Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  No hint of dawn at seven o’clock on this January morning, when the lights of Ed’s limousine arrived out of the darkness and pulled into the driveway. I’d been watching from my window and saw the two detectives step out of the car. One stood guard in the driveway, while the other went up to the apartment to escort Ed down. Security for Ed had been increased. He was the highest-ranking civilian in the Midwest, responsible for the civil defense in five states.

  I was down in the lobby by the time the elevator opened and Ed stepped out. One detective opened the car door, and we got into the back seat. Not much conversation. Too early.

  We stopped for seven thirty Mass at Holy Name Cathedral—his daily ritual. I had time to pray for Peter Keeley. Requiem aeternam—eternal rest—was surely his if I didn’t get on with it and do my job. Live. The feast of the Epiphany and I thought of the T. S. Eliot poem, “A cold coming we had of it, Just the worst time of the year.” But the Magi had persevered, and so would I.

  Then we drove down to the LaSalle Hotel across from City Hall. There was a table set up in the dining room for Ed. Four mugs of coffee and cinnamon rolls in place. Half the city council had breakfast in this room every day and our eggs over easy came quickly. No dillydallying here.

  The business of the day began. Alderman Paddy Bauler was German. His real name was Mathias, but he’d picked up his nickname as a boxer. He was the first one over, with a story about a friend whose liquor license had been suspended. “A good guy,” he told Ed, “but bad with details.” Would Ed make a call? After all, it was wartime, and Chicago was a Liberty Town. Only patriotic to keep the bars open. Ed had laid a small notebook on the table. He passed it and a pencil over to Paddy, who scribbled in a name and phone number.

  Ed poked a piece of white toast into the yolk of his egg and took a bite, as the next fellow approached. I knew that Ed had a meeting scheduled with the chief engineer on the subway project—worth millions of dollars and thousands of jobs to the City. But it wouldn’t do to rush the alderman. A revolt in the city council could shut down the most innovative project. Ed had become Boss Kelly and he told me that it was important to maintain that position.

  The war had silenced Wilcox, and even the Hearst papers were supporting Ed. Wouldn’t do to tear down the man overseeing the most productive defense industry in the country.

  This morning Ed had made time for John Sengstacke, who had taken over the Chicago Defender from his uncle, Robert Abbott, upon his death. John was the grandson of the German sea captain and Abbott’s mother. The paper had printed my photographs of Mrs. Roosevelt with the Negro soldiers in County Tyrone on the front page, along with a feature story by Marjorie Stewart Joyner, a wealthy Chicago businesswoman who also wrote for his paper.

  Ed was being made an honorary member of the Bud Billiken Club, named for the fictitious character Robert Abbott had created as a protector of children. The Defender sponsored a giant Bud Billiken parade every year, and Ed was delighted when Sengstacke invited him to march. I photographed the two of them together.

  As he was leaving the office, Sengstacke said to me, “How would you feel about taking on a special assignment for the paper?”

  “Are you hiring me?” I asked, following him into the hall, where we stood and talked.

  “I’ll pay you ten dollars for this job and then we’ll see. My main photographer just shipped out to the Pacific with a Navy construction battalion. So far, the Navy has only allowed Negro sailors to be cooks or stewards or laborers. Put us in a whole separate branch with a different uniform, but I understand something new is happening at Great Lakes. About time. Negro sailors were on John Paul Jones’s ship and served during the Civil War. But then they kicked us all out and have only let us back as servants. Anyway, this war is forcing even the Navy to change. Tomorrow, the first Negroes to graduate as seamen with rates are participating in the ceremony at Great Lakes. Think you can cover it? I’ll throw in train fare.”

  “Yes! Thank you. Yes.”

  I took a taxi from the Lake Forest train station. The driver got me through the front gates of the base and we were directed to the auditorium where graduation was taking place.

  The ceremony had already started. I eased into the back of the huge hangar-like building, and stood looking at row after row of shaved heads. Must have been over four hundred sailors. One of these ceremonies every week. The Boot Camp consisted of six weeks of basic training followed by six weeks of special schools. It took ninety days to build a ship and a sailor.

  “Are you a family member?” The fellow asking me the question was an older man in a dress uniform with a lot of gold braid.

  “I’m a news photographer,” I said.

  “Did you make an appointment with the public affairs officer?” he asked me.

  “No, I didn’t. See, I usually work in the mayor’s office. I’m Nora Kelly.”

  “Okay, then. Mayor Kelly is very popular around here. Chicago’s the only city that offers everything free to servicemen—transportation, lodging, food, entertainment. Welcome, Nora Kelly. I’m Admiral Abernathy. Why don’t you come and stand in the front so you can get a good shot of each sailor when he receives his diploma.”

  “Thank you, Admiral. I’m taking pictures on assignment for the Chicago Defender, the Negro paper, and I understand this is the first class in which colored men are graduating with special accomplishments.”

  “Well, yes, that’s true,” he said. “A bunch of those colored boys passed the tests required to get rates. First ones of their race to qualify as seamen for specialty schools where they can become signalmen, engineers, radar operators. Kind of a surprise.”

  Now I had time to look at the crowd. “Where are they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Where are the Negro men who are graduating?”

  “Oh, Miss Kelly, please. You’re not one of those crusaders are you? The fellows are in a separate camp. Hey, Chief Potts,” he called out. A man sitting in the last row turned around. The admiral waved him over.

  “Take this lady over to Smalls,” the Admiral said to him.

  “I’ll tell Ed I met you,” I said, but he didn’t answer. I followed Potts outside of the auditorium. A jeep was coming toward us. He flagged it down.

  “Too far to walk,” he said to me. “Especially in this wind. I’m from Alabama and I hate this Yankee weather. The niggers shiver worse than me all through the winter.”

  Right out! That word.

  “Are you referring to your fellow sailors,” I said, “who enlisted to serve their country?”

  “You Yankees have a lot to learn about—” he paused “—the colored. Best never put them on a ship. As soon as the first shots are fired they’ll jump overboard.”

  He climbed into the back seat of the jeep and waited while I pulled myself up onto the step and got in beside him. No helping hand for me from Chief Potts. The driver drove forward.

  The jeep crossed the railroad tracks and we were at the main gate of another post. “Camp Robert Smalls,” the sign said.

  I photographed the name plaque on the gates. “Who was Robert Smalls?” I asked Potts.

  “I don’t know, and I don’t care,” he said.

  We pulled up in front of a corrugated iron shed. Nothing like the auditorium in the main camp. We went inside. Here were the same rows of chairs and heads facing forward. As I walked up the side aisle I saw there were many more family members. The women wore fancy hats and the children seemed to be dressed in their Sunday best.

  I knew the man standing at the microphone, Congressman William Dawson, newly elected to represent Illinois.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he was saying. “You all know the story of the twenty-two year old messman who became the hero of Pearl Harbor. He was serving on the USS West Virginia when it was bombed. He carried his wounded captain to safety, then took over a gun firing back at the Japanese, though he had no real training in operating the weapon. Later he said, ‘I aimed it and shot.’ At first the Navy o
nly referred to heroic action by an unnamed Negro. But as you know, Robert Abbott began a campaign to find him. We did. He was from Waco, Texas. He was called after the midwife that delivered him. So this six foot three boxing champion is named Doris Miller. He’s been nicknamed Dorie. He’s the first one of our race to be awarded the Navy Cross. May I present the hero of Pearl Harbor.”

  As the tall, broad-shouldered young sailor stepped forward, the audience and the graduates stood and applauded.

  Dawson motioned for silence, and Dorie Miller began to speak.

  “I’m wearing this,” he said, holding up the Navy Cross that was pinned to his blue uniform jacket, “for all of you and all of our ancestors. You know we’ve been serving on US Navy ships since the very beginning of America. Now Robert Smalls—there was a real hero. I was just doing my job. But fellows like you are the ones who will give us a chance to show the white boys what we can do. Rated seamen, now that’s something to be proud of. I wish you all fair winds and following seas. I only hope the Navy lets us have our own ship. The fellows in Tuskegee got to fly. Why shouldn’t we take a US Navy ship into combat?”

  Well that set the crowd off. From among the family members there were shouts of “Amen,” and “Yes, Lord.”

  “Disgusting,” said Potts.

  “Run along,” I said to him, walked up to the front, and found a spot where I could photograph both the sailors and the families.

  I took a shot of each sailor as he accepted his diploma from Dorie Miller to huge applause from family and friends and then shook hands with Congressman Dawson.

  “I’ll introduce you to the men if you’d like,” Dawson said to me after the ceremony. Dapper as always. He and Ed always eyed each other’s suits, and Dawson had even sent his tailor up to the mayor’s office to refit the Brooks Brothers specials Ed bought, saying that a suit can’t just hang on you. Something touching about two such powerful men caring about how they dressed. I thought of Pat Nash and Jake Arvey. Doubt if they ever thought twice about their suits.

  Today, Dawson wore a navy blue suit, white shirt, and gold tie.

  “I’m very proud of these kids,” he said, pointing at the class. “Many of them have never even graduated from high school, and yet they got higher scores on the qualifying tests than the white sailors across the road. Are you wondering why, Nora?”

  Dawson always told you what question to ask and then answered it.

  “Because all Negroes were put together. The college-educated fellows, who by rights should be in Officers’ Candidate School, were thrown in with the youngsters. The older men set up classes and taught math and English and drilled the younger fellows on the material that was covered in the official Navy classes. Those young kids scored so well Admiral Abernathy thought there had been some cheating and made them take another battery of tests again with monitors walking the aisles, and guess what? They scored even better. The admiral wanted to submit the lower scores but one of the college men reached out to me and I spoke to the admiral. You have to remember, Nora, that the Navy is a Southern service—Annapolis and all that—with officers coming from the old Confederacy. But they can’t argue with excellence and that’s what today is about. Excellence.”

  Dawson had paid for the punch and cookie reception in the mess hall that followed the graduation ceremony. He took me from family group to family group, introducing me to young sailors as I took pictures and scribbled down names.

  “I’m from Harlem, USA,” Gordon Buchanan told me. Lorenzo Dufau was from New Orleans. He was sitting with a woman and a little boy. All three of them speaking French. Next to them James Graham told me he was from Lake City, South Carolina, the vowels coming out long and slow.

  As we were walking out Dawson said to me, “I have a car, Nora. I’d be glad to give you a ride back to town.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  As we walked through the crowd, Dawson said, “These men better get a chance to prove themselves in combat or Jim Crow will have won another victory. The Navy is tough. Men in close quarters on a small ship. Eating together, sleeping nearby, lots of white boys wouldn’t stand for that. And these men”—he pointed at the sailors—“are going to move up the ranks. They’ll be chief petty officers themselves, able to give orders to white sailors and that could cause trouble.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I heard some of that today. But the military can order obedience, can’t they? I’d say the president would be sympathetic.”

  “You would think so, but remember he was assistant secretary of the Navy when his cousin Theodore sent the great white fleet sailing around the world. TR fired the black sailors. Replaced even the cooks with Filipinos. The Navy will never change until they see what Negroes can do in combat. I understand you traveled with Mrs. Roosevelt.”

  “Yes. To the Navy base in Derry.”

  “A lot of destroyer escorts there,” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “The little ships that could,” he said. “That’s what the sailors called the DEs. Dozens being turned out every month. Something noble about their mission, protecting the convoys of troop ships,” he said.

  “My nephew protected them from above,” I said.

  “Important to bring the men and materials across to Europe who are going to defeat Hitler.”

  “With France the battlefield again,” I said.

  “The poor French,” he said. “You saw the dead bodies sinking into that mud. The French Army defeated, and now the children of the men killed in that war are dying in this one. Believe you me I can give you chapter and verse on the faults of the American military beginning here with these young men, segregated even in the classroom, every obstacle put in front of them. Yet look at what they’ve achieved. I want to see them in the fight, Nora. Double V–victory over there will lead to victory at home. When you brought Ed to meet me, I didn’t want to make too much of the fact that I’d spent time with his wife and cousin in a bistro in Paris. Some men wouldn’t like that.”

  “Ed’s not ‘some men.’”

  “You’re right. He’s not the typical fellow from his background. He’s a decent man, your cousin.”

  “I’m not sure you understand just how poor we Kellys were when my grandmother and great-aunt hauled their children off that boat. Ed’s not white in the way that Big Bill Thompson is. No privileges for us. No family money. And you know, Mr. Dawson, there were plenty of ‘No Irish Need Apply’ signs in Chicago. Now I’m not saying our people faced what your people did.”

  “I’m glad you know nothing compares to being enslaved for three hundred years, but I understand the case you’re making.”

  “And I think you can push Ed a little bit. I’m sure he could arrange for you to meet with the person who can get you your ship. Eleanor Roosevelt has asked a lot of favors from Ed and I’m certain she’d do one for him in return.”

  “Thank you very much, Miss Kelly.”

  “This is what you wanted all along, isn’t it? This is why John Sengstacke sent me out here today. Why didn’t you just call Ed?”

  “You have more influence than you realize, Nora. We politicians may seem crass but we don’t forget those who believed in us in the beginning. Harder to trust as time goes on, they are fewer and fewer. Ed has you.”

  We’d been standing to the side of the reception and I hadn’t noticed that most of the families were leaving. “Say, say,” I heard. One of the sailors was calling out to us.

  “I think someone is trying to get your attention, congressman,” I said, but the young man was waving to me. He came over.

  “I met you on the president’s train,” he said. “I’m Melvin Grant Junior. My father was the porter and now look at me.”

  “Look at you indeed,” I said.

  I turned to Dawson. “We can get the whole crew for the new ship right here and now.”

  “We could,” he said.

  I rode back into the city with William Dawson. “Strange to name a segregated camp after a hero
of the Union,” he said and told me the story of Robert Smalls.

  “He was born into slavery. Down in Beaufort, South Carolina. That’s Gullah country where the ties to Africa are very strong. Those people down there found ways to resist and Smalls managed to convince his owner to hire him out to work in Charleston. He had a lot of mother wit and became a pilot on a ship in Charleston Harbor. He was only twenty-one years old when the Civil War started but he convinced the Confederates that he was a loyal darkie and was put in charge of the crew of a ship called the Planter. One night when the officers went ashore, he and the crew smuggled their families aboard. Smalls dressed up in the captain’s uniform and put on a hat that the captain was known to wear. He’d copied his mannerisms and was a good enough actor to fool the guards in the battery above the harbor. Sailed right past them. Went up the river. Ran up a white sheet and surrendered to the Union Navy. He brought all the Confederate codebooks plus a number of big guns and a load of ammunition that were supposed to be delivered to the troops the next day. He was a celebrated man in his time. They say he was the one who convinced Abraham Lincoln to let Negroes enlist in the Union Army. After the war he was a congressman and did a lot for Beaufort and South Carolina during reconstruction until Jim Crow came to town and shut everything down and now a segregated Navy slaps his name on the colored-only training camp.

  “But give these young sailors a ship and they will change all that,” Dawson said.

  And they did. The USS Mason was commissioned in Boston on March 20, 1944. It was a destroyer escort that had been built for a regular Navy crew but turned over to 160 Negro sailors who would perform all the duties required to take a ship into combat.

  Ed and William Dawson and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People had worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to persuade the Navy to commission the ship. Their first foreign port was Derry, and the Chicago Defender carried the front page story headlined “Irish First to Treat USS Mason Crew as Americans.”