have made the Port Chicago explosion seem like a firecracker.

Over the following months the Carter was fully repaired, and as of March 2002, it was on station in the Diego Garcia area of the Indian Ocean.

 

T
he vindication of Sergeant Carter was a victory not just for the Carter family, but also for the African-American community and the nation. Allene Carter's quest showed that there is no statute of limitations on the struggle against injustice. Eddie Carter was not the only black soldier who was spied on, harassed, and mistreated by the military. During World War II many black soldiers were
unfairly targeted as suspicious and potential troublemakers. In November 1999, Del Walters and the investigative team of WJLA-TV, Channel 7 in Baltimore, produced a two-part report on this mistreatment.

Walters and his reporters uncovered evidence that “countless numbers of black soldiers who served in World War II may have dirty little secrets hidden in their military files—accusations they were spies, rioters, even traitors, their mail intercepted, their conversations monitored, their futures altered without reason.” The investigation concluded that “the Army routinely spied on black soldiers during World War II for a variety of reasons: espionage, fears of rioting by black troops, even concerns black soldiers would hoard ammunition. In most cases, as was the case with Sergeant Carter, the charges were unfounded, but the damage had already been done.” Soldiers were not the only targets. Black reporters, such as the respected journalist Alfred Duckett, who wrote for
Ebony
magazine and the Baltimore
Afro-American
newspaper, were also targeted as alleged traitors. Calls for a congressional hearing were made in the televised report. “How many other Sergeant Carters remain out there?” Walters asked.

“My hope,” Allene told me, “is that Sergeant Carter's story will encourage other veterans and their families to press on in their quest for justice. An apology should be made and restitution offered to the families of all veterans whose military records and good names were stained by unjust accusations.”