African American Military History and Civil Rights: Defend Democratic Rights! Protest Against the Burning of Black WWII Veteran John T. Walker’s Redwood City Home, 1946

African American Activism

Broadside

Communist Party, San Mateo County. Defend Democratic Rights!, 1946, issued after the burning of Black World War II veteran John T. Walker’s nearly completed home in Redwood City, California, on December 6, 1946. The handbill records a local act of racial violence against a returning serviceman and the political response it generated during a year marked by attacks on Black veterans across the United States. Walker’s military service is central to the appeal: the leaflet identifies him as a “Pacific veteran” and presents the destruction of his home as an attack on both racial equality and the democratic rights for which Black servicemen had recently fought overseas.

Defend Democratic Rights! Communist Party, San Mateo County. Redwood City, CA: Communist Party, San Mateo County, [1946]. 8.5 x 11 in. Mimeographed leaflet. The text reports that “around 4 o’clock before the morning of December 6th, before it was light,” what it calls “cowardly carriers of degrading race hatred” burned Walker’s “almost complete home” to its foundation. The Communist Party urges Redwood City residents “no matter race or religion” to recognize the attack as evidence of growing “pro-fascist forces” and calls upon them to press law-enforcement agencies for a thorough investigation. The leaflet thus preserves both contemporary reporting of the arson and the language used by a local Communist Party organization to mobilize opposition to racial violence in postwar California.

Walker’s case occurred amid nationally publicized violence against returning Black servicemen. Earlier in 1946, recently discharged Sergeant Isaac Woodard was blinded after being beaten by police in South Carolina, one of several attacks that intensified pressure for federal action on civil rights. The Redwood City handbill records how those conflicts also appeared at the local level in California, where a county Communist Party organization connected the destruction of one veteran’s home to racial intimidation and demanded an official investigation. Evenly toned with a horizontal fold crease; very good condition. A surviving local appeal naming the victim, date, place, and circumstances of a racial arson attack while recording an organized political response to violence against Black veterans immediately after World War II.

Item #16276

Price: $350.00