A story frequently told during Black History Month is of the Tuskegee Airmen — the celebrated Black flyers in the segregated Army Air Forces in World War II. One of their officers at their base in Alabama was my father, Lieutenant Atlee D. Washington.
I knew that, but I had little knowledge of his military life before then — until last month.
“Dear Robin,” Sarah Nestor Lane, an educator for the National Park Service, messaged me in January. “Your father wrote many articles for the Casper Army Air Base — The Slip Stream newspaper. I am really excited to share that we will be including his writings about the (all-Black) 377th as part of the student readings to celebrate Casper Wyoming’s Heritage City designation.”
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He wrote what?
I knew he wrote poetry, both before and after the war, and some of it was published. But he died in 1983 never telling me about his journalism career, even as I started my own. Fortunately, Lane was happy to fill in the blanks. She joined me on “Morning Edition” to talk about the column and its historical significance.
This conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Robin Washington: What was his column about and how did you find it?
Sarah Nestor Lane: I was reading through the Casper Army Air Base newspaper, which was called The Slip Stream. I noticed a column called “Under the Double V.”
It was a really amazing find because I hadn’t seen anything like this before, where a Black squadron had the opportunity to write in a base newspaper on a recurring basis. The base newspaper was also included in the daily Casper Tribune-Herald. And it was created and written by Atlee D. Washington.
It’s documented that the 377th faced low morale. A lot of these men wanted to be out on the front lines overseas but were relegated to maintenance operations at home. Some of the base’s leaders, who were white, must have thought to let the squadron have a column in the newspaper. That was unusual for a Black unit.
RW: I can see Atlee’s style of writing was part of the morale building. (Everyone called him Atlee, by the way — even my brother and me growing up.) You highlight a story about a forest fire that the squadron was dispatched to put out.
SL: The 377th was sent to combat a forest fire in the Bighorn Mountains. Atlee describes the mission in detail, and at the end shares an officer saying, “No one could wish for better soldiers under fire.” That’s a double-entendre because yes, they’re firefighting, but also, they thought they would have been under fire in the war zone, not in Bighorn National Forest.
RW: There’s another column from December 8, 1943, in which he writes: “Private William Webb offers the information that his application to join the paratroopers was turned down because of one physical defect which the doctors cannot cure: a certain skin ‘ailment.’” In other words, color.
SL: Whenever I read his writing like that, I say to myself, “Wow, he got away with that?” And after reading so many of his columns, he became a friend to me in his writings.
I could see his humor and also his seriousness and the responsibility he had, not only sharing the news and boosting morale for the unit, but also pushing on the boundaries of what was allowed to be said in this newspaper, especially about the segregation and discrimination that the unit was facing.
RW: One of the things that first caught your eye was the column’s title, “Under the Double V,” which referred to a campaign by Black newspapers calling for victory abroad over the Axis and victory at home over Jim Crow.
Historian Matthew Delmont of Dartmouth University called the title surprising, saying “a lot of the white military leaders were really concerned about the idea of ‘double victory’ because they thought it meant that Black Americans were being only conditionally loyal to the country.” He said it was extraordinary for the campaign to appear in a base newspaper. But this isn’t just Black history — it’s American history, correct?
SL: I completely agree. People often think of the Civil Rights Movement as the 1950s and 60s, but we forget about some of these pioneers that helped pave the way for that. I think about one of the pieces Atlee wrote: “We overcome the enemy not only in combat, but within ourselves as well. Relinquishing prejudices, reactionary tendencies and selfishness. To the degree that we work not so much for four freedoms, but for one freedom, full and complete for all men, even to that degree, do we come into our heritage.”
What a powerful message that was, for that time and into the future.
If you have an idea about something in northern Wisconsin you think we should talk about on “Morning Edition,” send it to us at northern@wpr.org.
