Army & Navy – MORALE: The Attack on Duck Hill

It was the night after the Fourth of July. The little town of Duck Hill lay quiet in the hot dark of the North Mississippi hills. Suddenly rifle fire crashed out. Bullets hit the watertower and the post office, ripped into homes. As lights flashed on, the volleys grew ragged and firing ceased. There was only frightening quiet.

Last week the Memphis Commercial Appeal cracked the quiet, printed the story of the attack and of the sentencing of six Negro soldiers at nearby Camp McCain. The sentences (10 to 15 years at hard labor) did not halt local clamor for local justice. Neither did the news that seven more soldiers were being held for court-martial.

The trouble at Duck Hill had the historic elements of race friction: Southern Negroes quartered close in a Southern camp. On the Fourth, some Negro troopers in Starkville to the east were roughly treated. At Camp McCain, resentment smoldered. Next night hot heads grabbed their Garands, broke into a supply house, crammed their pockets with cartridges, set out for Starkville, some 70 miles away. At Duck Hill their weariness equaled their anger. They took up a position along the Illinois Central tracks, shot away their anger with their ammunition, retreated when the lights came on.

There were no casualties at the battle of Duck Hill. But the Army could not underestimate its significance, for there are many Duck Hills around the big Southern camps. At Duck Hill, short years back, two Negroes had been lynched by a particularly ugly method: blowtorches (TIME, April 26, 1937).