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August 2011
ON JULY 6, 1944, Jackie Robinson, a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant, boarded an Army bus at Fort Hood, Texas. Sixteen months later he would be tapped as the man to break baseball’s color barrier, but in 1944 he was one of thousands of blacks thrust into the Jim Crow South during World War II. He was with the light-skinned wife of a fellow black officer, and the two walked half the length of the bus, then sat down, talking amiably. The driver, gazing into his rear-view mirror, saw a black officer seated in the middle of the bus next to a woman who appeared to be white. “Hey, you, sittin’ beside that woman,” he yelled. “Get to the back of the bus.”
Lieutenant Robinson ignored the order. The driver stopped the bus, marched back to where the two passengers were sitting, and demanded that the lieutenant “get to the back of the bus where the colored people belong.” Robinson refused, and so began a series of events that led to his arrest and court-martial and, finally, threatened his entire career.
Fort Ticonderoga – America’s Fort presented noted author John F. Ross with the first annual Fort Ticonderoga Prize for Contributions to American History at the 17th Annual Ticonderoga Ball organized by the Black Watch Council, at the Union League Club in New York on March 4, 2011. “In a world of accelerating change,” Beth Hill, Fort Ticonderoga’s Executive Director explained to 155 guests, “we need increasingly to understand and appreciate the principles and experiences that led to the founding of our nation. We established this new award to recognize national leadership in the history profession.”
WASHINGTON, DC—Congress votes to allow President Lincoln to enlist seamen in the Navy for the duration of the war.
DUG SPRINGS, MISSOURI—Spies for Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon report that a 25,000-man Confederate army is approaching his 4,000-man Army of the West. Lyon is ordering his troops back to Springfield to resupply.
WASHINGTON, DC—Maj. Gen. George McClellan has submitted a memorandum to President Lincoln recommending the creation of one main army of 273,000 men capable of defeating the Confederates in one campaign.
ON THE JAMES RIVER, VIRGINIA— John LaMountain has made the first balloon ascent from the deck of the supply tug USS Fanny.
WASHINGTON, DC—Union Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles calls for the submission of designs to build ironclad warships for the Navy Department.
Union Gen. Nathaniel Lyon’s outnumbered Army of the West is defeated by the 12,000-man Missouri State Guard 19 miles southwest of Springfield, Missouri, at the Battle of Dug Springs, the first clash of the war between the western Union and Confederate armies.
Abraham Lincoln and Congress authorize the first U.S. income tax to pay for the war.