Double Victory by Cheryl Mullenbach Read Free Book Online

Around the tiny town of Shubuta the two boys were often seen digging through ruins of deserted houses or rummaging through dump piles. They were looking for iron, copper, aluminum, or old tires to turn in to government centers that made the scrap materials into valuable war supplies. Ernest and Charlie were too young to join the military, but at home in Shubuta they could do their part to win the war.
    That’s what the two were doing on a Tuesday afternoon in October 1942—collecting scrap for the war effort. They were concentrating on an area around a bridge on the edge of town. Ernest was under the bridge and Charlie was on top when a 13-year-old white girl who knew the boys came along on her way home from school.
    What happened next is unclear. One report stated that a white passerby driving over the bridge saw the three together. He went to town and told the girl’s father that Charlie was “annoying” the girl. Another report stated the girl escaped from the boys after they attacked her and that she ran home and told her parents about the attack. There were other accounts—all with varying details. It’s uncertain what actually happened on that October day. But by the following Monday there was no uncertainty about the fate of Ernest and Charlie.
    The local sheriff was swift in reacting to the situation. He quickly arrested the two boys. They were taken to the countyjail at Quitman, Mississippi. At about 1 AM on Sunday a mob pounded on the door of the jailhouse. According to the county sheriff, a blanket was thrown over his head, he was locked in a cell—and that was the last he saw of the two black boys.
    The next day the local citizens were having a gala celebration in honor of Columbus Day. Someone removed two black bodies—Ernest Green and Charlie Lang—hanging from the bridge at the edge of town. They were delivered to the black undertaker in Shubuta. Some reports said there were signs the victims had been tortured. There was a great deal of ambiguity in the reporting of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the two boys in their little town in Mississippi.
    How could people get away with such horrific acts in 1942 in the United States? That was a question many people asked. It seemed especially outrageous at a time when black men and women were fighting for their country in a war for democracy. Was this the America they were fighting and dying for? Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said that the lynching of black Americans hurt the nation’s war effort “as much as a bomb in an airplane factory or shipyard.”
    When black men were discriminated against by the United States military, when black women were denied employment in war plants that received government contracts, when black citizens could not eat at cafeterias in government buildings, black students could not attend public universities, black nurses could not treat white soldiers, and black Americans could not attend a July 4th celebration, these, too, were situations that hurt the war effort in the eyes of black Americans.
    But most black citizens refused to let the injustices keep them from contributing. Many found ways to continue to supporttheir country, while protesting the indignities. Many who led the protests were women. And they laid the groundwork for a bigger struggle that was to come in later years.
    The Right to Work and Fight
    Some people called A. Philip Randolph “the most dangerous Negro in America” in 1941. He was considered “dangerous” because he wanted to change America. He wanted to change the way black people were treated in employment and in the armed forces. Philip was a well-respected man who had organized black railroad porters into a union in 1925. It was the first labor union for black workers. He had proved things could change when he organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP).
    So when A.