Charles F Wilson

I am choosing to write about the letter Charles F. Wilson wrote to President Roosevelt in 1944. I find his letter to be very intriguing and suitable for the times. Charles wrote this letter to open the eyes of President Roosevelt on the discrimination of Negro’s in the United States Armed Forces. President Roosevelt, at a press conference spoke about the United Nations, how they are fighting to make the world free, equal and have justice among persons regardless of race, color, and creed. Charles is writing this letter to the president to show the racism in the Armed Forces. Roosevelt set up the “Fair Employment Practices Committee”, giving all races equal opportunity to the highest types of work and to Charles, it seems the army intends to follow the exact opposite policy. The Army is giving the Negro’s the lowest types of work. They are working at the Resident Officer’s Mess, BOQ orderliness, and even as bartenders to name just a few. It is stated in the Second Air Force “every potential fighting man must be used as a fighting man.” This leaving out the Negro soldiers to do the other work. The Negro’s are also very segregated from the white soldiers on the base. The barracks of the Negro’s are covered in black tar paper, while the others are all painted white. I think this letter Charles wrote had a major impact on how President Roosevelt viewed the segregation in the army. By Charles writing this letter, coming from a Negro himself, it really explains what is going on behind the scenes. I don’t think that Charles was trying to say President Roosevelt was a hypocrite. Wilson’s letter seemed to be more about the perspective of a Negro man reaching out toward a political figure that he respected, asking for President Roosevelt’s aid in addressing and hopefully correcting some of the problems in the American Army. Roosevelt wrote the Executive Order 8802, establishing the fight for democracy in the industrial work place. Now, Charles is saying Roosevelt needs to add another Executive Order, which will lay the base for a fight for democracy in the United States Armed Forces. I think this is a good way for Charles to give his opinion on what President Roosevelt should do for the Negro soldiers, who are fighting for the United States, without coming off to the President wrong. He is simply stating Negro soldiers should be integrated into all section on base, as fighting soldiers, instead of housekeepers. I think this is only fair because the Negro’s are fighting for the United States. If the United States was treating me this way, and I was getting discriminated against daily, I would stop fighting for the country that is harming me. I don’t think this is fair at all for Negro soldiers. A major theme in Wilson’s letter is the way he wants to deal with discrimination, to stand up to it and reassert one’s dignity in the face of it rather than allow it to continue in the United States Armed Forces. He portrays this theme throughout his letter to President Roosevelt. In fact, this is the reason he wrote the letter, to stand up to the racial discrimination going on throughout the base of the army. I think Charles meant to explain and expose the true inequality’s faced by the African American soldiers, in attempt to ask a very valid question- How can we create a world democracy through war when it doesn’t even exist in America? This going back to the fact that Negro’s want to fight for the United States, but since they are discriminated against everywhere, why fight when their home country isn’t showing equality. Wilson’s letter reminds me of what recently has been happening in the army. The fight for homosexual service members to be open about their sexuality. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan stated that “homosexuality is incompatible with military service” and people who stated they were homosexual were discharged from the Army. This fight against discrimination towards homosexuality is almost identical to the fight Negro’s were going through. ‘Don’t Ask, don’t tell’ was introduced as a compromise for homosexuals in the army. Later, the Supreme Court ruled that federal government could withhold funding, in order to force the universities to accept all types of recruits. Finally, almost 30 years later, in 2010 the Senate voted to repeal the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ law that banned gay’s from serving in the military openly. This situation with discrimination against a certain type of people, whether it be Negro’s, or homosexuals are very much alike. In October 1947, Harry Truman proposed “to end immediately all discrimination and segregation based on race, color, creed, or national origin, in the organization and activities of all branches of the Armed Services.” He knew the Southern senators would be resistant, so instead Truman issued Executive Order 9981 in 1948. This was after the fact, Wilson had written the letter to Roosevelt. I think this letter was a major factor in changing the discrimination towards Negro’s in the United States Armed Forces. Perhaps if Charles Wilson never wrote this letter, President Roosevelt, nor President Truman would have noticed what was happening on the Army bases. I think this letter Wilson wrote was a major factor in the way the United States dealt with discrimination in the United States Armed Forces. It forced President Roosevelt to view the discrimination on the bases differently. He now had a sense of how the Negro’s were getting treated. It reminds me of the way homosexuals were getting treated just a couple years ago. This letter really changed America and the way we went about dealing with discrimination.