In September, 1945, my parents were on their way from Los Angeles to Springfield, Massachusetts. They didn’t have a car so I think that they took the train to Detroit where their families were and then rode up to Idlewild with the Cleages.
My father had been accepted as the minister of St. John’s Congregational Church, an historic black church, founded before the Civil War. I wasn’t born until almost a year later. My mother and aunts appear in the middle box on the top row. This article appeared in the Michigan Chronicle.
I also transcribed the article on the top left – Un-Covering Washington. Transcription beneath the page below.
Un-Covering Washington
By Harry S. McAlpin
White house correspondent (Released through the Atlanta Daily World by NNPA)
As a rule, most of us Negroes are miraculously able to keep a sense of stability despite this rotten system of racial segregation which is practiced and condoned in America and pulverized and condemned Germany. A few of us, as has been the case with some of the soldiers in our victorious army, go berserk and become psychoneurotic cases because of it.
Sometimes, I find myself thinking we are too complacent perhaps – too prone to accept and to adapt ourselves to receiving less than an American citizen deserves. But even when I have entertained these thoughts, I have rarely fell bitter–until last week.
I know I should have been swelling with pride, as everyone else in the room. But I wasn’t.
It was a beautiful and inspiring sight. The East Room of the White House, with its massive crystal chandeliers, its busts of Lincoln and Jefferson on the mantlepieces over the fireplaces, its of George and Martha Washington, was as pretty a picture as one could imagine.
THE PRESIDENT of the United States, immaculate in a light gray suit, black tie and black pocket handkerchief was beaming as he performed the ritual of placing the coveted Congressional Medal of Honor around the necks of 28 outstanding heroes of World War II in the first mass ceremony of its kind in history.
The relatives and friends of the 28 heroes filled the room. As the soldiers were called, one by one, his invited guests arose and stood while the citation was read and the President made the award. Flashlight bulbs exploded. news reel cameras ground. History was in the making.
BUT SOMEHOW, I could not keep out of my mind that I was the only Negro in the room – there simply as a White House reporter. Out of a million Negroes in our army, not one of those 28 heroes had a black skin. Out of 13 million Negroes in the United States, not one of those families watching this ceremony was Negro.
I thought of my dear friend Capt Charles Gandy, whose heroic deed: endeared him to the men under his command, and who lost his life on the battlefield in Italy saving his comrades and making possible the advance of his company. He, of course, could not have been there because he is dead.
But, I thought too of Corp. James Woodson of Pittsburgh who was a hero on D-Day, ministering to the wounded in the face of enemy fire, saving two officers from drowning and giving them artificial respiration sticking to his tasks 48 hours without sleep wounded himself, and giving up only when he collapsed.
And I couldn’t help but feel that this vicious system of American segregation was responsible for the picture in the East Room having its lily – white appearance.
I was bitter, but was not ashamed of the way I felt. Perhaps I was wrong, but I left before the ceremony was concluded.
The Michigan Chronicle, Detroit, Michigan Sep 1, 1945 Page 20
Other posts about Idlewild 1945
Building Louis’ Cottages – Idlewild 1943 to 1945
Idlewild 1945 – En route to Springfield