Black Sailors Aboard USS Leyte During Early Desegregation of the U.S. Navy Photo Album Documents the Death of the Navy’s First Black Aviator

Desegregation of the U. S. Navy

Photograph

African American sailors aboard the USS Leyte (CV-32) photo album, compiled circa 1950–1951, documents daily life, labor, and camaraderie among Black enlisted men serving during the opening phase of the Korean War and in the early implementation of military desegregation under Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981. Created while the carrier was deployed in Atlantic and Caribbean waters and later in support of Korean War operations, the album offers sustained visual evidence of African American naval presence during a transitional period when the U.S. Navy was moving unevenly from segregation toward formal integration. Of particular historical significance is the inclusion of the 15 December 1950 Christmas edition of 32’s News containing an obituary and photograph of Ensign Jesse L. Brown, who was killed in action on 4 December 1950 near the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea when his F4U-4 Corsair was struck by enemy fire, making the album an immediate shipboard witness to the death of the Navy’s first Black aviator. The archive supports research in African American military history, Korean War studies, naval integration, and the social worlds of Black servicemen abroad.

Photo Album with approximately 100 black-and-white silver gelatin photographs, ranging from 2.75 x 1.75 inches to 10 x 8 inches, most mounted recto and verso on 22 black paper album leaves with several images unmounted, accompanied by loose and mounted ephemeral materials including mimeographed wartime reports, clippings, and shipboard newspapers. Notable among these are the 14 October 1950 issue of Daily Press News and the 15 December 1950 issue of 32’s News (Vol. 1, No. 5). Identified sailors include Harvey Thomas, James Kincaid, Leo Bowser, “Lippy Connor,” “Stockson,” “Boby Mitchell,” and James G. Watson, the latter represented by photographs captioned “Watson” and accompanied by 1949–1951 W-2 forms documenting his service at Naval Air Station Quonset Point and aboard USS Leyte. A large-format photograph captioned “The GTMO Four” depicts four African American sailors in dress whites at Guantánamo Bay, while other images captioned “Mindoro” situate the crew in the Philippines during operational deployment.

The album interweaves formal portraits, group military images, and informal scenes of athletic recreation, swimming, nightlife, and cross-cultural encounters with Filipino civilians, as well as studio portraits labeled “School Days” and images of family members and sweethearts, grounding naval service within networks of kinship and memory. Interior views of barracks, communal meals, and experimental aircraft armament work—contextualized by a mimeographed article describing the so-called “mercy bomb” perfected aboard Leyte—further illuminate the technical and social dimensions of shipboard life. Produced at a moment when Black servicemen were asserting dignity and professional competence within historically exclusionary institutions, the archive offers unusually cohesive visual testimony to African American presence in a modernizing, desegregating Navy at the outset of a global Cold War conflict. Photographs exhibit minor fading, light corner wear, and typical album mounting abrasions; mimeographed documents show toning, creasing, and several edge tears. Overall very good condition. A substantial and visually integrated record of African American naval service during the Korean War’s opening year, anchored by contemporaneous memorialization of Jesse L. Brown and richly documenting everyday Black military life at sea and abroad.

Item #21543

Price: $2,850.00