[The History Channels reruns so much old war footage that it's sometimes referred to as The Hitler Channel. But I once by accident saw a documentary they produced on the Port Chicago incident of 1944, which was completely news to me, and it was very well done. That also involved injustices done to blacks by the US army. So this might be worth checking out. It plays on May 20th.]
http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=10821
The Mystery of the 364th Geoffrey F.X. O'Connell, Gambit Weekly (New Orleans) May 1, 2001 Viewed on May 11, 2001
Were a thousand African-American soldiers gunned down by the Army in a racially motivated shootout in 1943?
Were members of the controversial 364th (Negro) Infantry Regiment killed at Mississippi's Camp Van Dorn to silence their relentless -- and sometimes violent -- demands for equality in a segregated Army?
Were the bodies buried in a mass grave somewhere on the sprawling base or "stacked like cordwood" and shipped north on boxcars?
That's a story that's been whispered since World War II. A Pentagon spokesman sums up its 1999 probe of the allegation: "Nothing egregious happened." But that isn't the end of it. Historians and journalists -- including this writer -- in pursuit of this puzzling piece of American history are uncovering a nationwide trail of racial violence during World War II. There were hundreds of bloody domestic firefights from Camp Benning, Ga., to Beaumont, Texas; from Ft. Dix, N.J., to Camp Shenango, Pa.
Much of what we are learning about this racial violence is coming from recently released documents that were part of a massive, and largely unknown, wartime domestic intelligence operation. And much of what we don't know about the period is the result of government press censorship.
The ongoing controversy will be examined in an upcoming History Channel documentary, "The Mystery of the 364th," scheduled to premiere on May 20. The hour-long program explores allegations that, upon first read, seem ridiculous -- especially the charge that 1,200 soldiers were killed in a single massacre at Camp Van Dorn, and that a subsequent cover-up has gone on for almost 60 years. But even one Army commentator believes aspects of history can be hidden for generations. "Although almost too preposterous to consider at first," he wrote of the Camp Van Dorn massacre, "so too was the government's involvement in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study."
[Rest of article at http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=10821]