The Free Lance-Star (June 22, 1943)
Sabotage charges lodged against 7
FBI makes arrests in manufacture of bombs, grenades
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J. Edgar Hoover warns of illegal use of uniforms
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Gen. Marshall: Nazi myth blown up
Marshall tells governors Tunisia ended German legend; Russia praised
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The Pittsburgh Press (June 22, 1943)
Roving Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
Somewhere in Africa –
Brazzaville is the capital of French Equatorial Africa. It is also the original headquarters of the entire Free French movement throughout the world.
You’d have to search a long time for a more remote spot in which to center a world movement, but at the time France went under, there weren’t many French territories left to harbor a renewal of the war against the Germans.
Brazzaville has been mostly just an executive war capital, fighting only with the radio, with plans, with decisions. Gen. de Gaulle has been there a number of times, but no actual movement or concentration of war goods has ever occurred there. It’s just too far away from anywhere.
Brazzaville is on the opposite bank of the Congo River from Leopoldville. The river there is about a mile and a half wide. You cross in a motor launch, which runs every half hour. Natives sit in the front part, and whites in the rear.
Brazzaville is to Leo what West Memphis, Arkansas, is to Memphis, Tennessee. It is small in comparison and everybody goes to Leo for his better shopping and entertainment. Brazzaville has a few paved streets, a few nice homes, but mostly it is a native village.
There is one thing you do go to Brazzaville for, however, and that’s to buy ivory. It is one of the best places in Africa for ivory carvings. I wanted to get some to ship home, so I collected a friend and we went across the river.
This friend was Capt. Phil Ross (now a major), formerly an independent oil operator in San Antonio, Texas. Buying ivory is one of his hobbies. He knows the values down to a centime, and he has a way of haggling with the natives – a boisterous pretense of being insulted and angry at the prices they ask – that tickles them to death.
When we got off the launch, about a hundred black boys came charging down as though we were a citadel and they were storming us. They were all rickshaw pullers.
Knowing how this thing works in other countries, I quickly picked out one boy on the theory that he would save me from the rest. But it doesn’t work that way in Brazzaville. The others continued to yell, grab, push and haul at my defenseless person until we were a hundred yards down the road. Real chamber-of-commerce go-getters, those Brazzaville boys.
A Brazzaville rickshaw is something new under the sun. It has only one wheel. This wheel is nicely rubber-tired, and about the size of a motorcycle wheel. It sits in the center right beneath your seat. A framework of shafts extends fore and aft, and it takes two boys to balance and pull the thing.
Brazzaville is full of rickshaws, but for some strange reason there are none at all in Leo, 10 minutes away.
We went into the heart of the native section and finally pulled up before a mud house. An ivory dealer lived there. He got out his supply from a wooden truck, spread it out on the bare ground of the hallway, then ran along the front of his house, and we began bargaining.
The grapevine carried the word rapidly over town, and pretty soon other dealers began to arrive with their ivory tied up in white rags. They would sit and watch the proceedings for a while and then slowly untie their stuff and very gradually, enter the bargaining.
They were all Negroes, dressed mostly in loosely flowing white gowns. About a dozen finally came. These were not ivory carvers, but merely traders.
They looked like plain jungle Negroes, yet they were acute businessmen. When the American troops first arrived, ivory prices skyrocketed, but when we were there, most of the troops had gone and prices had consequently nosedived again.
Some of the Negroes spoke a few words of English, and Capt. Ross knew a few words of French. Between them we bargained, laughed and haggled there on the ground for three solid hours. We bought bracelets, Negro busts, solid ivory elephants, beautiful Madonnas, knife-and-fork salad sets, dainty pairs of antelopes, turtles, necklaces.
It was more like an auction than a private transaction. I kept books on the thing – whenever Capt. Ross would finally strike a deal for something he would lay it aside and I would put down a description of the article and its cost, on the back of an envelope. When we were finally finished, we had more than 50 separate pieces and they ran into thousands of francs.
I added up the figures, Capt. Ross added them up, and two of the Negroes added them up. I didn’t think they could add, but they said the total was correct. Anyhow we paid a lump sum to one man and left it up to them to thresh out the division among themselves.
How they ever got it straightened out, I didn’t know, for it was a complicated mess, but everybody seemed happy, including us.
Völkischer Beobachter (June 23, 1943)
23 Tote, über 709 Verletzte
Einer Reuter-Meldung aus Neuyork zufolge wurde vom Gouverneur des Staates Michigan in Detroit der Ausnahmezustand verhängt, weil bei Unruhen gegen Neger 23 Personen getötet und über 700 verletzt wurden.
Brooklyn Eagle (June 23, 1943)
Hints Allies may bomb Rome military targets
RAF commentator says religious shrines would not be attacked
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Few miners return as strike ends
Rank and file show resentment at Lewis for lack of pay raise
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Federal aide sees ‘male dynasty’ ending this year
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Adm. Kelly praises naval reserves’ work
Hails ‘valor and intrepidity’ of officers in Morocco as he addresses graduates
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3rd Allied raid in 36 hours on Naples area rips rail yards
Bombs hit supply line for Sicily
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Fortress crew sees Dutch V-signs on hedgehop flight
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Joe Louis’ induction Kos Army weight standard
Men too heavy in scales not necessarily too fat for service, food expert reveals
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Editorial: We can find in ourselves the cause of Detroit’s riots
Whenever there is an outbreak such as this week disgraced Detroit, there is a tendency for observers to hunt around for a scapegoat. A lot of people wonder if the rioting in Detroit wasn’t Axis-inspired.
That would be a simple explanation that would suggest a simple remedy. If we rooted out Axis propagandists, we’d have no more of such trouble.
The real explanation, perhaps unfortunately, is not so easy. Hitler doesn’t have to sow seeds of hate and prejudice and intolerance and just plain, mean cussedness in our hearts. We have a domestic growth of those things quite adequate to flower into something like the shameful crop harvested in Detroit.
Hitler must chortle over the news of race riots in Detroit and coal strikes in Pennsylvania, but let’s not kid ourselves that he starts those things. We do all right on our own.
Trouble is, we talk a better brand of democracy than we live. We get all choked up with emotion on the speaker’s platform and our voices tremble as we brag about our belief in the brotherhood of all men and equality of humanity. But when it comes down to cases we don’t ACT like brothers. We don’t even act like friends. We don’t have the honesty to admit our prejudices.
Detroit has boasted for years of the way its collections of foreign-born and its colonies of native-born Americans got along. It conveniently overlooked the fact that the newcomers brought their prejudices right along with their extra shirts. It overlooked the fact that the older residents had some hot prejudices of their own and that everyone who had lived in Detroit a year considered himself an old-timer and resented the arrival of anyone who came after him.
Detroit didn’t believe that what happened could happen. Mobs battled all of Sunday night but the authorities still, apparently, didn’t believe it could happen. That would seem to be the only reason why there was so long a delay before soldiers were called in.
No one believed that sooner or later the price of prejudice, of economic servitude, of the denial of ordinary rights would have to be paid. But it always does.
Negroes return to Detroit factories as race riot wanes
Army, police still patrol fight zones
Detroit, Michigan (UP) –
Negro workers returned to factories and boosted lagging war production to near-normalcy today as federal and state troops and city police patrolled streets in the wake of Detroit’s turbulent race riots.
Tension diminished considerably in the Negro district as Governor Harry F. Kelly abolished two of six restrictions included in his state of emergency order issued Monday during rioting which left 29 persons – 25 of them Negroes – dead and more than 700 injured.
Kelly said after a conference with Michigan State Police and military officials today that other restrictions may be lifted tomorrow, “if we get through today without incident.” He added, however, that the 10 p.m. curfew will remain in effect at least one more day.
3,900 troops on guard
Brig. Gen. William E. Gunther, in charge of federal troops in the area, announced there are now 3,900 federal soldiers in the city, including 2,100 infantry and 1,800 military police. In addition, 2,700 State Home Guard troops are here and another 2,600 have been alerted in event of further trouble.
Additional arrests were reported early today, boosting the total to more than 1,300. Thirty-four Negroes were given 90-day jail sentences yesterday and 15 others, including the first five white defendants, received similar sentences today.
A brighter production picture was reported by all major automotive concerns, which yesterday said Negro absenteeism ranged as high as 75%.
Kelly, describing the 1,300 arrests made since the outbreak of fighting, said “at least 75% of the trouble” was caused by boys 15-21 and that three-fourths of all persons arrested are under 21.
Troopers at ballpark
Although Kelly announced that baseball and horse-racing would be permitted today, he ordered dispatch of 350-man state troop contingents both to the Detroit Fairgrounds Speedway and to Briggs Stadium, where the Tigers meet Cleveland in a doubleheader. Both a ball game and the race meet were called off yesterday.
White and Negro leaders attributed the riots to fifth-column activities and the Ku Klux Klan.
Walter White, secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said the Klan and “Nazi money” circulating here had “something to do with inciting the riots,” and expressed apprehension over what may happen when the soldiers leave.