Medal of Honor

The Color of Honor

The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in World War II. By Elliott V. Converse III, Daniel K. Gibran, John A. Cash, Robert K. Griffith, Jr., and Richard H. Kohn. McFarland & Company, Inc., 200 pages, $23.50.

Of the sixteen and a half million Americans who served in World War II, only 294 received the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military award. Until last year, not one of those 294 winners was black.

It wasn't that no black soldiers had performed worthy acts. There was Private First Class Jack Thomas, who carried a fellow soldier to safety across a 100-yard clearing through enemy fire. Or Sergeant Edward Carter, who single-handedly killed six German riflemen and captured two. Wounded, Carter withdrew, but would not evacuate until he had relayed full information about the enemy's position.

And First Lieutenant Vernon Baker, who killed nine Germans in a pre-dawn battle at an enemy stronghold. With two-thirds of his company wounded or dead and no reinforcements in sight, Baker's commander ordered a withdrawal. Breaking into tears, Baker protested, "Captain, we can't withdraw. We must stay here and fight it out."

The black community had contended for decades that the reason these and other black soldiers hadn't received the medal was clear—racism. Last year, a team of historians concluded that they were right. Based on the historians' recommendations, the army reevaluated 10 men for the medal, and awarded it to Thomas, Carter, Baker, and four others. Baker was the only man to receive the medal personally. The others had died in combat or after the war.

Richard H. Kohn, chair of the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at Carolina, helped assemble the team that pored over army records and interviewed witnesses. Daniel Gibran, then an international studies professor at Shaw University, asked for his help partly because of Kohn's ten years of experience as chief historian for the U.S. Air Force. "I knew the kinds of records we needed to look at, but most importantly, I knew where to find the historians to perform the work," Kohn says.

Kohn advised the team, wrote parts of the study, and brought the book to publication. "The central argument is that the reason no blacks won the medal was racism, without question," he says.

The study finds fault, not with specific acts of sabotage, but with the pervasive attitude in the military at the time that blacks were inferior, Kohn says. Segregated into separate units and mostly relegated to service and support roles, black units weren't committed to combat until 1944. And even then, blacks were sent into battle largely because of pressure from the black community, Kohn says.

But in awarding the additional medals "the army and the government did the right thing," Kohn says. When the army decided to investigate, it funded independent scholars "with no axe to grind," which gave the study credibility.

"You could not go back and increase the number of people receiving the nation's highest award for heroism without a persuasive piece of scholarship demonstrating that there had been an injustice," Kohn says. "It degrades the significance of the award if you just hand them out. Soldiers who receive the Medal of Honor are singular people."

—Angela Spivey