GHOSTBUSTERS WHO'S WHO 2
Germany launches massive assault on windswept mountain village Sommocolonia Dec 26, 1944. 2 92nd Buffalo Soldiers infantry division platoons dug in, their commanding officers expecting they'd throw down their guns and run. For 20 hours 70 black GIs fought an offensive that could change World War II's course, then vanished almost completely from official war records. A million black soldiers served in World War II. Among those seeing combat, nearly 1/4 were killed or wounded. They captured twice as many enemy troops as their own numbers. When books were closed no blacks received Congressional Medals of Honor. Black soldiers melted away during major offensives, said Truman Gibson, War Dept special assistant on Negro Affairs. For 50 years his words were the standard assessment of black World War II military performance.
Today's integrated U S Army has top-level black officers. 1944 Army racism was crude, government-sanctioned policy, an extension of Southern politics because of its close ties to Southern congressmen controlling military budgets and because many senior white Army officers were Southerners. Whites commanding segregated units regarded blacks with contempt, limiting them to gravedigger or mess hall duty. "I didn't send for you," Gen Edmund Almond, white 92nd Division commandant told black junior officers landing in Italy. "Your Negro newspapers, Negro politicians and white friends insist on your seeing combat. I'll see that you get combat and your share of casualties."
White GIs could not be sent to reinforce black units. The too-depleted 92nd Division combined with the Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment in the Rainbow Division. Wounded black soldiers needing blood transfusions could only use plasma of other black soldiers to save their lives. By late 1944 the Allies developed formidable new weapons and trucks to fight the Wehrmacht. The 92nd Infantry transported ammunition and supplies on mules purchased from Italian peasants. Regardless of education and experience blacks were considered less intelligent, trustworthy and capable than whites.
Beside a 2,200-ft cliff Sommocolonia is a landscape painter's dream and a soldier's nightmare. Craggy granite peaks frame the 35-mile Serchio Valley where the 92nd Infantry fought its way north. Cutting sharply through 2 precipitous mountain ranges the valley was a key stretch of the Gothic Line, principal German defensive bulwark in Italy. A mile north was the German 14th Army's forward camp, told not to take prisoners because official Nazi standards called blacks not fully human. 6 miles south the American 5th Army's command post called them not fully soldiers. A white battalion pulled back from the front a few days before the battle. Black GIs in Sommocolonia were determined to prove assumptions wrong.
Dec 26, 1944 Artillery spotter Lt John Fox, 29, awake at 4 am by mortar fire, rushed to position on Sommocolonia's hilltop. As dawn broke over the mountains Fox saw streets below him swarm with Austria's elite 4th Mountain Battalion infantry, the forward edge of an offensive to throw elements of 6 Axis divisions at U S Army detachments in the Serchio Valley. The poorly equipped, thinly supported 92nd was no obstacle. With luck the Wehrmacht would retake strategic port Livorno, 40 mi south. If successful they'd choke off Allied supplies. By 9 a m Sommocolonia filled with bloody hand-to-hand fighting. The 70 black GIs and 25 Italian Partisans joining them could only slow down the offensive.
"Get out of there," a U S Army captain in nearby Barga radioed Lt Graham Jenkins, Fox's fellow officer in Sommocolonia. "We need ammunition," Jenkins replied. Sommocolonian men fought until over 2/3 of them were dead or wounded. The Austrians torched houses where wounded GIs lay, shooting them as they tried to escape out windows. Jenkins radioed his final message to the captain in Barga: "They're coming after us. Please when you get home tell my wife, daughter and mother I love them." As the Austrians closed in to kill Jenkins, who had no ammunition left, he tried to comfort a badly wounded soldier.
From his observation post, now surrounded by enemy troops, Fox phoned in artillery coordinates moving closer and closer to his own position. No one seeing the end survived. Several men at 92nd headquarters heard Fox's last call, asking for a smoke screen to cover a withdrawal by the handful of GIs and Partisans who could still walk. Then he ordered a heavy concentration of mortar and 105mm shells on the surrounded observation post. "Fox, that will be right on you. I can't do that," artillery officer Otis Zachary, Fox's oldest Army friend, a gunner who could lay artillery on a rabbit, yelled into headquarters' phone. "Fire it!" Fox yelled back. Zachary knew targeting at Sommocolonia was Fox's decision. He'd called and said, "Put everything you've got on my coordinates." Zachary refused until a colonel ordered him to do what Fox asked. Late that night the Austrians rounded up villagers hiding in cellars and forced them to leave Sommocolonia. The village priest saw Fox's body at his post, surrounded by over 100 Austrian corpses.
Of Sommocolonia's 95 American and Italian Partisan defenders 18 returned alive to U S 5th Army lines. 3 days later Germany's offensive sputtered out. By Jan 1 Sommocolonia was firmly back in Allied hands. Italians remembered them. To Washington, Fox, Jenkins and their men melted away, almost forgotten within a year. Zachary was tormented by the belief that his shells killed Fox. They trained together in Massachusetts in 1942 and sailed on the same transport for Italy. Other 92nd vets, widows and children including Fox's wife Arlene and their daughter Sandra haunted by the story couldn't let it rest. For 50 years they pounded Pentagon doors demanding the record corrected. The Pentagon always replied the official book on World War II honors was closed in 1952. Only Congress could reopen it. Jan 13, 1997 John Fox and 6 other black Americans received the Congressional Medal of Honor for their World War II actions. A village stone marked John Fox, U S Army Lieutenant, Dec 26, 1944 marks graves of anti-Fascist Italian Partisans dying in Sommocolonia.
William Lawson, member Black Psychiatrists of America - After only a few weeks at John L McClellan Veterans Hospital in North Little Rock AK Dr. Lawson noticed black male Viet Nam veterans invariably diagnosed as schizophrenic and heavily drugged. They had nightmares and flashbacks, classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Lawson immediately replaced their anti-psychotic medication with therapy and antidepressants. They quickly recovered. Mistakes like these are odd but not uncommon, says Lawson, now a professor at Indiana University and co-editor of Cross-Cultural Psychiatry (Wiley, 1999) Blacks are significantly more likely than whites to be labeled schizophrenic, due to clinician error. Rates are lower for example in hospitals affiliated with universities. In overburdened community mental-health centers 30% of black patients are mislabeled as schizophrenic.
July 1944 morning Irene Morgan boarded a Greyhound bus for Baltimore after bringing her two children to stay temporarily with her mother in Gloucester VA. A few miles later the driver told Morgan to move because a white couple wanted to sit there. Refusing to give up a seat she'd paid for she was arrested. At the time it was illegal in Virginia and 9 other states for blacks to sit by whites on buses. Morgan willingly paid a $100 fine for resisting arrest because she kicked the Middlesex County sheriff removing her from the bus and scratched the deputy taking her to jail. Her mother posted her $500 bail. Morgan wouldn't pay a $10 fine and $5.25 in court costs for refusing to give up her seat. Morgan's case was appealed to the U S Supreme Court by then-NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall. 1946 SCOTUS struck down interstate transportation segregation. 1947 Morgan inspired the first Freedom Ride when 16 civil rights activists rode Southern buses and trains to test the new law. 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat after a long day's work, inspiring Martin Luther King's Montgomery Bus Boycott.
Veteran Muni driver Alan Brown proudly wears Operator of the Month patches, driving Muni's Fun Bus' 5-Fulton and 1-California lines. He sings, jokes, anything to brighten passengers' days. "Your day is what you make of it, good or bad. People get on here grumpy and frustrated. I've got to change that." "Show your transfer, flash your pass. You got neither, drop in cash," Brown chanted to 2 sneering, leather-clad, tattooed tough guys ascending Transbay Terminal's bus stairs. When they didn't respond to Brown's "good afternoon" he asked if they'd sing to the rest of the bus. Soon they smiled, singing along to Billy Joel's "For the Longest Time" as Brown provided backup. Other riders clapped along. Entertainment is constant. When one song finishes, another begins. He whistles, taps his feet and honks the horn. He takes off his driver's glove - with drawings of himself on the palm and Mayor Willie Brown on the back - and taps his wedding ring against a safety bar. If you don't feel like laughing, don't get on Alan's bus. People memorize Brown's schedule and pass on other buses to wait for his. He better not leave us again, one said, referring to the torn hamstring and herniated disk sidelining Brown after he slipped on a stray newspaper outside a bus.
Brown recovered quickly thanks to rigorous workouts surprising even his doctors. 18 years and 170 pounds ago that probably wouldn't happen. Since then persistent workouts reduced him to a trim, muscular 180 pounds. Playing an amusement park weight-guessing game and finding out he weighed 350 pounds Brown knew it was time to do things different. "I was Fat Albert, King Kong, Godzilla. I looked in the mirror and decided to change." This personal improvement attitude carries over to others. Riders are inspired to get off the bus and do something nice for someone. "Can I have your attention, please?" he shouted as his bus rolled through the Civic Center. "If you can answer this riddle, you can ride my bus free the rest of your life: What do you do if you see a lion on Lyon Street?" The answer: "Run to Bush and Hyde." Most people like Brown's attitude.
News, stocks, weather, time. He announces points of interest to locals ("The DMV is 3 blocks south") and tourists ("Here's the Opera House") and makes sure everyone knows connecting points for Muni and other transit. People need to know that stuff if they aren't from here. If you're from here you still want to know the history. Brown loved all the jobs he's had: plumber, electrician, carpenter. He helped build hundreds of the Western Addition homes he drives to. He sold newspapers and shined shoes of former mayors George Christopher and John Shelley. He never expected to be a teacher. A City College ESL teacher riding his bus noticed Brown greet her in her native Cantonese, one of 9 languages in which Brown welcomes and makes small talk with riders. "You can't expect to communicate in a city as diverse as San Francisco using just English. I listen to people speaking or guess what they speak by what neighborhood we're in. If a Korean lady gets on in Chinatown and says she's not Chinese after I greet her I say neither am I. They laugh and give me thumbs up. We communicated." Brown's clear announcements of connecting lines and landmarks were great to teach newcomers to use English to get around The City. She plopped a tape recorder on Brown's dashboard. The class loves it.
"Alan speaks survival English, such as the difference between 33rd Ave and just 33. For advanced students he's a role model for politeness and courtesy. Things go on on that bus." Brown listens closely to figure out people's needs, overhearing people trying to find their way and telling them where to go. In 1987 Brown stifled a robbery on his 21-Hayes bus. Hearing a commotion in the back of the bus he stopped, pushed a silent alarm, handcuffed 2 of the suspects to a pole in the bus, then ran after the 3rd guy and dragged him back. By then 10 police cars arrived. Mayor Dianne Feinstein honored Brown with a gold watch and dinner at an exclusive restaurant. Brown hopes to send riders on happier than when they came aboard. "He gives red-carpet service. On a scale of 1 to 15 he's 20 every day. Where does he get the energy?"
1450 - 800 BC Olmec (Nubian-Kemetic) Africans arrive in Mexico and Central America teaching, trading, learning
1305 - 1312 Abu Bakari II, King of Mali, sends fleet of ships and later leads another across the Atlantic Ocean, exploration
1310 - 1491 Mandingo merchant explorers made over 50 trips to Caribbean, South and Central America including Panama, Honduras, Haiti
1492 Pedro Alonzo Nino piloted and navigated for Columbus
1513 Nuflo de Olano with Vasco Nunez de Balboa claimed the South Sea for Spain. Olano and 29 other Africans crossed Panama with Balboa.
1514 Africans with Pedrarias de Avila when he took title of governor of a Spanish colony in Panama
1523 Africans entered Guatemala with Pedro de Alvarado's expedition
1527 Estevanico led Panfilo de Navaes' unsuccessful expedition from Spain to SW North America. Led 3 surviving Europeans on 8-year transcontinental journey from Florida through Texas and northern Mexico to the Gulf of California and Mexico City
1532 12 Africans with Francisco de Montejo on his first Yucatan Peninsula campaign
1539 Africans journey to Mississippi River with De Soto
1539 Estevanico led expedition which included Friar Marcos de Niza giving Europeans their first contact with Arizona and the Zuni people (now New Mexico)
1540 Africans entered SW U S with Francisco Vasques de Coronado looking for City of Gold, Cibola
1565 Africans with explorers founding St Augustine FL
1745 Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable born in St Marc, St Dominique (Haiti) Built first permanent home on Northern bank of the Chicago River, 1779. Later established a thriving trading post which grew into the city of Chicago
1781 26 Africans helped found Los Angeles, with 18 others
1798 - 1866 James Pearson Beckwourth born in Fredericksburg VA. Explored western U S long before John Fremont. Assisted Wm Ashley of the Rocky Mtn Fur Co until 1825. Served as Fremont's chief scout starting 1848. Well liked by Blackfeet and Crows. Crow made him Chief Bull's Robe. 1859 discovered pass through Sierra Nevada Mtns later used by wagon trains, pioneers, gold-seekers and the Western Pacific Railway. The Pass, a Nevada valley, and a Denver Methodist church bear his name.
1810 5 Africans with Lewis and Clark expedition. Rourk was their scout, trapper and trader.
1820 George Bonga opened a northern Great Lakes trading post, married a Chippewa. A town in Cass County MN bears his name.
1843 Jacob Dotson, Mifflin Gibbs, Andrew Jackson, don Jesus Picos, with Fremont. Dotson, lasso expert and marksman, fought beside Fremont in the Mexican War and fought Kit Carson in the Bear Flag Party during the Civil War.
1848-9 Mammy Pleasant helped build San Francisco and helped slaves escape
1909 Matthew Alexander Henson first to arrive at the North Pole, then physically carried Robt E Peary there