Joseph Hairston, Excerpts from Oral History Interview, Washington, DC, 1998, 2010

Joseph Hairston enlisted in the army in October 1940 and, after finishing Officer Candidate School (OCS) in October 1942, became one of the first black officers commissioned in the 92nd Infantry Buffalo Soldier Division. He served in Italy with an artillery battalion. Hairston remained in the army and served in the Korean War. Hairston noted the continuing discrimination, even after EO 9981, but he said his own ideas had changed significantly. He was less willing to accept racial discrimination. Hairston obtained a law degree from Georgetown University and worked as an attorney for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). In the 1960s, he took part in the organization of civil rights demonstrations, including the famous 1963 March on Washington.

Camp Livingston, Louisiana, that’s where I got my first real indoctrination of discrimination. Now I grew up in a small town and there was racism. But in small towns, it’s not a real problem. When I left West Point, we were on a New York Central, until we got to St. Louis, where they put us on the segregated train to go from St. Louis down to Alexandria, Louisiana. And there were no dining facilities, so we had to jump off when the train stopped at the station, and run in through the back door to get sandwiches to come back to eat. And that was my first shock.

The second shock, I got off the train in Alexandria, Louisiana. And there were a couple of “crackers” just standing there. And the one “cracker” said to the other, and this is an exact quote, he said, “That looks like a bunch of them God damn northern niggers. We'll have to show them how we do things around here.” That was my first exposure to the real south.

I almost got killed in a riot in Alexandria. Very little is known about that riot. General Davis, Senior investigated it. But you won’t find much in the books. The situation in Alexandria, at Lee Street, was the center of the black community. And it was a long block; it would be the equivalent of about two or three regular city blocks. There were no cross streets. And you had these—we referred to them as juke joints—that were shoulder to shoulder. And on a weekend night, it was the only place black troops could go. You had Camp Livingston, Fort Polk, Camp Lee, Camp Breckinridge, and two other bases. And all these troops came into this small area and they were, it was like maggots.

And a soldier got drunk and the black MP’s had him in custody. A couple of white MP’s came in and took him from the black MPs even though he was no problem to the black MP’s. But because they intruded, then the black troops all around beat up the white MP’s and chased them out of the area. Took their weapons and chased them out of the area. They [white MPs] came back reinforced within about a half hour. The same thing happened.

And then by that time, if you can imagine a long block, but at the end of the long block you had a cross street. And the good Lord got me to the cross street. I was at the corner when the white civilian police, came down the street to this mob of people. As they got to the corner where I just happened to be standing there, a white policeman pushed me in the chest and he said, “Get out of my way, nigger.” And a moment later, he opened fire, point blank into the crowd.

Well, when I heard the gunfire I left. And I went several blocks away into a movie. And when I came out of the movie that night all the blacks were cleared out of town and I was immediately hustled on the vehicle and sent back to Camp Livingston. We were restricted to the post for 30 days before we could go to town. General Davis investigated that. But you’ll find very little in the archives as to what really happened. Nobody really knows how many people died. But I saw the point blank firing into that crowd.

Yeah, the white policemen were shoulder to shoulder across the street marching abreast of each other and shooting point blank into the crowd. We were unarmed. In fact, you weren’t allowed to go to town with weapons. The black MP’s, I don’t think were armed.

We were sent to Camp Robinson, but now there was some racism that occurred there that was significant. The combat team commander was Sterling A. Wood, who later became the Chief of Staff of the Far East Command. We were training night and day and because we didn’t get a chance to go home at regular times, it was the practice for the officers to have their wives come out to the post and eat dinner at the officer’s mess. Well, some of the white wives didn’t like the idea of eating in the same building with the black officer’s wives. So, they complained to the Battalion Commander and he placed the officer’s mess off limits to the black wives.

There was a Lieutenant, whose name was Dolphin G. Thompson. Thompson was the kind of officer who would end up being a General Officer; he had that charisma. You know, only a few people have that, but even as a Second Lieutenant, he had that. When the Battalion Commander separated us and told us that our wives couldn’t come, Thompson (who was a man six foot something, a very imposing person), stood up and said to the Battalion Commander, “I assume that means no wives will come to the officer’s club.” The Battalion Commander became very angry. He said, “No, I said, your wives.” And Thompson, a Second Lieutenant talking to a Lt. Colonel, says, “If any wife comes, my wife will come.” From then on, he had problems and was subsequently court-martialed and hounded out of the Army.

The second incident, the Combat Team Commander, Sterling A. Wood, felt that the black officers needed additional training. So, he set up a training program that tried to mimic West Point. You know, the square eating where you sit and you don’t speak? You know, all of that garbage you do as a cadet. And one Sunday he called the black officers together in the theater. And he seemed to be dissatisfied with our progress.

And he said to us “You people constitute 10 percent of the population of this country. And I’m going to see that you incur 10 percent of the casualties.” Now that shocked a hell of a lot of us. And that affected my thinking of the Army for a long time after that, because I lost a very good friend in Italy. And I don’t know that it was directly connected, but his having said that and losing a friend on a patrol, which I thought was ill-advised, was stupid, I figured he was overdoing it. But that’s what he said to us. And that stayed with me, well, now it’s as though it happened yesterday.

I was on the first boatload coming home [to the United States after the war]. But there at the Port of Embarkation was an interesting thing. You had German war prisoners, German war prisoners could eat in the establishments and we couldn’t. That was a horrible thing.

Another thing at Fort Huachuca, there was a time when there were about 30 officers in the guard house for various indiscretions. Most of it resulting from the racist treatment. In fact, it was rather interesting, they let them out daily for exercise. And they’d dress in their dress uniforms. And march in formation at the guard house at north post. They’d march in formation during their exercise. They did it to make a statement. It didn’t go very far but at least it gave them a sense of reacting to injustice. All of them were people who resisted or fought against the racism they were subjected to. [They were there for] individual acts where some local, some Unit Commander decided they infringed, and the rules were very strict with respect to the behavior of blacks.

I’m working at the IRS. And my Division Director is kind of a nice guy but he’s a racist. The IRS was one of the most racist, next to the agriculture. Agriculture is the worst. The IRS was next. And I’m one of the first blacks at IRS. And my concern at that time, I’ve always been an activist, was that with this March coming up [1963 March on Washington], that I was afraid there would be violence. The whole movement would be discredited because of the violence. Now at that time, CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, had James Farmer as the head of CORE. The local guy as head of the Washington CORE was a guy named Hopson, Julius Hopson. Julius Hopson and I served in Italy together. And so the arrangement with the leadership then was that we would form something like security: Marshals. The idea of it was if violence broke out, to contain the violence, to prevent it from erupting. That was our mission. Now Hopson was a charismatic type of leader, who could inspire people to get involved. And we were able to put together a structure, how we were going to do this. You see, it’s one thing if you’re going to have tens of thousands of people now. But how do you structure a marshal system where you can control it, understand what you’re doing.

So, the idea that I gave, which ended up to be the system we used, was an Army formation. That is a Regimental setup. Where you have a Regimental Commander at the top. That’s Hopson. Then you have three battalions. And then each battalion has five Companies. And you had your groups organized into Companies with a radio.

And the idea was if there was any problem the Company would seek to surround it. And report up the line by radio to get the police in and to keep the thing from blowing up. And then the Companies would report, because you weren’t sure of communication, to a battalion and the battalion would report to a Regiment and that was where I was. Now since I was in the sensitive IRS position I couldn’t take any publicity for it, so Hopson got all the credit. But I did it.

We wanted to be sure there was no violence because violence would have discredited the whole thing. And there was no violence. When you see the famous picture of Martin Luther King giving his speech, if the camera goes up I was on top of the monument.

Because at that point with my radio, I had radio communication with all levels. You know, from Company, battalions and up. Plus I could see everything. And I had a police major beside me, who had communication to the police force. The idea was, the police didn’t have enough people to fan out through the crowd.

So the idea was if there was a disturbance it come up the line to me, I would tell the police person, and then the police, you know, through their system they would have the police and, or whatever force was necessary. Fortunately, everything was cool.

Source: Joseph Hairston, oral history interview by Maggi M. Morehouse, Washington, DC, 1998, 2010.

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