Page 10 The Skanner BLACK HISTORY EDITION February 21, 2018
Black History
Thomas A Gugliel-
mo, George Washington
University
(The Conversation is
an independent and
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analysis and commen-
tary from academic
experts.)
(THE CONVERSATION)
In December 1941, a few
days after the bombing of
Pearl Harbor and the U.S.
entry into World War II,
a Detroit mother named
Sylvia Tucker visited her
local Red Cross donor
center to give blood.
Having
heard
the
“soul-stirring” appeals
for blood donors on her
radio, she was deter-
mined to do her part. But
when she arrived at the
center, the supervisor
turned her away. “Or-
ders from the National
Offices,” he explained,
“barred Negro blood do-
nors at this time.”
“Shocked”
and
“grieved,” Tucker left in
tears, later penning a let-
ter of protest about the
whole ordeal to first lady
Eleanor Roosevelt.
Today, this discrimi-
natory blood program
and African Americans’
determined opposition
to it are long forgotten,
despite the fact that a few
scholars, including Spen-
cie Love, Susan E. Leder-
er, Sarah E. Chinn, and
myself, have explored the
topic.
This history is worth re-
membering. It provides
an antidote to facile, feel-
good stories about the
“Good War,” stories that
scholars such as Michael
C.C. Adams and Kenneth
D. Rose have long refuted
but that live on in muse-
um exhibits, blockbuster
films, best-selling books
and war memorials.
The story of how blood
got desegregated also re-
minds Americans that,
as novelist Ralph Ellison
wrote nearly a half-cen-
tury ago, “The black
American … puts pres-
sure upon the nation to
live up to its ideals.”
Historian Robin D.G.
Kelley puts it more
broadly: “The marginal
and excluded have done
the most to make democ-
racy work in America.”
In an age of resurgent
racism, Ellison’s and Kel-
ley’s words are especial-
ly important and timely.
‘A
tremendous
thing’The Red Cross
Blood Donor Program
began in early 1941 – and
went on to collect blood
from millions of Amer-
icans that the military
shipped to soldiers fight-
ing overseas.
“If I could reach all
America,” asserted Gen-
eral Dwight D. Eisen-
hower at the end of the
war, “there is one thing I
would like to do – thank
them for blood plas-
ma and whole blood. It
has been a tremendous
thing.”
Tremendous indeed:
The blood program saved
many lives. But it also
initially excluded Afri-
can American donors
like Sylvia Tucker. When
it did accept them, in Jan-
uary 1942, it did so on a
segregated basis.
Never mind that sci-
entists saw no relation-
ship between race and
blood and that one of the
world’s leading authori-
ties on blood banking at
the time, and the director
of the Red Cross’s pilot
blood program, was an
African American sci-
entist named Dr. Charles
Drew. Never mind that
Nazi Germany had its
own Aryan-only blood
policy or that America’s
principal rhetorical war
aims concerned democ-
racy and freedom.
To what extent military
commanders segregat-
ed blood in the field was,
during the war and after-
wards, a matter of some
debate. Officially, at least,
the distinction between
bloods remained in place
for years. It was not un-
til 1950 that the Red Cross
stopped requiring the
segregation of so-called
Negro blood. And it was
not until the late 1960s
and early 1970s that
Southern states such as
Arkansas and Louisiana
overturned similar re-
quirements.
A forgotten civil rights
struggle
In one internal mem-
orandum, the Red Cross
called its donor pro-
gram democratic, since
“the point of view of the
majority … ” – which
its leaders assumed de-
manded blood segrega-
tion – “must be taken
into account in a democ-
racy.”
But many Blacks and
their allies had a very dif-
ferent idea about democ-
racy, one that required
PHOTO: NARA
Desegregating Blood: A Civil Rights Struggle to Remember
Sicily, 1943: Whose blood was this U.S. soldier getting?
all citizens be treated
equally and without re-
gard to race. They fought
tirelessly throughout the
war years to make that
idea a reality, not simply
in the military, in the
workplace and in Holly-
wood films but also in the
blood program.
These many battles
constituted a nascent,
surging, and, today,
too-often-overlooked
civil rights struggle that
helped pave the way for
the more famous move-
ment of the postwar
years.
Nearly all the major civ-
il rights organizations
of the day, including the
National
Association
for the Advancement
of Colored People, the
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Movement and even the
upstart Committee (lat-
er, Congress) of Racial
Equality, made changing
blood policy a top prior-
ity. One statement from
a group of the nation’s
most prominent Black
leaders put it this way:
“In justice to what we
know to be the practi-
cally unanimous senti-
ment among Negroes in
America, we affirm the
need for alteration of the
segregated blood plasma
policy.”
Black newspapers also
protested blood segrega-
tion and exclusion, reg-
ularly featuring front-
page stories, boldface
headlines and blistering
editorials on the subject.
In January 1942, for
example, the African
American weekly the
Cleveland Call and Post
published an “editorial
in rhyme”:
The cross of Red, that
burned so bright
In fire, storm and flood
Is now the crooked Nazi
sign
That spurns a Negro
blood!
Wide-ranging activists
Activism on this issue
extended well beyond
these traditional places.
Labor unions, Chris-
tian and Jewish groups,
local interracial commit-
tees, scientific organi-
zations and the New Jer-
sey State Legislature all
spoke out against blood
segregation.
The Communist Party
of Cuyahoga County in
Ohio held a rally of 3,500
people,
condemning
blood policy as “Barbar-
ian Hitlerism.”
An interracial group of
precocious junior high
schoolers at Harlem’s
Public School 43 tested
(with the help of their sci-
ence teachers) the blood
of a Black student and of
a White student. Find-
ing no difference, they
wrote an article in the
school paper, made and
distributed hundreds of
posters, and held a public
meeting – all in opposi-
tion to the Red Cross pol-
icy.
The most widespread
form of protest, however,
came from thousands of
ordinary African Amer-
icans who refused to do-
nate blood and money to
the Red Cross.
While roughly 10 per-
cent of the U.S. popula-
tion at the time, blacks
made up less than 1 per-
cent of all blood donors.
African
Americans
contributed generously
to the Treasury Depart-
ment’s Defense Bonds:
It is not a lack of patrio-
tism that explains their
halfhearted response to
blood drives. The reason
was a determined oppo-
sition to race-based ex-
clusion and segregation.
Expressing these feel-
ings best was a high
school student from
Cleveland named Geral-
dyne Ghess. Her poem
appeared in the local
Black newspaper:
Had I wealth, I’d burn
it all;
Not one cent for the Red
Cross call.
Our money is good …
our blood is bad.
But, still that shouldn’t
make us mad.
Are they afraid they’ll
all turn black?
Is that why our blood
they lack?
Their skins are white as
snow … it’s well.
Their souls are tar-
nished, black as hell.
In the end, this
wide-ranging activism
may have failed to de-
mocratize the blood
program fully – at least
during the war.