1. Miss Turner. 2. Mr. Matthew Bullock. 3. Mrs. Craigwell. 4. Misses Edwards and Rochon, and Mr. Owens. 5. Misses Phelps and Suarez. 6. Mr. H. O. Cook. 7. Miss Hagan. 8. Mr. E. T. Banks.
Sometimes, even, when there were no such signs, services to colored soldiers would be refused. One such soldier came to the Leave Area, and one day, while on a hike to Hannibal’s Pass, he confided to the writer that he was beginning to see the Y. M. C. A. from a different view-point, since he had been where there were colored secretaries. That at one time, up at the front, he had been marching for two days, was muddy to the waist, cold and starving, because he had had nothing to eat during the entire journey. He came across a Y. M. C. A. hut, went in, and asked them to sell him a package of cakes. They refused to sell it to him under the plea that they did not serve Negroes.
The writer remembers an appeal that came to her one Sunday morning while at St. Nazaire. A Sergeant in the Medical Corps desired her to use her influence to help to get him out of the guard house. On investigation she learned that he had been placed there for doing violence to a Y. M. C. A. secretary. This secretary served in a hut just two blocks from the one in which the writer served. It happened to be immediately across the street from the dispensary, where the sergeant was on duty. Instead of coming to the colored hut, he went across the street to the one nearer. The secretary, with much indignation, told him that he did not serve Negroes. The sergeant went back to the dispensary, feeling outraged. The next day this same Y. M. C. A. secretary went into the dispensary and asked for some medicine. The sergeant told him he must wait until those ahead of him were served; but the secretary persisted that he was in a hurry, and must be served at once; whereupon the sergeant, still smarting under the insult of the day before, unceremoniously ejected him from the building.
One secretary had a colored band come to his hut to entertain his men. Several colored soldiers followed the band into the hut. The secretary got up and announced that no colored men would be admitted. The leader of the band, a white man, by the way, immediately informed his men that they need not play; whereupon all departed and there was no entertainment. Some huts would permit colored men to come in and purchase supplies at the canteen, but would not let them sit down and write, while others received them without any discrimination whatever.
Quite a deal of unpleasantness was experienced on the boats coming home. One secretary in charge of a party sailing from Bordeaux, attempted to put all the colored men in the steerage. They rebelled and left the ship; whereupon arrangements were made to give them the same accommodations as the others.
Huts Showing Scarcity of Colored Secretaries and Some Discriminations Practiced
1. Hut 5, Camp Lusitania, St. Nazaire. The largest Y. M. C. A. hut in France, with full staff of three secretaries. From left to right—J. C. Croom, Kathryn M. Johnson, F. O. Nichols, traveling Lecturer on Civics, and Walter Price.
2. Last Y. M. C. A. hut built in France, showing sign in upper right corner, reading, “Colored Soldiers Only.”