Five Black WW II Veterans: Dovey Johnson Roundtree (1914-2018)

Roundtree was a Women's Army Corps member who used the GI Bill to attend law school at  Howard University School of Law.  Then she started a law firm in Washington, D.C. and won a landmark Civil Rights case, Sarah Keys vs. Carolina Coach Company in 1955, and helped to secure a ban against racial segregation in interstate bus travel.

"Evers and Roundtree are part of a generation of black veterans who use their service as a way to launch their involvement with the Civil Rights Movement," says Delmont.  "They're making sure that the United States is a place where freedom and democracy will be true for all people, and they came back and fight for that."

--GreGen

Fifty Facts About D-Day-- Part 4: Higgins Boats

31.  It was supposed to happen one month earlier.

32.  Nature played a key role.   Weather almost caused another delay in June.

33.  Higgins Boats (LCVPs) took on D-Day.

34.  D-Day films have become very popular in American culture.  "The Longest Day" and "Saving Private Ryan" of course.

35.  A movie star was at D-Day.  Henry Fonda was a quartermaster on the destroyer USS Satterlee at D-Day.  He also was in the movie "The Longest Day."

36.  Many other famous people were at D-Day.  Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, author J.D. Salinger and Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers.  Also golf great Bobby Jones and British actor David Niven and  Charles Durning.

Before he played Scotty" on "Star Trek," actor James  Doohan sustained six wounds and lost his middle finger at Juno Beach.

37.  Gargantuan supply shipments preceded the invasion.

38.  17 million maps were needed.

39.  The landings opened a supply line.

40.  Artificial harbors supported the supply lines.

I'm Hit, Capt. Kirk!  I'm Hit.  --GreGen

Bits of War: Oldest Pearl Harbor Vet Turns 106-- New Book on Dorie Miller-- Another USS Oklahoma Unknown ID'd

1.  OLDEST PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR--  Ray Chavez of San Diego turns 106.

2..  NEW BOOK ON DORIE MILLER--  There is a new biography on Doris "Dorie" Miller called "Pearl harbor and the Birth of the Civil Rights Movement" by Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish

3.  ANOTHER USS OKLAHOMA UNKNOWN IDENTIFIED--  3-19-18--  Navy Fireman 1st Class Jarvis G. Outland.

Sure Glad They Are Identifying the Unknowns of the Oklahoma.  --GreGen

World War II Sit-In in Chicago

From the Feb. 23, 2014, Chicago Tribune "Birth of the sit-in" by Ron Grossman. //// Before the more famous Civil Rights sit-in in Greensboro, NC, eighteen years later, there was a sit-in by 28 blacks and whites at the Jack Spratt Coffee House on East 47th Street in May 1942. (I have seen other sources say it was 1943.) //// This place regularly refused service to blacks. That was kind of strange because the United States was busy fighting a war to save democracy overseas while blacks were denied basic rights by law in the South and custom in the North. Of course, bad treatment was the lot of blacks during the war both on the homefront and front lines. //// I wrote more about it in todays entry to the Cooter's History Thing Blog. //// Things I Didn't Know. --GreGen