Honoring Sergeant Carter

by Allene Carter

  Mitchell, meanwhile, employed his lobbying skills and made sure the Pentagon knew that others were interested in Sergeant Carter’s plight. Among those who took an early interest in Eddie’s situation was Helen Gahagan Douglas, a staunch liberal and member of Congress from California. Mrs. Douglas asked for a hearing for Sergeant Carter. She said that surely someone who had served his country so bravely deserved to know the basis of the decision against him and should have the right to be heard in his own behalf.

  A barrage of letters, calls, and telegrams was orchestrated by Mitchell. Another letter from Mitchell himself to the secretary of defense drew a rambling reply from James Evans, assistant to the secretary. Sounding peeved, Evans twice alluded to the many communications and telephone calls he had received as a result of Mitchell’s efforts. These included, Evans wrote, White House Committees, members of Congress, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, the Office of the Adjutant General, the Federal Security Agency, and various members of the press. Evans admonished Mitchell that, despite suggestions to the contrary, his office had yet to find a direct racial factor in the difficulties encountered by Sergeant Carter.

  Evans said the Carter case first came to the attention of the secretary of defense’s office in August. “It was recited that former Sergeant Carter wished to reenlist in the Army,” Evans wrote, “and wanted to make the Army a career.” What is interesting here is that the plans of a first sergeant to reenlist should be brought to the attention of the secretary of defense’s office the month before his present enlistment ended. It seems that a rather high level of consultation was invoked in the process of deciding to bar Eddie from reenlisting.

  While this correspondence was going on, Eddie and his family moved to an apartment on Vancouver Avenue in Tacoma. The family had to scramble to keep afloat. As soon as he returned from Washington, Eddie began looking for work. Here his old problem—lack of civilian job skills—confronted him again. Eddie tried his hand at various odd jobs to make ends meet. Mildred got work as a cleaner in a restaurant. Soon the family moved out of Tacoma to a small farm they rented in nearby Orting.

  Although it was a difficult time for the family, the boys found life on a farm exciting. Redd remembers Eddie teaching them about farm life, while raising pigs, rabbits, and turkeys to supplement the family’s income. “He also brewed a little beer on the side,” Redd recalled. For Buddha, a high point was when his father, an expert marksman, taught the boys to shoot. While their parents worked, the boys attended the local elementary school. “My father wasn’t a very affectionate person,” Buddha recalled, “at least not toward us. But we knew he loved us. We knew it from the way he would talk with us and the things he taught us. He spent a lot of time with us. Ours was not a family with a lot of hugging and kissing, but everybody was comfortable, and we knew he really cared for us.”

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  Although initially disheartened, Eddie grew more determined to fight the Army’s refusal to let him reenlist or grant him a hearing. In November, two months after his denial, Eddie wrote to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York for help. Jack Greenberg, then assistant to special counsel Thurgood Marshall, passed Sergeant Carter’s request and materials on to the ACLU, saying “as far as we can determine there is no factor of racial discrimination present in this case. Carter’s predicament seems to be of the customary loyalty species.”

  It fell to Herbert Levy to reply. Levy, a young graduate of Columbia University’s law school and former ACLU legal volunteer newly appointed as staff counsel, asked what information Sergeant Carter had from the Army regarding the basis of their action. He said he would let Eddie know what the ACLU could do to help.

  In reply to Levy’s request, Eddie and Mildred sent the letter of December 5 giving details of his situation with the Army. The letter recounted Eddie’s background, his service in three wars, his medals, his honorable discharge and reenlistment, and his service in the California National Guard. The seven-page letter, apparently dictated by Eddie but written in Mildred’s flowing penmanship, continued: “Sir, from my second enlistment until my recent discharge I was constantly hounded by our ‘Secret Police.’ I was questioned about attending a ‘Welcome Home, Joe’ dinner given under the auspices of the ‘American Youth for Democracy.’ At the time I was definitely ignorant that the above organization was a ‘Red Front.’ I was constantly shadowed by two C.I.C. agents wherever I went.” Eddie told Levy of his sudden severance from the Guard, the comment by General Clark, and his transfer to Fort Lewis. Eddie added, “Sir, I have never belonged [to] or been a member of any organization that advocates the overthrow of our government through force or violence.”

  Summing up his military career to that point, Eddie wrote that he was an excellent soldier who was consistently selected to instruct other soldiers. “Soldiering is my profession,” he said.

  In the last two pages of that letter Eddie could not contain his anger. “During World War II, I believed that I was fighting a ‘Holy War.’ I believed and fought in defense of the democracy I now find myself denied. According to the laws of our democracy, an individual is innocent until proven guilty. According to the powers that be, that law has been interpreted in the opposite [way]. Should that be the case, I ask for the right in the name of democracy, that so many profess, to prove my loyalty and establish my innocence. I am not afraid to face any board of inquiry, in fact, I invite a hearing or trial.”

  The many decorations he had received were meaningless, an insult to one’s intelligence, he wrote. More meaningful were the scars of battle that he would carry to his grave, scars received in defense of the democracy he was now denied. Instead of attempting to export democracy, Eddie wrote bitterly, the United States should try importing it.

  Eddie ended his letter with a scathing denunciation of the police state he saw rising in the United States. Coming as it did on the eve of McCarthyism’s cancerous flourishing, Eddie’s letter was prophetic. “Sir, I believe that the people of our country do not realize how much the United States has become a ‘Police State.’ The very evils that we fought against in World War II were not destroyed. We have captured and adopted many of these evils. Sir, I shall continually fight for redress. I wish to be charged with whatever charges the Department of the Army has. Once again, I repeat, I invite any hearing or trial.”

  Eddie and Mildred were grasping for some way to confront an opponent who would not show his face or present any evidence of Eddie’s wrongdoing. Instead, the Army preferred to use innuendo to smear Eddie’s reputation and destroy the career of a person whose only crime was that he was a proud black man and a superb soldier. By the time I finished reading Eddie’s letter I was angry myself.

  Arthur Garfield Hays, Levy’s boss at the ACLU, wrote to Army Adjutant General Edward Witsell on February 15, 1950, asking why Sergeant Carter was denied permission to reenlist despite his distinguished service record. Hays said Carter thought it was because he attended a meeting of an alleged subversive nature. “Mr. Carter advised me that he had no information at the time that the meeting was of such a nature, and he further advises me that he never has had and does not now have any connection whatsoever with any organization on the subversive list.” Hays ended his letter with a request for a hearing for Sergeant Carter.

  Witsell’s reply to Hays, if any, was not in the file. However, in a collection of materials I obtained later through the assistance of Kenneth Schlessinger at the National Archives, I found a draft of a letter from Witsell written in response to a November 15, 1950, follow-up query from Herbert Levy. Witsell acknowledged that the Army had received many requests from individuals and agencies asking that Sergeant Carter be allowed to reenlist. Witsell again repeated his assertion that a careful review of the case led to the determination that reenlistment could not be authorized. His letter ended: “I am obliged to advise you that the information in this case is classified investigative
material, and that for this reason your request must be respectfully denied.”

  There would be no reenlistment, no further explanation or information, no hearing. Witsell’s draft letter was passed on to the secretary of the army and the White House as the suggested reply to any future inquiries about Sergeant Carter. No inquiry would be allowed to get beyond this stonewalling form-letter response.

  For Eddie and his family, conditions had worsened. On May 2, he wrote to Levy that after word got around that he had been kicked out of the Army as an alleged communist he had lost two jobs. Eddie was angry. “I find it hard to make a living for my wife and four children. The only profession that I am familiar with is that of a soldier. How to kill and not be killed. Perhaps military tactics will prove successful against a bank or two.”

  Instead of robbing a bank Eddie took a more heartbreaking step. After seven months of waiting, he was losing hope of gaining redress, he wrote. He had lost faith and was disappointed in American democracy. Politicians could get hearings, he said, but he, an ordinary citizen, could not. Enclosed with the letter was Eddie’s Distinguished Service Cross. He asked Levy to return the medal to President Harry S. Truman. In his country’s hour of need, Eddie ended, he was in the front lines with a submachine gun in his hand. “My reward? A stab in the back.”

  Levy was deeply disturbed by Eddie’s letter, with the enclosed medal. “I was stunned,” he later recalled. “This man had more than earned this medal, I thought. He should keep it, not give it back.” In his reply to Eddie, Levy sought to give the matter a positive spin. He said he would keep the medal in case a direct appeal to the President and a full-scale publicity campaign became necessary. For Levy, Sergeant Carter’s case was a matter of common decency and justice.

  After more unsuccessful appeals for help to Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson, politicians, and the press, Levy sensed that that his efforts were not going to succeed. Eddie, too, was feeling despondent.

  Levy appealed for help to David Niles, administrative assistant to President Truman. Niles replied on February 26, 1951, that he had been familiar with the case “for some time,” having queried James Evans in the secretary of defense’s office in response to a call on Eddie’s behalf from Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas. “I received the answer,” Niles wrote, “that Carter had been denied the right of reenlistment on security reasons, which were based on confidential information that could not be disclosed. The Army is, of course, entirely within its rights in setting conditions for reenlistment—in this case, for security reasons.”

  Two years later, in March 1953, Eddie wrote to ask if Levy thought there might be a better chance under the new administration of Dwight Eisenhower. With McCarthyism in full swing, Levy was not optimistic. Nevertheless, he said he would take the issue up with the new administration.

  Again there was to be no success. Over the next two years there were occasional letters between Eddie and Levy. In May 1954, Eddie wrote that he was forced to concede defeat. He asked Levy to return all papers and his Distinguished Service Cross. Levy responded that although he was pessimistic, he would not admit defeat.

  But in the end Levy did return all of Eddie’s papers and his Distinguished Service Cross. The return of these materials meant the end of any hope of redress. “After looking at the Cross,” Eddie told Mildred, “I almost broke down and cried. That Army deal I took harder than anything I ever had to. You’ll never realize just how tough it was on me.”

  As it became apparent that the ACLU case had gotten nowhere, the family decided to return to Los Angeles with the hope of making a new start. The farm in Orting, while a pleasant interlude for the boys, was not economically viable. Both Eddie and Mildred held down jobs in Tacoma to make ends meet. In June 1954, they decided that Mildred and the boys would return to Los Angles to live with Mildred’s parents. Eddie was doubtful that he could find work in Los Angeles, so he decided to stay in Washington working to pay off the family’s accumulated debts. He rented a room in the home of friends. To Eddie, this separation must have seemed liked another defeat. It was a separation that would last for a year and a half.

  During this long separation Eddie and Mildred wrote to each other faithfully, as they had during the war years. Mildred, as she had done before, saved all of Eddie’s letters. Their main concern was to reduce their debt and reunite the family. In almost every letter Eddie reported that he was paying off the bills as they planned. He often sent money to Mildred as well. He reported on his work situation and his hopes of getting to Los Angeles soon. “All I am doing is working like the devil and coming back to my room,” he wrote. “I do not go anywhere at all.” Eddie found work with an automotive supply and service company in Tacoma. It was a union job—he was a member of the Teamsters Union—but the work was not always certain. Still, he managed to keep bill payments current. From time to time, he asked Mildred to watch for work in Los Angeles, but he was not optimistic.

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  Eddie was determined to pay off the debts before coming to Los Angeles. But Mildred was pressing him to set a date for rejoining the family. “I shall be home just as soon as possible,” he told her sharply in one letter. “So please don’t make it any harder for me. Dammit! There are bills to pay. Do you have a job for me? Shinning shoes? Washing dishes? Cooking in someone’s kitchen? No? Then you’ll just have to wait.”

  When Mildred protested the tone of his letter, Eddie tried to smooth things over: “Darned if you didn’t detect the ice in my letter. Oh, how I love you for you.” But the longer the separation lasted, the more the tension built between them. By May 1955, they had been apart for nearly a year. Eddie sensed that Mildred was making a life for herself in Los Angeles, and he felt a need to reassert his control. “In your letters you write that you never have any time. And that you are always on the run. Do you think that you need a husband? Do you think that you will ever have any time to be a wife? You seem to be loving and living the life and the pace that you have set. When I return I intend stepping in on some of these people. In other words I intend telling them that you are my wife and not a social butterfly. Make up your mind now because I do not intend running around all over town. Now and then okay.”

  Eddie’s growing edginess toward Mildred was compounded by health problems. On May 25, he complained of having bad headaches. “I just about go blind,” he wrote. His war wounds also started acting up. He wrote Mildred in July that his left arm, which had been wounded in the war, was giving him such pain that it kept him awake at night.

  In September, Eddie was counting the days until he would be with his family. By then Mildred was working at the Los Angeles County Hospital as an aide and their financial situation was looking better. “Fifty-one more days until my last day of work up here,” Eddie wrote on October 26. Then on December 2 he happily proclaimed: “All bills are paid off.” He would work for two more weeks, he said, to pay for a plane ticket to Los Angeles. He didn’t want a big group to meet him at the airport—only Mildred, her daughter Iris, and Iris’s boyfriend Fred Scott would be there. In the final days before his departure Eddie told Mildred, “I still love you very much. It seems as though we are staring all over again. But we will and must make it.”

  Eddie finally rejoined his family at Mildred’s parents’ home in Los Angeles in December 1955. Her parents now lived in a big, rambling, two-story house on South Bonnie Brae that had five bedrooms, a full dining room, and a music room with a piano. The peaceful household of Mildred’s parents now became home to Mildred and Eddie, four children, two Great Danes, a miniature Doberman pinscher, two adult Siamese cats, and several kittens. In a sense, for Eddie and Mildred, moving back into her parents home was a return to their beginnings, but not an altogether happy project.

  Mildred’s job at the county hospital gave the family an economic foothold. Eddie, with the help of a letter of recommendation from his former employer in Tacoma, found wor
k as a tire vulcanizer. “He worked at a tire recapping plant on Jefferson Boulevard,” Fred Scott recalled. “I remember seeing him come home in white coveralls that were soiled by the dirty work he had to do at that plant.” To Eddie, whose pride had been manifested in an immaculate military uniform with sergeant’s stripes and medals for bravery, ending each day in dirty coveralls would have represented another blow to his dignity. For Mildred, the return to Los Angeles had allowed her to resume the kind of social life she had always enjoyed. Old and new friends were frequent visitors at the house. Eddie, on the other hand, seemed more distant, and he made few friends.

  Among Mildred’s new friends was Nicholas Cunningham, the young doctor who later wrote to the ACLU on Eddie’s behalf. He and Mildred shared an interest in music, and Cunningham often came to the house to visit with Mildred’s family and friends.

  Cunningham remembered Mildred as a charming, attractive, bubbly person. “I really liked her family,” he recalled, “and for me it was like a home away from home. It was a very attractive, friendly environment. Sometimes we would play music together. She played violin and I played cello. Her youngest son, Redd, was really terrific—ebullient, talented, and very interested in sax and jazz. Buddha, the oldest son, played alto sax, but he seemed a bit preoccupied, as if he was worried.” Cunningham recalled Eddie as “a quietly intense person who was completely his own man. He didn’t feel a need to prove anything to anybody.”