The Pittsburgh Press (January 28, 1946)
Deeds of Negroes in war recorded
Congress will get history of service
WASHINGTON (UP) – Rep. Helen Gahagan Douglas (D-California) is making certain that the history of the American Negro servicemen in World War II is regarded.
She is inserting in serial form in the Congressional Record the story of the Negro fighting man’s contribution in the recent conflict.
“I am doing this,” she explained, “because I discovered that no history was kept of what the Negro did for the United States in the last war. The story is there, if you dig through the files of the Army and Navy but it has never been compiled.”
Recently Mrs. Douglas and a staff of three assistants enlisted the help of the War and Navy Departments and set to work to assemble information on Negro service in the war.
The result is the nearly 50,000-word history she is now placing chapter by chapter in the Congressional Record.
She reported that as of last August there were 695,264 Negroes in the Army, of whom 295,950 were overseas. On V-E Day there were 22 Negro combat units in action on the European front, she added.
Most were in service outfits, she continued, “building airports, bases, roads and highways under fire, in freezing cold and blazing heat,” often forced to drop a shovel and pick up “a gun from the stiffening hands of a fallen fighting comrade.”
She recalled that more than 5,000 Negroes responded to a call to behind the lines troops for replacements for frontline losses in Europe in December 1944. “Twenty-five hundred Negro soldiers were accepted, but 3,000 were turned back, because a quota for Negroes among the volunteers had been set,” she said.