To come: Episode 4, The Long Arm of Tradition

As a WWI soldier in France, Ely risks his safety and freedom to defend his men from racist officers.

Writer: Karla Diggs

In this episode we will see a pugilist, a real fighter for justice. 

Emboldened by the idea of citizenship and fighting for the flag—one touted by W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP— Green signs up for WW1 against the wishes and pleas of his employer. Green’s concerns about language and freedom follow him to training camps and to France.

It doesn’t take long to figure out two things: someone is keeping him from being promoted to the front, and any CO with racist tendencies can make life miserable for Green and the men working labor on the docks, the famous stevedores. 

We will talk about Green’s experience after armistice is declared and Green comes back from “oper there.”. To quote DuBois: “We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.” Green is immediately treated as a second class citizen, by the military and the Red Cross, and feels he has returned home to an unchanged civilian population who does not care about the service and sacrifice of Black men. 

A mystery opens up: almost all of the personal records of US military personnel that were stored in a St. Louis warehouse were destroyed in 1973. What happened? And can we find records in other places? 

Green finds himself once again with a need to escape Texas after a tight scrape with the KKK, says goodbye to the family he loves, but where will he go since he is too black, too white to keep the jobs he needs to survive? How many times can he be backed in a corner?

We close on his dinner back in Texas with George Washington Carver, who tells him, “Sonny, you want my advice. First I advise you to get out of Texas as the Klan has warned you to do so. If I were you I would take the next train out.”