From Virginia Foster Durr
Author: Durr, Virginia Foster
Date: March 6, 1962
Genre: Letter
Details
Montgomery activist Durr urges King to lead the fight against discrimination on military bases in the South.1 She declares that when a black soldier “is asked and commanded to die for his country, he is certainly entitled to be treated as a first class citizen while he is wearing its uniform.” On 31 March 1962, King responded that segregation in the military was a “matter in which all of us are intensely interested,” and assured her that he would discuss her letter with his colleagues.2
Dear Martin:
I hope to see you tomorrow when I come to Atlanta, but if I do not, I will hand this to Coretta for you.
As you can see from the enclosed, the CRC [Civil Rights Commission] is interested in the amount of discrimination that goes on at the Military Bases in the South.3 As we both know, there is a great deal still actually on the bases, such as schools, etc. but where the greatest injustice is done is when men are sent here, by no wish of their own, and because they are doing their duty by their country, they have to put with segregation and discrimination which many of them have never had to suffer before, or at least not to as great an extent.
From my conversations with various people from Washington, I am convinced that if the Negro people, or you as their spokesman, will press continuously on this point, that something will be done by Executive Order. The right of a man or woman in the uniform of Uncle Sam to travel and to eat and to sleep is so obvious that only the most bigoted people will dare to defend any such practice as segregation of the Military Personnel. Of course we want all segregation barriers to go down, but here is one opening that I feel sure will go if the pressure is put there.
As the letter says, Senator Keating of New York is also interested in this, and if no action is forthcoming from the Administration, then I think he should be appealed to.
I hope you will press hard on this point as it is something that is even embarrassing to the deepest dyed white supremacist. After all when a man is asked and commanded to die for his country, he is certainly entitled to be treated as a first class citizen while he is wearing its uniform, and this is so obvious that the most rampant racist will have to invent something to avoid its obvious injustice.
Sincerely yours,
[signed]
Virginia Durr
1. Virginia Foster Durr (1903–1999), grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and attended Wellesley College. In the 1930s and 1940s, she worked with Eleanor Roosevelt to end the poll tax in the South. Durr was a leader of the interracial Southern Conference for Human Welfare, and, in 1948, campaigned unsuccessfully for the Senate as a member of the Progressive Party. In 1955, she and her husband, attorney Clifford J. Durr, posted bail for Rosa Parks after she was arrested for refusing to move to the back of a Montgomery bus. Durr remained active in state and local politics until her early nineties.
2. On 20 March 1962, King received a letter from De Witt Paul Garth, a member of the United States Air Force, stationed at the Ellsworth base in South Dakota. Garth complained about the racial situation in the city, asking King how he is expected to “protect and defend the rights of our free United States,” when “I am not able to exercise the liberty granted to me by the law of this country?” King responded on 2 April 1962 that he had been in contact with the Kennedy administration regarding numerous claims from black servicemen around the world, and officials within the administration are “beginning to make some effort to insure equal treatment.” In June 1962, Kennedy created the President’s Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunity in the Armed Forces under the chairmanship of Washington lawyer Gerhard A. Gesell. When asked if the President was acting in response to particular complaints about racial discrimination in the armed forces, White House press secretary Pierre Salinger said: “No. This is a study the President felt should be undertaken at this time” (“Kennedy Attacks Prejudice in Service,” New York Times, 24 June 1962).
3. Durr enclosed a copy of a 1961 Defense Department memorandum reiterating that “the policy of equal treatment for all members of the Armed Forces without regard to race, creed or color,” is well established in the department (Roswell Gilpatric, Memo to the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of the Air Force, 19 June 1961). She also included a letter from Berl Bernhard, of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, suggesting that Durr should express her concerns to Senator Kenneth Keating of New York, who himself served in both world wars (Bernhard to Durr, 28 February 1962). Keating, a staunch supporter of civil rights, was a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In 1957, he helped draft the 1957 Civil Rights Act, and in 1961 he vocally urged President Kennedy not to dismantle the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
Source: MLKJP-GAMK, Martin Luther King, Jr. Papers (Series I–IV), Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., Atlanta, Ga.