BLACK BUZZ NEWS SERVICE
Pittsburgh PA.
September 17, 2010
The article titled ETO Vet Sues Railroad: Pretty ARC Worker Forced From Train was taken from The Pittsburgh Courier dated Saturday, January 5, 1946, and is part of the James S. Robinson Jr. Project.
New York- Charging that she had been forcibly removed from a Louisiana to-New York train by two husky white military policemen upon the instigation of a belligerent conductor in Newport, Arkansas, Odette Harper, attractive Red Cross worker, home on furlough after more than a year overseas in France, Germany, and Italy, last week instructed her attorney, Harry G. Bragg, 409 Edgecombe Avenue to sue the Missouri Pacific Railroad in Federal Court for damages.
Miss Harper, a former director of publicity for the NAACP, said she was occupying a seat with four Negro returnees in the Jim-crow day coach, while white coaches were practically empty.
FOUND DOOR LOCKED
Said Miss Harper:
" I was riding in the Jim Crow coach because I had been unable to get Pullman reservations at Alexander, Louisiana. An Army nurse-a Lieutenant Martin-who had seen overseas service, heard that I was on the train and sent her Pullman porter up to invite me to visit her to exchange experiences. I accepted the invitation rather reluctantly because the walk necessitated passage through two white day day coaches. I remained with the nurse only a few minutes. When I attempted to return to my car I found the door of the adjoining day coach locked.
"The train conductor then came up and told me that he had locked the door to "keep you goddamn niggers in your coach." He also called me a yellow bitch' and ordered me to bring my ticket book to him. As he had already punched my ticket, I ignored his language and returned to my seat.
GIs OBJECT TO LANGUAGE
" Two hours later I was roughly awakened by the conductor, who seized my shoulder and profanely demanded the ticket. The Negro soldiers objected to his language and action, and he left the coach muttering, 'You'll be a long time getting to New York.'
" When the train stopped in Newport the conductor came back with two MPs. I was taken off the train and rushed to the City Hall where local officials aroused from bed, charged me with intoxication, disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace and using profane language.
I was cursed and reviled by these officials and manhandled on an alleged excuse for searching my person for weapons. I was kept in a small filthy cell until 4:30 A.M., and then released on bail after they took $25 and a $100 War Bond from my purse. The next morning when I appeared at court for a hearing the charges were dropped, the case dismissed, and my money and bond returned."
Black Buzz News Service reports that there is no further information about this egregious racist insult to Ms. Odette Harper, but our investigation will continue.
Black Americans have been subjected to millions of documented and undocumented examples of brutally racist oppressive acts similar to Ms. Harper's in the USA from the Jim Crow era to the present.
Note slavery is a separate period and has to be treated entirely different than any other era in American history.
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