FORWARD
The Mayor od Domfront apologized gravely and then stated: if I had
known of your coming, I would have received you formally at the
Hotel de Ville. After this statement I thought: Me whom most of my fellow countrymen received only at their back doors, and only after I have apologized for my presents. But how could I explain in Domfront--that reborn feudal town of ancient memories? I could not--I did not. But I sang the Marseillaise, "Le jour de gloire est arrive!"
Arrived to the world and to ever widening circles of men
--but not yet to us. Over those hills of France, transported bodily from America, sits "Jim Crow",segregation, in a hotel for white officers only. In that same hotel is a Massachusets Colonel
who frankly hates "[Blacks]" and segregates them at every
opportunity. The General from Georgia who openly and officially
stigmatizes his black officers by stating that black officers
are no gentlemen. The General ordered the black soldiers never
to speak to French women in public or receive the spontaneously
offered social recognition of the French. All this ancient and
American race hatred and insult in a purling sea of French
sympathy and kindness. The French provided human uplift and a
giant endeavor for the black soldiers during the mightiest
crusade humanity ever saw: The war for justice!.
"contre nous de la tyrannie,
L'etendard sanglant est leve'."
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J.Linzy-(intro-7)