Reasons for riot

Powell conjectures on the reason for the riot being that young whites were angered by blacks taking jobs they thought should go to them. Powell notes that, “The leading class of white people were all right. They did not sanction the outbreak.” He said that white merchants were disturbed by the riot, which he said involved some 100 people, because blacks were good customers.

“Negroes who have cars now shop in Huntsville,” Powell noted.

Powell even conjectures that the riot was a “good thing” because it showed the black population who their friends were and because it showed white merchants “the dangers to good relationships.”

Powell noted that the two greatest needs of blacks in 1946 Limestone County were education and health care. There were few black schools in the segregated South and “in all Athens there is no hospital or clinical facility for Negroes. The one Negro doctor does not even have an office and white physicians answer Negro calls at their leisure.”

While Powell makes some pointed observations in his account, at no place does he mention that an argument over a black man being awarded one of the nation’s highest military honors sparked the riot.

“But my cousin James Dobbins kept insisting that is what started the whole thing,” said Walker. “And it sort of makes sense. You know, the war had just ended and no black who fought in World War II had been awarded such an honor. In fact, it was a common belief that the black soldier wasn’t worthy.”

That erroneous belief was fueled from the top on down. In 1925, the memoirs of Maj. Gen. Robert L. Bullard, commander of the American 2nd Army, contained excerpts from his diary in which he had written: “Poor Negroes! They are hopelessly inferior…” In another entry he wrote, “The poor 92nd Negroes wasted time and dawdled where they did attack…”, and in still another entry Bullard wrote, “If you need combat soldiers, and especially if you need them in a hurry, don’t put your time upon Negroes.”

It wasn’t until nearly 20 years after his retirement from the Army that Walker happened to do an Internet search on the American Negro in the World War that he finally found records of Van Horton, who was awarded not the Silver Star, as his cousin believed, but the Distinguished Service Cross.

Citations

The citation for Col. Van Horton, a member of the all African American 366th Infantry Regiment, presented Dec. 2, 1918, near Pont-a-Mousson, France, explains the events of Sept. 4, 1918, near Lesseau, France:

“During a hostile attack, preceded by heavy minenwerfer barrage, involving the entire front of the battalion, the combat group to which this courageous soldier belonged was attacked by about 20 of the enemy, using liquid fire. The sergeant in charge of the group and four other men having been killed, Corporal Horton fearlessly rushed to receive the attack and the persistency with which he fought resulted in stopping the attack and driving back the enemy.”