In some cases when word got back to the commanding officer about restaurants refusing to serve blacks in uniform, all base personnel would be told not to frequent the establishment again. But that type of response largely depended on the beliefs of the commander in charge and whether he was a segregationist or not. At Camp Rupert in Idaho, one particular commanding officer would let the German POWs walk or loll on the grass, but if a black nurse did, he’d get on his P.A. system and order her off. He also called one African American nurse to his office who reportedly overheard him tell his secretary, “That’s one of those smart niggers. When I see these black she-apes in officers’ uniforms it makes me so mad I could puke.”3

Gwyneth handled Jim Crow better than Elinor. She was originally from New Orleans and lived there for a portion of her childhood before moving to the Northeast, so she knew exactly how the rules of Jim Crow worked. “Whites Only” signs didn’t send Gwyneth into a rage, and when locals in Phoenix or around Camp Florence were nasty to her, she looked the other way because she’d learned how to brush those slights off as a child.

German POWs were treated better in every aspect of their lives than a great many black Americans, and especially in terms of the freedom and respect they enjoyed when they worked outside of camp and went inside white establishments, including striking up conversations with local residents or attendants at gas stations and train depots. It was also not uncommon for prisoners who were contracted out to work at outside farms to develop friendships with farmers and their children.4 The differential treatment given to German prisoners and black Americans did not go unnoticed by the POWs, despite the U.S. government’s attempt to avoid addressing the glaring hypocrisy. The military wouldn’t dare have reading material in the POW camp library that portrayed America in a negative light, including anything about race relations between blacks and whites under Jim Crow, so German POWs did not see the regular commentary about discrimination toward black soldiers and nurses in the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, Ebony, or newsletters from the NAACP, but they witnessed it. And when POWs did confront white American officers about the conditions for blacks, they were told that discrimination was a result of slavery but tremendous progress was being made.5

The prisoners learned the limitations of such racial “progress” as they worked alongside black civilians in the cotton fields and in service industries. A surprising camaraderie developed as African Americans began to share their experiences of second-class citizenship at the hands of their own government.6