Black and White

Winston Churchill needed all his skill at parliamentary parrying of touchy subjects. Cocky Tom Driberg, Independent M.P., had risen in the House of Commons and asked the Prime Minister to "make friendly representations to the American military authorities asking them to instruct their men that the color bar is not a custom of this country." The Prime Minister thought the suggestion "unfortunate," hoped "'that without any action on my part the points of view of all concerned will be mutually understood and respected."

But the question had peeled the blanket of official silence off a complex and dangerous problem. Almost everyone in Britain had heard at least one eyewitness story such as:

>A pub keeper, indignant at American whites' behavior toward Negroes, put up a sign on his bar door: "For the use of the British and of colored Americans only." He was forced to remove it next day.

>Three Negroes on a bus leaped to their feet when a white officer boarded it. Said the girl conductor, tartly: "Sit down. This is my bus and this is England."

>Two Southerners broke up a small party at which Negroes were dancing with English girls. They demolished some furniture, insulted the hostess.

> Four Czech soldiers, championing the principal of minority rights, fistfought a group of white Americans.

>On more than one occasion, British girls, highstepping down their village streets with Negro boys, were forcibly stopped by Southern U.S. white troops. When British soldiers and civilians defended the right of the women to choose their own escorts, military police of both colors and nations had to haul off their battling charges.

>In Belfast a Negro American soldier was stabbed to death and a white American soldier seriously wounded in a pub brawl.

Great Britain, whose Colonial Service has been known to discard young men who showed an undue interest in the Empire's other races, had never faced the "race problem" at home. Ninety per cent of Britain's citizens had never actually seen or talked to a black-skinned human being before. America's polite, liquid-voiced, smartly uniformed Negro soldiers were a surprise, a pleasure, and a happy opportunity for them to thumb the nose of moral self-righteousness at the U.S. Britain's hospitable small homes were thrown open to white & black alike.

Much of the trouble that had occurred pointed to the failure of the U.S. Army command to take a strong line against discrimination among its own troops. Some British officers tried to please Americans by encouraging American prejudices.

In June, in the village where the first American colored troops were billeted, Pubkeeper John Parrish had said: "My pub is open to everyone who behaves himself. The Negroes could teach some of our boys some manners." An elderly native had remarked: "They are so polite it seems as if they have been repressed."

Since then the Negroes had got along excellently with the villagers, with British troops near them, with hard-working Land Army girls. They had worked hard and well. Off duty, they had the freedom of the town. Said Private Richard Sessions, onetime locker boy for a swank Minnesota club, in University English: "I rather thought the English people would be a bit prejudiced toward members of my race, but it's not true at all. They've been extremely nice."

It seemed as if the English people and American Negroes, if uninterrupted, might teach anybody something about democratic possibilities. If all the officials involved encouraged that lesson, democracy and democracy's war would be well-served.

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