diers in the South were angry over the
harassment and segregation with which they were confronted. In
particular, they were irritated by the fact that German prisoners of war
were permitted to eat with white American soldiers in the same dining car
on a railroad train traveling through the South, while Negro soldiers
could not. Racial riots occurred at Fort Bragg, Camp Robinson, Camp
Davis, Camp Lee, Fort Dix, and a notorious one at an American base in
Australia. The policy of the War Department was to gloss over these
events. Casualties which resulted from riots at bases in the United
States were officially listed as accidental deaths. Those which resulted
from riots overseas were officially reported as being killed in action.
On several occasions, Negro soldiers refused to do work which they
believed had been assigned to them purely because of their race. For this
they were charged with mutiny.

There was also one serious civilian race riot during the war; it occurred
on June 20, 1943, in Detroit. A fist fight between a white man and a
Negro sparked the resentment which had been mounting in that city.
Thousands of Afro-Americans had been moving again from the South into the
North to fill vacant jobs in war industry, and this was resented by local
white residents. Before the Detroit riot ended, twenty-five Negroes and
nine whites had been killed. President Roosevelt had to send in federal
troops to quell the disturbance. Another factor which irritated
Afro-Americans was that the Red Cross blood banks separated Negro and
white blood. This was particularly humiliating in that it had been a
Negro doctor, Charles Drew, who had done the basic research that made the
banks possible.

In spite of this, Afro-Americans were eager to demonstrate their
patriotism and to support the war effort. Besides the hundreds of
thousands who were involved directly in the military, millions more
supported the war effort in countless other ways. Besides growing their
own vegetables, saving tin cans and newspapers, they were avid
contributors to the War Bond issues. Others volunteered to serve as block
wardens in case of enemy air raids. Negro newspapers had their own
journalists at the front, and the Afro-American community eagerly kept up
with the war news. They took special pride in stories of heroism about
Negro soldiers. When Hitler and his racist philosophy went down in
defeat, they felt that they had achieved a personal victory an