3. Strain, Christopher Barry. “Civil Rights and ... - Freedom Archives

Montgomery was buried without incident. The readiness of these men to defend
their fellow veteran's honor symbolized a new phase of militancy in the black struggle for
equality . Williams would describe this event as "one of the first incidents that really
started us to understanding that we had to resist, and that resistance could be effective if
we resisted in groups, and if we resisted with guns ."2 ~ Many vets, battle-hardened and
worldly-wise, returned home after World War Q to initiate and lead what would become
the modern civil rights movement . They had experienced an egalitarianism in combat
overseas unknown in the racially bisected South . They had managed their duties as
servicemen with Flan, and they yearned for similar satisfaction from their lives at home
after the war. Whether sitting alongside whites in Parisian cafEs or enjoying the company
of white women in London, they had tasted freedoms in Europe forbidden in their
homeland . Ten years later, under Williams' leadership, some of these same veterans
would organize in Monroe to stand down the Klan . "Fresh out of the arnKd forces," they
Z~Williams, interviewed by James Mosby, July 22, 1970, transcript, Ralph J . Bunche
Oral History Collection (Civil Rights Documentation Project), Moorland-Spingarn
Research Center, Howard University .
'Numerous authors have treated this trend, and have disagreed as to whether World
War Q was an intemrption of legal battles and direct action in the 1930s or a catalyst of
black protest in the post-war years . For more on this debate, see Harvard Sitkoff,
"African-American Militancy in the World War Q South : Another Perspective," in Neil
McMillen, ed., Re-Making Dixie : The Imt~ct of World WarQ on the American South
(Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, 1997), 661-681 . The national and international
climate following World WarQ made the 1940s ripe for civil rights reform . After a war
to defend democracy against Nazism and fascism, and in the beginning stages of a "Cold
War" against Communist totalitarianism,segregation seemed an increasingly
unacceptable part of the American landscape . The return of black soldiers who had
participated in these struggles highlighted the irony of second-class citizenship at home.
Most importantly, Afro-American veterans returned to the United States with a new sense
of militancy .
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