'One Negro Marine Was With Us'
Mr.
Edwin
Akers,
Taylorville,
Illinois
In 1954, a group of high school track team members (one carload) was traveling to Bloomington, Indiana, for a second round of competition leading to a final state meet. We stopped to eat along the way in Bedford, Indiana. Because of the one Negro among us being refused service, our coach had us leave and eat in another town.
As a young Marine in the mid-1950s, I was in a car with a group of other Marines returning to North Carolina from a long weekend of liberty. One Negro Marine was with us. We stopped at a restaurant along a highway to eat. The restaurant was in Kentucky. Our fellow Marine refused to go in with us, fearing it would cause trouble. He said, " Bring me out a hamburger."
Once, while going home on leave from Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station in North Carolina, I was seated on a bus close to the rear when a Negro man entered. This was at a bus station in New Bern, North Carolina. The bus driver said in a loud voice, "I wish Eisenhower could smell one of them."
Another time, a group of us were returning from a long weekend of liberty and a Negro Marine from Kentucky was to return with us. He failed to meet us at the appointed time in Louisville, Kentucky. So after waiting for him for 30 minutes or more, we had to travel on. This Negro Marine then had to return by hitchhiking. Later we learned he had been jailed in Clinton, Tennessee, for his own protection. The Marine Corps gave him no penalty for returning late to base.
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