The Philadelphia 15

Juneteenth is a holiday that should remind us all that freedom in this country is incomplete, if we need reminding of that, and I guess a lot of white people do. It was far from complete in the founding documents, and it was still incomplete during and after the Civil War. 

As I was reminded today, even June 19, 1865, wasn't the day the last enslaved person became free in the U.S.: that didn't happen until the 13th Amendment went into effect at the end of 1865, abolishing slavery in Maryland and any other state that had remained part of the Union. 

And, of course, after white resistance to Reconstruction and the rise of the Klan and Jim Crow, slavery by another name was the law of the land in the South, and segregation was enforced in the North and in the developing Midwest and West as well.

Which leads me to this news story I saw a few days ago, about the Philadelphia 15, a group of Black sailors who were given undesirable (now called dishonorable) discharges in 1940 for writing a letter to the Pittsburgh Courier, a Black newspaper. 

In the letter, they urged parents to not let their sons enlist in the Navy and described the way they had been misled into thinking they would have opportunities they were then denied. Instead of military work, they were allowed only to perform duties as chambermaids, shoeshines, and waiters for the white officers. They also were kept at entry-level pay for a year, while white sailors were advanced after three months.

The dishonorable discharges, one can imagine, made their lives difficult — especially during and after World War II, which followed immediately. Two of the men were even court-martialed and spent time in the brig.

Finally, through their own legal initiative, descendants of two of the men have been given a formal apology from the Navy, and their relatives' service records have been changed to honorable discharges. The Navy is trying to find descendants of the 13 other men, and those service records have also been changed. 

This 1940 publication of the Socialist Workers Party contains the full text of their letter to the Pittsburgh Courier, as well as some other critical pre-war political analysis.