At the same time, Negro soldiers in the South were angry
over the harassment and segregation with which they were
confronted. In particular, they were irritated by the fact that
German prisoners of war were permitted to eat with white
American soldiers in the same dining car on a railroad train
traveling through the South, while Negro soldiers could not.
Racial riots occurred at Fort Bragg, Camp Robinson, Camp Davis,
Camp Lee, Fort Dix, and a notorious one at an American base in
Australia. The policy of the War Department was to gloss over
these events. Casualties which resulted from riots at bases in
the United States were officially listed as accidental deaths.
Those which resulted from riots overseas were officially reported
as being killed in action. On several occasions, Negro soldiers
refused to do work which they believed had been assigned to them
purely because of their race. For this they were charged with
mutiny.
There was also one serious civilian race riot during the war; it
occurred on June 20, 1943, in Detroit. A fist fight between a
white man and a Negro sparked the resentment which had been
mounting in that city.
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