U.S. At War: Sit-Down & Sentence

In the U.S. Army’s troubled history of race relations, an army court-martial wrote one more entry. The court found four Negro WACs guilty of refusing to obey a superior’s command.

The accused were members of a company of 99 Negro WACs stationed at Lovell General Hospital, Fort Devens, Mass. The four and 56 others, most of whom served as orderlies, had gone on a sit-down strike, complaining that they were given menial jobs and were treated badly because of their color. After Negro and white officers (including a major general) had talked to them, the 56 had gone back to their jobs. But not the disgruntled four: Privates Anna Morrison, Mary Green, Alice Young and Johnnie Murphy steadfastly refused to work.

The court (two white WACs, five white male officers, two male Negro officers) listened for two days to testimony, heard the ranking Negro WAC officer, Lieut. Tenola T. Stoney, when asked if she had noted any difference between the handling of black and white WACs at Lovell, answer: “I have not.” When all the testimony was in, the court retired, soon reached its verdict: for each of the four, a year of hard labor, dishonorable discharge.