The Disputation of America’s Moral Authority in Nuremberg (sample chapter)

Abstract

The Disputation of America’s Moral Authority in Nuremberg constitutes a chapter in the monograph entitled Service in the Shadow of Justice: The Legacy of the Black American Military Court Guards in the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. The full work demonstrates that the assignment of Black troops to security details at the historic Nuremberg Trials was both symbolic and significant in the Long Civil Rights Movement and within the activism surrounding the desegregation of the U.S. military. Dim perceptions surrounding the performance of the U.S. Army’s Black troops (pejoratively termed “the Negro Problem”) during WWII and the continuation of Jim Crow policies in the European Theater were factors in excluding these servicemen from earlier duty at the Trials which ran from 1945-1949. By 1946, Nuremberg had become a symbol for the strivings of American racial justice while the verdicts delivered at the International Military Tribunal precipitated calls for anti-lynching legislation. A confluence of events, including slowly staged advocacy work by the Black press and by antiracists from within the U.S. military, eventually brought Black troops into the courtroom as sentries while the service window and stakes in the Nuremberg legacy waned. America was at its finest postwar display in the Palace of Justice while simultaneously revealing a tension between its democratic ideals and actions. The Black U.S. military court guards of Nuremberg are situated in this complex and historic legacy.