Honoring Sergeant Carter Read Free Page A

story and find out why his success seemed clouded to his family.
    I found references to Eddie having been raised by missionary parents in India and China, and having foughtwith both the Chinese Nationalist Army and the Spanish Loyalists. That he was recognized as a war hero when he returned from the service was quite evident: several articles published in the 1940s described his exploits in glowing terms. There were also some disturbing references. One undated article claimed that Eddie had been denied the right to reenlist, that he was barred by the Army in Fort Lewis, Washington. Apparently, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was urging the Army to allow him to reenlist. There was also a letter he wrote to Mildred in 1948 telling her not to worry about the CIC, that his record was clean and they had nothing to fear. I worried about what all this meant, especially when I learned that CIC had to do with the military Counterintelligence Corps. Was he under investigation? For what? Did it have something to do with his reenlistment problem? Whatever happened, could it reach through time and adversely affect his candidacy for the Medal of Honor?
    To my relief, there was nothing in the Shaw University report to suggest that Sergeant Carter had any problems while he was in the service. Interestingly, the report mentioned a 1945 news item from the Omaha Star, a black newspaper, claiming that Sergeant Carter was originally recommended by his superior officers for a Medal of Honor but was denied it because of his race. According to the report, “It is possible that Carter’s award recommendation began as a Medal of Honor and was thenchanged to a Distinguished Service Cross. Research for this study, however, has found no evidence to support such a hypothesis.”
    The report was going to be published as a book, under the title The Exclusion of Black Soldiers from the Medal of Honor in World War II, and Professor Gibran, one of the authors, called to ask if I could send him a photograph of Sergeant Carter to be used in the forthcoming book. We also talked briefly about their research in the National Archives and the Army personnel files that had been destroyed in the 1973 fire in St. Louis. It occurred to me that the National Archives might have more information on Eddie that would be useful in my research for Gloria Long and the White House, and helpful in putting my mind at ease. But a trip back east seemed a remote prospect.
    In the meantime, I tried my hand at doing research closer to home. Joe Wilson, a military historian I had met, referred me to two important books: The Hellcats, about the Twelfth Armored Division’s activities during the war, and The Employment of Negro Troops, by Ulysses Lee. Both books contained mentions of Sergeant Carter (although his name is incorrect in The Hellcats ). Lee’s book contained a one-paragraph description of the action at Speyer and Sergeant Carter’s role in it. The context of this account was a visit on April 19, 1945, to the Twelfth Armored Division by General Benjamin O. Davis, the top-ranking black officer in the Army.
    In addition to these books, William told me that Mildred once had an issue of Ebony magazine that contained pictures and a big story about Eddie. I wrote to the offices of Ebony in Chicago and was able to get a copy of the January 1947 issue, which included an article about black soldiers who won medals for bravery. The article, “Where Are the Heroes?,” included two wonderful photographs of Eddie with Mildred and their young sons in Los Angeles after the war.
    The tone of the article was critical. It pointedly stated that many black veterans, including those praised for heroism, returned to an America that continued to discriminate against them. It quoted Eddie as saying, “The war helped race relations by proving to America and the world that Negroes and whites could live, produce and fight a common