A few months after the Allied victory in World War II, 24-year-old Capt. Harold Montgomery returned to the General Accounting Office at Fifth and G streets NW to reclaim his old job with the U.S. Post Office Department.
Since leaving 4 1/2 years earlier, Montgomery had led a heavy weapons company of the Army's all-black 92nd "Buffalo Soldiers" Infantry Division up the western coast of Italy through barrage upon barrage of German fire. He had watched wounded men die as shrapnel sliced through the plasma bags set up to give them transfusions. He had grinned and waved as cheering residents of liberated cities pressed flowers and bottles of wine into his hands.
But when the Washington native walked into the GAO's grand, high-ceilinged lobby, it was as though time had stood still. A large plaque honoring postal employees who had served in the war did not list Montgomery or any other African American veterans, he recalled. Worse still, a personnel manager informed him that he would not receive a pay raise given to returning white soldiers.
"To hell with that," retorted Montgomery, who resolved to find a different line of work.
| Continue Nurith C. Aizenman's registration-required Washington Post article "Black Soldiers Battled Fascism and Racism," the fourth in a five-part World War II Memorial series
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