(2 of 2)
Time Bomb. Black awareness and militancy began to catch up with the Seventh Army last winter. "Study groups" for black G.I.s appeared on some 25 Army posts; the members used such textbooks as Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and Claude Brown's Manchild in the Promised Land. One organizer was Specialist Fifth Class Lincoln Ashford, 21. Ashford, who admired the Black Panthers but was not a member, talked vaguely of "black men in green fighting white men in green." He often said: "We are a time bomb, man, and it's going to go off." Ashford finally drew the study groups together into a "defense committee" in which the black G.I.s could meet monthly to discuss gripes and coordinate activities. Ashford has since been discharged from the Army and has returned to Chicago, but the defense committee continues vigorously without his leadership. About 150 blacks came to last month's session.
Rhetoric turned to violence last March, sparked by two unrelated incidents at the huge Army base at Heilbronn. A white G.I. died after a fistfight with a black soldier, and the corpse of a long-missing black corporal was discovered under a sheet of ice in a sump trench at the motor pool. Stirred up by the corporal's death, a band of black G.I.s wrecked the local enlisted men's club two nights in a row. From Heilbronn, the racial strife spread to other bases. Says David Ingram, a civilian American lawyer, who represents black G.I.s in courts-martial: "A bunch of the brothers just declared war."
Midnight Flights. The militants' complaints range from grievances about unequal housing and lack of advancement to gripes about too little soul music in enlisted men's clubs and the scarcity of black chaplains. There is also a widely held belief that blacks are more apt to be ordered to Viet Nam than whites. The Army is fully committed to equal riahts; U.S. Commander in Europe General James H. Polk declares that "discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated." But equality at the command level often gives way to prejudice at the company level. In addition, bureaucratic channels like the inspector-general system sometimes handle black complaints too slowly or ineffectively.
Seventh Army officers seem puzzled about how to handle the militants. At Augsburg, one general tried a program of "midnight flights"—hustling supposed troublemakers back to the U.S. as soon as they could be identified. Stars and Stripes reporters have been ordered to play down racial incidents. Seventh Army headquarters at Heidelberg has set up an Equal Opportunities Discussion Group to study the dissension and suggest antidotes. But the few attempts at curbing racial troubles have been so unsuccessful that the Seventh Army's ranking officers will probably be grateful for any advice that the Washington experts will be able to give.