David M. Shribman
For nearly two years, the American Cemetery in Margraten, The Netherlands — solemn site of more than 8,300 graves of Americans who died freeing Europe from Nazi rule — displayed commemorative panels honoring the Black military personnel who fought for freedom abroad that they were denied at home.
Until, in early March, the panels were quietly removed, almost certainly as part of the Trump administration effort to cleanse American history of conflict and negativism and to play down the separate contributions of minorities.
The removal sparked a reaction that is anything but quiet. The development has been front-page news in the Netherlands, lawmakers are beseeching American officials to return the panels, and relatives of those buried in the cemetery in the southern part of the Netherlands are angry — and heartbroken.
The removal of the commemoration — like an article on baseball pioneer Jackie Robinson’s military service record that was initially removed from a Pentagon website — is consistent with the administration’s effort to erase what it called “illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility’ (DEIA) programs.” The article about Robinson, who desegregated Major League Baseball in 1947, was restored — exactly the treatment officials in the Netherlands are hoping to win with the Margraten panels, which speak of how the Black soldiers were “fighting on two fronts.”
That phrase is a direct reference to an effort, prominent in Black circles yet all but unknown among whites, called the “Double V,” or “Double Victory” campaign. It began with a 1942 letter to the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, the leading Black newspaper and one with a national audience, that spoke of the incongruity of Blacks fighting for freedom in Europe while being denied freedom at home.
The drive to strip references to the achievements of various groups, especially minorities, is congruent with the White House offensive to remove any scent of negativism or single-interest matters in portrayals of American history. “The exhibitions in Margraten are not intended to promote an agenda critical of America,” American Ambassador Joe Popolo, who visited the cemetery Monday, said on the X social media platform. He donated $827,900 to the Trump 2024 campaign.
But the record of Black involvement in World War II, including digging graves at Margraten, and the irony of Blacks’ commitment to foreign freedom while lacking it domestically, is not solely part of African American history, nor is it inherently negative. It is immutably part American history more broadly, especially since the Double V campaign is considered a precursor to the civil rights movement.
“This was an important movement by the Pittsburgh Courier on behalf of a community experiencing segregation throughout the United States and the military,” Rod Doss, the publisher and editor of the newspaper, said in an interview. “Our soldiers fought overseas for the freedom of others, but they lacked that same freedom in the United States.”
The Double V campaign came after James Thompson, a 26-year-old Courier reader from Wichita, Kansas, wrote the newspaper posing six questions, which we might regard as Black analogs to the four questions Jews ask at Passover, itself a moment of reflection about freedom:
“Should I sacrifice my life to live half American? Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow? Would it be demanding too much to demand full citizenship rights in exchange for the sacrificing of my life? Is the kind of America I know worth defending? Will America be a true and pure democracy after this war? Will Colored Americans suffer still the indignities that have been heaped upon them in the past?”
He went on to argue the following: “I want to know, and I believe every colored American, who is thinking, wants to know.”
Thompson, who eventually was awarded the Soldiers Medal, the highest honor for noncombat situations, for his service in the segregated Quartermasters Corps in the India-Burma theater, died 26 years ago.
It took six years after the Thompson letter, and an order from President Harry Truman, to desegregate the armed forces. It took a dozen years for the Supreme Court to issue its school desegregation decision. It took 22 years, marches and sit-ins around the South for Congress to pass the landmark Civil Rights Act.
But the involvement of Black Americans in World War II, despite having no answers to the six questions that Thompson posed in his letter, remains one of the most poignant parts of the liberation of Europe from Nazi tyranny.
“We’re talking about 1.2 million African Americans who made a vital contribution to the liberation of Europe,” said Sebastiaan Vonk, a historian with the Black Liberators in the Netherlands foundation.
Dutch citizens — thankful for the Allied campaign to liberate them — along with American relatives of those buried in the Netherlands cemetery have adopted the graves, learned the names of individual soldiers and aviators, decorated them each May, pledged to visit them several times a year, and, in some cases, have a portrait of the fallen American in their homes. Some 1,000 people are on a waiting list to become grave adopters.
The adoptions span generations and now include Dutch people who have no memories of the Nazi occupation of their country or of its liberation by a force that was principally Canadian and which Cornelius Ryan said required “the rawest form of courage” and rendered the Dutch “hysterical with joy.” In announcing the offensive, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “The hour of liberation the Netherlands have awaited so long is now very near.”
The Dutch today remain mindful of the sacrifice of Black service members who fought for liberty for others without possessing it themselves.
“The panels that no longer have a place in the visitor center of the American Cemetery in Margraten tell the story of a struggle by Black American soldiers on two fronts: against the enemy and against racism,” said Bas Albersen, spokesman for Emile Roemer, governor of the southernmost Dutch province. “They fought for a freedom they themselves did not have. Among other things, the panels give them recognition for the role they played in the liberation of Limburg — recognition that, due to the deeply rooted segregation in the American army at the time, they hardly received.”
One of the tragedies of our time is that Americans, about to celebrate 250 years of freedom, have to be told this by someone 3,750 miles from Washington.
A Swampscott High School Class of 1972 member, David M. Shribman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning former executive editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
