"We Are Insulted"

When Negroes were drafted for the A. E. F., the Army, mindful of race prejudice even under the stress of battle, put them into colored units of their own instead of sprinkling them indiscriminately among white troops. Few, if any, protests were made against this military segregation. But the War Department's determination to segregate by race the Gold Star Mothers it is sending to France this year brought forth last week loud protest to President Hoover from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Fifty-five black mothers with sons buried in France declared they would not go on the free pilgrimage unless the President ordered the War Department to abolish segregation and allow them to travel along with white mothers. Sample protest:

"As a Gold Star Mother who happens to be colored I wish to protest against the gratuitous insult in the attitude of the War Department in segregating colored Gold Star Mothers. . . . Twelve years after the Armistice the high principles of 1918 seem to have been forgotten. . . . We who gave and are colored are insulted by the implication that we are not fit persons to travel with other bereaved ones. . . . We are set aside, Jim Crowed, separated and insulted. . . ."

President Hoover referred such mail to the War Department. The War Department was unmoved. Acting Secretary of War Frederick Trubee Davison explained that Negro Gold Star Mothers were grouped separately "after the most careful consideration of the interests of the pilgrims themselves." Said he:

"No discrimination whatever will be made as between the various groups. Each group will receive equal accommodations, care and consideration."

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