Poster depicting a Tuskegee Airman, Image courtesy of the US NARA, ARC ID 514823
If you’ve read my blog entry entitled “T. M. Berry Project: A Few Words for Sarge and Berry’s WWII Service” then you’ll know that Theodore Berry served in the federal Office of War Information during World War II as a Liaison Officer for Group Morale responsible for the “Negro Problem.” For those who have not read that post, let me explain that in Berry’s own words such positions “are in substitute for positions of merit and responsibility in general affairs of government heretofore occupied by Negroes prior to World War I and the Wilson Administration. They are compromise sinecures and in the nature of the case are second class – they compromise the Negro in his efforts and desire to share and serve his government, and they compromise the incumbents of the position.” Berry was thwarted at every turn in his efforts help African Americans serving and dying for their country during his short tenure at the Office of War Information by “dollar-a-year-men” who held no position of rank but nonetheless garnered control of Negro Morale Programs via secretive dealings with the administration. Because of this experience, Berry was no stranger to the rampant discrimination taking place in the American Armed Forces when, in 1945, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall asked him to act as lead counsel for the defense team which Marshall would be directing on behalf of three Tuskegee Airmen who had been court-martialed after the Freeman Field Mutiny.
A P-51 Mustang with the distinctive coloring which earned the 332nd Fighter Group the nickname “the Red Tailed Angels.” Image courtesy of the United States Air Force Museum
The Tuskegee Airmen, known formally as the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group were a group of African American pilots trained at Tuskegee Army Airfield (now known as Sharpe field.) In 1941, the time of the program’s founding, all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces were segregated and African Americans had never before been permitted to fly in the Air Force. However, from 1939 to 1941 Congress passed a series of legislation mandating the formation of an Air Force Combat Unit for African Americans. As a result, the federal government budgeted $1.7 million for the construction of a new “all black” airfield in Tuskegee, Alabama despite the fact that Maxwell Air Force Base would be only forty miles away from the new site. The pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group went on to earn a great reputation and escorted bombers on more than 200 missions throughout the war.
Lieutenant Roger Terry. Image from the personal collection of Roger Terry
In 1945 the 447th Bombardment Group was stationed at Freeman Field near Seymour, Indiana. The group had heard that the airfield had two officer’s clubs – one for “instructors,” all of whom were white; and one for “trainees,” all of whom were black. African American soldiers were also prohibited from going to the PX or attending the theater on base although German POWs were allowed to attend. The group developed a plan to challenge this de facto segregation of the recreational facilities which had been made illegal in 1943. In a PBS interview with Tavis Smiley, Roger Terry of the 477th Bombardment Group explained that after arriving at the field a group of officers set up a table and inspected the others to make sure they were properly attired before sending them in groups of three to the white officer’s club. All were prohibited from entering the club. When Terry asked why the officer at the door responded “”Well, to be frank with you, no niggers allowed.” Nineteen African American Officers then entered the club against a direct order from their superiors and were placed under arrest. In total, sixty-one African American officers were placed under arrest after two days of protest including Lieutenant Roger Terry, Second Lieutenant Marsden A. Thompson and Second Lieutenant Shirley Clinton who were accused of shoving the officer at the door. The other fifty eight were released by Colonel Selway because of his uncertainty as to whether or not the regulation segregating the clubs had been properly written. Colonel Selway drafted and published Base Regulation 85-2 to officially segregate the clubs. On April 11, 1945 all officers were instructed to read the regulation and sign a statement acknowledging that they understood it. One hundred and one African American officers refused to sign and were arrested under the 64th Article of War for disobeying a direct order from a superior officer in a time of war – a very serious charge which according to the U.S. Code of Military Justice § 890. Art. 90. “shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct.” However after much pressure from African American leaders, human rights groups and Congress, The War Department dropped the charges and released the hundred and one with administrative reprimands on their permanent records.
The three men who remained in custody, Lieutenant Roger Terry, Second Lieutenant Marsden A. Thompson and Second Lieutenant Shirley Clinton, were Court-martialed in July of 1945 for “jostling” a superior officer. Thurgood Marshall took on direction of the case and asked Theodore M. Berry, with whom he had worked in previous cases such as the 1940 desegregation case Lewis v. Board of Education of Wilmington School District, to act as lead defense counsel for the three. Berry won acquittals for Thompson and Clinton and had the charge of disobeying an order dropped from Terry, but Terry was convicted of “jostling.” He was made to pay a $150 fine and received a dishonorable discharge from the Air Force.
Fifty years after his conviction, Roger Terry was granted a full pardon, had his rank restored and received a refund of his $150 fine. Upon Berry’s death the Cincinnati Post reported that, while on a U.S. Government plane with his son-in-law Togo West, Clinton’s Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs, to a ceremony honoring the Tuskegee Airmen, Berry stated “We’ve come a long way from the back of the bus.” He couldn’t have been more correct.
President Clinton in a red blazer like those worn by the Tuskegee Airmen awards General Benjamin Davis, commander of the 332nd Fighter Group his Fourth Star. Image courtesy of the Department of Defense
In 2010, the University of Cincinnati Libraries received a $61,287 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the Archives and Records Administration to fully process the Theodore M. Berry Collection in the Archives & Rare Books Library. All information and opinions published on the Berry project website and in the blog entries are those of the individuals involved in the grant project and do not reflect those of the National Archives and Records Administration. We gratefully acknowledge the support of NARA.
