Location: West Franklin Street at South Roberson Street in Chapel Hill
County: Alamance
Original Date Cast: 2016
Integration came to the U.S. Navy slowly and haltingly. During World War I the only African Americans to serve in the Navy did so as cooks and stewards. Resistance was high within the ranks. During World War II President Franklin Roosevelt pressed Navy Secretary James Knox to integrate his forces. The initial entry point for African American sailors was via all-black bands. The Naval School of Music was closed to blacks but, between 1942 and 1945, several thousand black musicians trained at Great Lakes Training Camp. Important steps toward integration took place in North Carolina.
In 1942, after lobbying by Governor J. Melville Broughton, the campus at Chapel Hill was selected as the site for one of the nation’s five Naval Pre-Flight Schools. In time future President Gerald Ford and baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams, among others, trained there. The Pre-Flight School at UNC opened on May 23, 1942. Four days later on May 27, a group of 44 black musicians, most of them affiliated with North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State College (present A.&T. State University) in Greensboro, travelled to Raleigh to enlist at general rank in the Navy. The date is important as official Navy histories date the integration of that branch of the service to June 1, 1942. Training took the men to Norfolk but they were assigned to serve the Pre-Flight School in Chapel Hill and there played their first concert on July 31.
Since the men could not sleep or eat alongside the white enlistees, they dined and bunked at what is now Hargraves Recreation Center, about two miles from campus where Chapel Hill and Carrboro meet. The unit drew wide attention, hailed by the Norfolk Journal and Guide as the “first all-Negro Navy band.” Duties included marching to campus each day to play as flags were raised and returning each evening to play “Taps.” James Parsons, director of the Dudley High School Band in Greensboro, was bandmaster. In May 1944 the band was transferred to Pearl Harbor. Postwar many of the members took up careers as music educators. In the 1980s a plaque, with the names of band members, was dedicated at the recreation center. In 2007 surviving veterans returned to Chapel Hill where they were honored by the chancellor.
References:
Alex Albright, The Forgotten First: B-1 and the Integration of the Modern Navy (2013)
Gregory Drane, “The Role of African-American Musicians in the Integration of the US Navy,” Music Educators Journal (March 2015): 63-67
New Bern Sun Journal, January 17, 2014
Morris MacGregor, “WWII: The Navy,” in Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 (1981)