* The Bronzeville Book Corner *

BronzevilleOnline.com greatly mourns the loss of our board member and friend,
Mr. Truman K. Gibson, Jr.

TRUMAN K. GIBSON JR. 1912-2005
Presidential adviser fought to integrate Army

By Steve Huntley, Chicago Sun-Times

Truman K. Gibson Jr., a Chicago attorney who had been the last surviving member of the World War II-era "black Cabinet" of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S Truman, died Friday at Mercy Hospital after an illness of five weeks. He was 93.

As an advocate for African- American soldiers in the War Department from 1940 through 1945, Mr. Gibson fought tirelessly to break down the segregation that ruled the U.S. Army, to persuade the military leadership to commit black servicemen to combat instead of relegating them to service and support duty, and to protect the rights and even the lives of African-American soldiers trained at camps mostly in the Jim Crow South where white violence was a constant threat.

"Truman Gibson was one of the great resources of the civil rights battles who was never acknowledged as he should have been," said Abner Mikva, the former Illinois congressman, federal appellate judge and White House counsel.

That story was the heart of Mr. Gibson's memoir, Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America, published this year by Northwestern University Press.

"I am just so thankful that he got to do that book, to say what he wanted to say," said his daughter, Karen Kelley of New York. "He lived nearly 94 years pretty much on his own terms, and it was such a wonderful life."

Born in Atlanta on Jan. 22, 1912, Mr. Gibson moved with his family to Chicago in 1929. His was a life that touched on many of the critical issues of race in America in the 20th century.

As a young graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, Mr. Gibson was a member of the legal team that challenged a restrictive racial covenant prohibiting African Americans from living in the Washington Park area of the South Side. He spent months poring over property deeds to build the factual basis for the U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned the covenant. The plaintiff was black real-estate developer Carl Hansberry, whose daughter Lorraine would use the experience as inspiration for her 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning play "A Raisin in the Sun."

In 1940, Mr. Gibson served as executive director of the American Negro Exposition, which was in effect a black world's fair to commemorate the 75th anniversary of emancipation, showcase black excellence in the arts and entertainment, and celebrate African-American contributions to U.S. history. The two-month-long expo in Chicago featured Duke Ellington, Paul Robeson, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie and other famous entertainers of the day.

With the outbreak of war in Europe and the increasing likelihood that the United States would be drawn in, the Roosevelt administration sought to answer the growing outcry from black Americans over the segregated military and the second-class support status of African Americans in the military. Already black leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune served in New Deal agencies, constituting a "black Cabinet," so the administration created the office of civilian aide to the secretary of war as an advocate for African Americans. Mr. Gibson served as an assistant to the first civilian aide, William Hastie, and in 1943 was promoted to the job after Hastie quit.

It was an often-thankless challenge, with the generals bristling at any suggestion of change from Gibson, and civil rights leaders complaining about lack of progress. The Army insisted that it couldn't get ahead of civilian society in race relations.

" 'The Army is not a sociological laboratory" . . . was the sorry rationale for segregation that I was to hear General George C. Marshall, the army's chief of staff, and other commanders repeat ad nauseam," Mr. Gibson wrote in his memoir.

Backed by a few white officials in the War Department and some increasingly vocal white northern politicians as well as natural allies such as Roy Wilkins and Walter White of the NAACP and a strident black press, Mr. Gibson played an influential role in finally convincing the Army that it had to commit African-American troops to battle. Most notably, the black 92nd Infantry Division was thrown against the heavily fortified German Gothic Line in northern Italy in early 1945 in a terrible bloodletting that remains a source of controversy.

In the 1940s, civil rights advances often were measured in small steps as opposed to the major strides of the 1950s and '60s. It's hard for 21st century sensibilities to comprehend the huge effort required by Mr. Gibson just to get the Army to tell unit commanders they were responsible for maintaining smooth race relations and to goad the War Department into asking, usually unsuccessfully, for federal prosecution of whites in the South, often law enforcement officers, who assaulted and murdered African Americans called to the service of their country.

Mr. Gibson was an adviser to filmmaker Frank Capra of "It's a Wonderful Life" fame in making the movie short "The Negro Soldier" to demonstrate to the civilian population the African-American contribution to the war. He got Joe Louis, the world heavyweight boxing champion, to form a group of boxing champs to put on matches at Army bases here and aboard.

Morris J. MacGregor Jr., a historian of the military's relationship with African Americans, wrote in his Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965, "Dedicated to the abolition of racial segregation, Gibson eschewed the grand gesture and emphasized those practical changes that could be effected one step at a time." As a result, MacGregor wrote, "the Army for the first time began to agree to practical if not policy changes."

After the war, President Truman appointed Mr. Gibson, whom he called "my namesake," to the Advisory Commission on Universal Military Training, which he used as a platform to campaign against segregation, in testimony before Congress. In one White House meeting, the president told Mr. Gibson that he intended to end the practice, and the Chicagoan provided input into the planning of the 1948 executive order to end military segregation.

Mikva praised Gibson's role in helping persuade President Truman to integrate the armed forces and called Truman's order "the most important thing the government had done since the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution."

Mr. Gibson had met boxing champ Louis and become his lawyer in the 1930s. During the war, Louis often reported to Mr. Gibson about racial conditions on Army posts, enlisting him in helping future baseball great Jackie Robinson avoid a court-martial for striking a racist officer. After the war, his association with Louis propelled Mr. Gibson into a career as one of the nation's premier boxing promoters.

With Chicagoans James Norris and Arthur Wirtz, he ran the International Boxing Club, which ruled the sport until declared a monopoly by the courts in 1959. Mr. Gibson pioneered network television broadcasting of the sport -- the New York Times called him "a profound advocate of television's marriage to boxing" -- but he had to spend much time fending off accusations of mob influence in boxing. The government prosecuted him over allegations about the management of a minor fighter, one of several legal problems in Mr. Gibson's later years.

After leaving boxing, Mr. Gibson returned to law practice in Chicago. Wanemond Smith, his law partner for the last decade, said, "He taught me so much, not just about the law but about life and how to deal with people."

Mr. Gibson practiced law until his health failed after he suffered a stroke and heart attack Nov. 17. Besides his daughter, survivors include two grandchildren, three great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild. Services were pending.

Steve Huntley, editorial page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, is co-author of Knocking Down Barriers.

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Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America
Trade Cloth
ISBN 0-8101-2292-8
$ 21.95

Sixty years ago, when Truman Gibson reported for duty at the War Department, Washington, D.C. was a southern city in its unbending segregation as well as in its steamy summers. Gibson had no illusions, but as someone who'd enjoyed the best of the vibrant black culture of prewar America, he was shocked to find the worst of the Jim Crow South in the nation's capital. What Gibson accomplished as an advocate for African American soldiers-first as a lawyer working for the Secretary of War, then as a member of President Truman's "Black Cabinet"--is a large part of the history of the struggle for civil rights in the American military; and it is a compelling part of the story that Gibson tells in this book, a memoir of a life spent making a difference in the world one step at a time.

http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/title.cfm?ISBN=0-8101-2292-8

Truman K. Gibson Jr. (Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America)

Truman K. Gibson Jr. has been a civilian aide to the Secretary of War, a member of two president advisory committees, and the president of the International Boxing Club. He is an attorney in Hyde Park, Illinois. Gibson is 92 years old.

To read what Attorney Truman K. Gibson, Jr. experienced as a young, upwardly mobile African American male involved in the Civic and Cultural life of Bronzeville back in the 1930s and 40s, please visit this execerpt from Black Metropolis.

In the 1960s Frank Joseph covered the Chicago ghetto riots, events that were personal for him. Watching his grandfather struggle as a Jewish businessman in a segregated black neighborhood, Joseph grew up deeply aware of the divisiveness of race. When he left Chicago in the 1970s to become an editor at The Washington Post, Joseph could not leave his childhood behind. “There wasn’t a day for thirty-five years that I didn’t think about writing this book,” he said.

With TO LOVE MERCY, Joseph finally returns to Chicago. Told in the unflinching style of Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, TO LOVE MERCY evokes nostalgia for a difficult time.

Read the press release for To Love Mercy (Microsoft Word)

About the author: Frank Joseph cut his teeth as a writer at the famous training-ground City News Bureau of Chicago. He worked at The Associated Press, covering the Democratic National Convention street disorders, the Detroit riot, Dr. Martin Luther King’s march into Cicero IL, and just about every ghetto uprising and incident of urban violence that defined the turbulent mid-‘60s in Chicago. Joseph was an editor with The Washington Post during the Watergate years. In 1982, he founded Key Communications Group Inc., a specialized-information publishing company. He and his wife, Carol Jason, a sculptor and artist, met in Chicago and now live in Chevy Chase MD; they are the parents of Shawn and Sam.

Black Chicago’s First Century, Volume One, 1833-1900
University of Missouri Press
$49.95

A groundbreaking book that for the first time ever presents the early history of African Americans in Chicago has been published by Roosevelt University History Professor Christopher R. Reed.
The book, entitled Black Chicago’s First Century, Volume One, 1833-1900, provides the first comprehensive study of African American settlement and achievements in Chicago, recounting the lives and careers of many of Chicago’s first black residents.
A long-time Chicago resident, historian and 20-year professor at Roosevelt, Reed has spent the last five years tracing the lives of Chicago’s earliest black settlers. During the process that took him from the U.S. National Archives and Records Agency in Washington D.C. to manuscript collections in Chicago, Reed made a major discovery: African Americans who lived in Chicago during its first century flourished in businesses and neighborhoods all over the city.

“One of the things I’ve found is that Chicago - more than most places - offered a lot of opportunities for blacks. They owned banks and insurance companies in Bronzeville. And the most interesting thing is that they weren’t confined to a ghetto. They lived all over Chicago before the Great Migration of 1915-1918,” said Reed, who shines a light on very average but successful black Chicagoans, including its first barber, its first doctor, its first dentist, its first teacher, the first African American couple to buy a home in the city, etc.

About the Author:

Reed has spent much of his life in Chicago and has been quite active in the city’s African American community. He is currently at work on the second volume of Chicago’s African-American history, dating from 1901-1933. “I hope that my work will motivate and stimulate individuals of our time to try and do more with their lives and their communities,” said Reed.

Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration
Trade Paper
ISBN 0-8101-2315-0
$ 22.95

In their first great migration to Chicago that began during World War I, African Americans came from the South seeking a better life--and fleeing a Jim Crow system of racial prejudice, discrimination, and segregation. What they found was much less than what they'd hoped for, but it was much better than what they'd come from--and in the process they set in motion vast changes not only in Chicago but also in the whole fabric of American society. This book, the first of three volumes, revisits this momentous chapter in American history with those who lived it.

Oral history of the first order, Bridges of Memory lets us hear the voices of those who left social, political, and economic oppression for political freedom and opportunity such as they'd never known--and for new forms of prejudice and segregation. These children and grandchildren of ex-slaves found work in the stockyards and steel mills of Chicago, settled and started small businesses in the "Black Belt" on the South Side, and brought forth the jazz, blues, and gospel music that the city is now known for. Historian Timuel D. Black, Jr., himself the son of first-generation migrants to Chicago, interviews a wide cross-section of African Americans whose remarks and reflections touch on issues ranging from fascism to Jim Crow segregation to the origin of the blues. Their recollections comprise a vivid record of a neighborhood, a city, a society, and a people undergoing dramatic and unprecedented changes.
http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/title.cfm?ISBN=0-8101-2315-0

Timuel D. Black Jr. (Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration)

Timuel D. Black, Jr. is a prominent civil rights activist, noted jazz historian, and professor emeritus of social sciences at the City Colleges of Chicago. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, he moved to Chicago as a baby, and has lived here since. He holds a B.A. in Sociology from Roosevelt University and a master's degree in Social Sciences from the University of Chicago. Mr. Black has served as an educator for the Chicago Public school system and higher education including Roosevelt University.

His numerous awards include the Man from Chicago Award (1994), the Black Faculty in Higher Education Award (1977), the Civil Liberties Award (1971), and the Chicago Urban League’s “Beautiful People Award” (1986). Mr. Black has been a candidate for public office, including running for State Senator of the 22nd District. Dedicating his life to social justice and preservation of history, Mr. Black continues to be an unprecedented community leader and respected historian.