III 

111TH CONGRESS 

2D SESSION H. CON. RES. 238 

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES 

MARCH 1, 2010 

Received and referred to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs 

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION 

Recognizing the difficult challenges Black veterans faced 

when returning home after serving in the Armed Forces, 

their heroic military sacrifices, and their patriotism in 

fighting for equal rights and for the dignity of a people 

and a Nation. 

Whereas there has been no war fought by or within the 

United States in which Blacks did not participate, including the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, the War of 

1812, the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, 

the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom; 


jlentini on DSKJ8SOYB1PROD with BILLS
2 

HCON 238 RFS 

Whereas Frederick Douglass voiced his opinion in one of his 

autobiographies, ‘‘Life and Times of Frederick Douglass’’, writing, ‘‘I * * * urged every man who could, to 

enlist; to get an eagle on his button, a musket on his 

shoulder, the star-spangled banner over his head,’’ later 

remarking that ‘‘there is no power on Earth which can 

deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the 

United States.’’; 

Whereas during the Civil War, Black soldiers, commonly referred to as the United States Colored Troops, were 

treated as second-class citizens, the health care and hospitals available to them were substandard, and they often 

died from neglect of services that was supposed to be administered by medical personnel; 

Whereas Dr. W.E.B. DuBois and William Monroe Trotter, 

members of the first generation of freedom’s children, 

founded the Niagara Movement in 1905; 

Whereas in his book, ‘‘Black Reconstruction in America’’, 

published in 1935, DuBois wrote that ‘‘[n]othing else 

made Negro citizenship conceivable, but the record of the 

Negro soldier as a fighter.’’; 

Whereas the 369th Infantry, known as the Harlem Hellfighters, fought the Germans during World War I as part 

of the French Army and served the longest stretch in 

combat—191 days without replacement—without losing a 

foot of ground or a man as prisoner; 

Whereas at the end of the service of the 369th Infantry, the 

entire regiment received the Croix de Guerre, which was 

France’s highest military honor, from a grateful French 

nation; 


jlentini on DSKJ8SOYB1PROD with BILLS
3 

HCON 238 RFS 

Whereas Alain Locke, the first black Rhodes Scholar, wrote 

in 1925 about a ‘‘New Negro’’ who had returned from 

battle with a bold new spirit that helped spark a new 

mood in the Black community; 

Whereas in 1917, Charles Hamilton Houston encountered 

racism after entering World War I as a commissioned 

first lieutenant in the segregated 17th Provisional Training Regiment, later writing that ‘‘I made up my mind 

that if I got through this war I would study law and use 

my time fighting for men who could not strike back.’’; 

Whereas Dorie Miller, a messman attendant in the Navy, was 

catapulted to national hero status and an icon to generations, after displaying heroism on board the USS West 

Virginia during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 

December 7, 1941; 

Whereas before becoming a famous baseball player, Jackie 

Robinson was court-martialed in the Army for refusing to 

sit in the back of the bus in 1944, and when he was later 

acquitted, he wrote that ‘‘[i]t was a small victory, for I 

had learned that I was in two wars, one against the foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.’’; 

Whereas the famed Tuskegee Airmen, a group of Black pilots, flew with distinction during World War II under the 

command of Captain Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., the highly 

decorated officer who served for more than 35 years and 

became the first Black general in the Air Force; 

Whereas during World War II, the 6888 (known as the ‘‘Six 

Triple Eights’’), the first all-woman Black Postal Battalion who served in England and then France, were 

given the daunting task of clearing out a two-year backlog of over 90,000 pieces of mail, succeeded in their misVerDate Nov 24 2008 22:35 Mar 01, 2010 Jkt 089200 PO 00000 Frm 00003 Fmt 6652 Sfmt 6300 E:\BILLS\HC238.RFS HC238

jlentini on DSKJ8SOYB1PROD with BILLS
4 

HCON 238 RFS 

sion, completed it in three months, and went on to make 

a positive impact on racial integration in the military; 

Whereas during World War II, the Army’s 92nd Infantry Division, better known as the ‘‘Buffalo Soldiers’’, which 

traces its direct lineage back to the 9th and 10th Cavalry 

units from 1866 to the early 1890s, was the only Black 

segregated unit to experience combat during the Italian 

campaign of 1944–45 with several members later earning 

Medals of Honor for bravery; 

Whereas Reverend Benjamin Hooks, who served in the 92nd 

Division, found himself in the humiliating position of 

guarding Italian prisoners of war who were allowed to eat 

in restaurants that were off-limits to him; 

Whereas even after President Truman issued Executive 

Order 9981 desegregating the military on July 26, 1948, 

discrimination continued; 

Whereas in 1946, when Charles and Medgar Evers tried to 

register to vote, they were turned away at the polling station; 

Whereas after serving overseas in the Army, Charles and 

Medgar Evers returned home to Mississippi where, in 

1952, they began to organize voter registration drives for 

the National Association for the Advancement of Colored 

People (NAACP); 

Whereas Oliver L. Brown, a World War II Army veteran 

from Kansas, and Harry Briggs, a World War II sailor 

from South Carolina, were the fathers of two of the five 

named plaintiffs in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and Briggs v. Elliott, the historic school desegregation cases of 1954; 


jlentini on DSKJ8SOYB1PROD with BILLS
5 

HCON 238 RFS 

Whereas the Black heroes and heroines of World War II and 

the Korean War, such as Private Sarah Keys and Women’s Army Corps (WAC) officer Dovey Roundtree, won 

significant victories against discrimination in interstate 

transportation in landmark civil rights cases, including 

Keys v. Carolina Coach Company, which was decided in 

1955, six days before Rosa Parks’ historic protest of Alabama’s Jim Crow laws in Montgomery; 

Whereas in his address at Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., commented on the irony of 

Blacks fighting in Vietnam to guarantee liberties in 

Southeast Asia while not enjoying the same rights at 

home; 

Whereas Black veterans who were in the forefront of the 

leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, with their 

strong resolve to address the paradox of military service 

abroad and the denial of basic rights at home, brought 

deeper meaning to the word ‘‘democracy’’, and through 

their example, transformed the face of the United States; 

Whereas the Black veterans of the Nation’s wars sowed the 

seeds for today’s bountiful harvest through the Niagara 

Movement, the NAACP, and the latter-day Civil Rights 

Movement, all of which share a common ancestry in the 

Civil War, without which there would be no Civil Rights 

Movement and no equal rights for all Americans; and 

Whereas today, Black veterans suffer at a disproportionate 

rate from chronic illnesses and homelessness and are 

plagued by health disparities: Now, therefore, be it 

1 Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate 

2 concurring), That Congress recognizes— 


jlentini on DSKJ8SOYB1PROD with BILLS
6 

HCON 238 RFS 

1 (1) the difficult challenges Black veterans faced 

2 when returning home after serving in the Armed 

3 Forces, their heroic military sacrifices, and their pa4 triotism in fighting for equal rights and for the dig5 nity of a people and a Nation; and 

6 (2) the need for the Department of Veterans 

7 Affairs to continue to work to eliminate any health 

8 and benefit disparities for our Nation’s minority vet9 erans. 

Passed the House of Representatives February 26, 

2010. 

Attest: LORRAINE C. MILLER, 

Clerk. 


jlentini on DSKJ8SOYB1PROD with BILLS