NEWS

Iraq war veteran tells stories of WWII vets who joined the fight for civil rights

Matt Soergel
University of North Florida graduate student Bryan Higham wrote his thesis on African-American World War II veterans who came home to Jacksonville and helped make changes during the Civil Rights era.

Bryan Higham knows first-hand how serving in the military can change a person: He joined the Army as a teenager, and did two tours in the infantry in Iraq, earning the rank of sergeant between deployments.

"After 9/11 it really called to me. It was a way for me to go and do something on my own," he said. "It was a pretty transformative and powerful experience."

So, years later, casting about for a topic for his honors thesis in history, he came across the stories of other men who'd served their country, and been changed by their experiences - only to come home and find that the system they'd fought for was still horribly unfair, for them and their families.

That led to his thesis: "Jacksonville's Greatest Generation: The Contribution of African American Veterans to the Civil Rights Movement 1945-1960."

Black Southerners who served in the segregated Armed Forces during World War II came home to a segregated society where little had changed while they were gone.

The vets, though, weren't the same.

They'd seen other parts of the world, where, Higham said, they were thought of as "Americans," not black Americans. They'd been given responsibility, learned skills. They'd served their country in a terrible fight.

They were ready to make change at home, particularly since many could now go to college on the GI Bill.

"You see that, especially in the context of what was going on, the things our country claimed to be fighting against - against oppression, fighting for democracy," Higham said. "Veterans were extremely well-equipped to pick up that fight and take it to a new level."

Higham, now 29, wrote his thesis for a history degree from the University of North Florida. He's working there as a graduate teaching assistant while getting his master's degree.

His work focused particularly on two Jacksonville veterans: Elcee Lucas, a printer and civil rights activist, and Ernest Jackson, an attorney.

After returning from the war, Lucas - who spent some time studying journalism at Oxford University - got active in politics in 1947 after a black candidate ran for City Council and lost. In Jacksonville, he spent decades recruiting blacks to run for office. And he met with candidates, black and white, who sought his endorsement.

"Politics is a hell of a game," he said in a 1989 interview. "but it's the only way you could ever get anything done.

During nine weeks in 1950, he helped lead a voter registration drive that increased the city's number of black registered voters from 9,000 to 24,000, according to his obituary in the Times-Union.

The next year he ran, unsuccessfully, for city council, then spent years working to get blacks into political office.

He had a print shop, the Telegraph Press, on Moncrief Road, where African-American leaders often met until late at night, plotting political strategy. In 1967, Lucas and others engineered the ground-breaking City Council victories of African-American candidates Mary Singleton and Sallye Mathis.

He said that while whites were often opposed to black candidates trying for office, he saw little outright racism in politics.

"One thing I'll say about Jacksonville," he said in 1978. "I have not seen anything like threats, or damage or harm to an office ... But they can beat you another way if you have no moxie."

Lucas died in 1997 at 80 years old.

Jackson, meanwhile, got a law degree at Howard University and soon took on civil rights cases showing unfairness against blacks in the judicial system. He also tackled cases in Jacksonville, including one granting blacks the right to use public golf courses on any day - not just those days designated for them.

Jackson died in 1979, at 57.

He was a candidate for several political offices, his obituary noted, but was never elected.

He did win the Democratic nomination for justice of the peace in 1956, but after that victory, a white candidate he had defeated filed a suit saying the district from which he ran had been improperly drawn. The courts agreed, and the party allowed the white candidate to run from another district, while shutting Jackson out.

Jackson sued. But after two years in the courts he allowed the case to drop.

Stories at the time described him as a disabled veteran of World War II in both the European and Pacific theaters.

After losing a race for the state legislature in the early 1960s, he vowed to continue working to give blacks a voice and a better chance at getting good jobs. Though from here on out, he said, they might have to turn to the courts for equal rights, since victories at the ballot box were so rare.

United Press International quoted him: "If we want to protect our youth, then we must open these doors for them."

Matt Soergel: (904) 359-4082