By Reuben Keith Inexperienced

The hidden story of the U.S. Navy’s first Black commissioned officer spans 5 a long time, three continents, two world wars, two wives from totally different international locations, and one hell of a journey for an Indiana farm boy. For mutual comfort, each he and america Navy pretended that he wasn’t Black. This story had virtually been erased from historical past till the decided efforts of certainly one of his prolonged relations, Jeff Giltz of Hobart, Indiana, introduced it to mild.1

From earlier than World Conflict I till after World Conflict II, leaders within the U. S. authorities and Navy would make choices affecting the composition of enlisted ranks for greater than a century and that also echo in officer demographics as we speak. Reminiscences of maelstroms previous reverberate in as we speak’s discussions relating to range, fairness, and inclusion (DEI), affirmative motion within the army academies, meritocracy over so-called “DEI Hires,” who’s and isn’t Black, and in renaming – or not – bases and ships that honor relics of America’s discriminatory and exclusionary previous. Earlier than Doris “Dorie” Miller acquired the Navy Cross for his actions on December seventh, 1941, and lengthy earlier than the Navy commissioned the Golden 13 in 1945, Lieutenant (junior grade) William Lloyd Garrison Payne was awarded the Navy Cross for the hazardous responsibility of commanding the submarine chaser USS SC-83 in 1918. Whereas his Navy Cross quotation is sparse, the hazards of searching submarines from a 110-foot picket ship had been appreciable. His private {and professional} historical past, nonetheless rising although it might be, reveals a lot concerning the nation and Navy he served and deserves to be revealed in full. Understanding the racial and political local weather throughout which he acquired his fee is essential to understanding the significance of his place in Navy historical past.

Fig. 1: USS SC 83 underway. Lieutenant (junior grade) Payne was awarded the Navy Cross for his service as commanding officer. (Picture credit score: Nationwide WWI Museum assortment 2012.98, by way of subchaser.org.)

Quietly Breaking Limitations

William Lloyd Garrison Payne was born on Christmas day in 1881 to a White Indiana girl and a Black man, and accomplished forty years of army service by 1940 – earlier than volunteering for extra service in World Conflict II. Garrison Payne’s digital anonymity, regardless of his groundbreaking standing as the primary Black naval officer and a Navy Cross recipient, stemmed from pervasive racial discrimination, manifested in political and public opposition (notably by white supremacist politicians like James Okay. Varner and John C. Stennis), and inner resistance inside the Navy. His lengthy anonymity exemplifies a failure to study from the previous.2

Fig. 02. Ensign Payne (seated), accountable for USS SC-83. (Picture credit score: subchasers.org.)

Garrison Payne, or W.G. Payne, served in or commanded a number of vessels and had a number of shore assignments throughout his five-decade profession. His officer assignments embrace commanding the aforementioned USS SC-83 and serving aboard the minesweeper USS Teal (AD-23), the collier USS Neptune (AC-8), submarine chasers Eagle 19 and Eagle 31, which he could have additionally commanded, and troop ship USS Zeppelin. He had a prolonged report as a Chief Boatswain’s Mate (Chief Bos’n).

Fig. 03: 1917 North Carolina Service Card, thirty-three year-old Chief Boatswain’s Mate Garrison Payne was discharged from the Navy and instantly “Appointed Officer” (Commissioned) on 15 December 1917 whereas assigned to the usNeptune (AC-8) at Naval Base, Plymouth, England. (Credit score: Public report within the public area.)

After his commissioning in Plymouth, he presumably stayed in England and later took command of the usSC-83 after she transited from New London, Connecticut to Plymouth, England in Could 1918.

Garrison Payne took Rosa Manning, a widow with a younger daughter, as his first spouse in 1916. The 1910 North Carolina Census information point out that she was the daughter of Sami and Annie Corridor, each listed as Black within the census information. Later census information listing Rosa Payne as White, and utilizing her mom’s maiden title (Manning), as she did on their 1916 marriage license. His race was additionally indicated as White on the license, and his dad and mom listed as Jackson Payne and Ruth Myers (Payne), his maternal grandparents.

Fig. 04: Garrison Payne and an unidentified girl, probably his second spouse Mary Margaret Payne, presumably taken within the latter Nineteen Twenties, location unknown. Courtesy of Jeff Giltz.

Within the photograph above, Payne, carrying the rank of lieutenant, stands beside an unidentified Black girl, who could also be his spouse. He introduced again Mary Margaret Duffy from responsibility in Plymouth, England on the usZeppelin, a troop transport, in 1919, itemizing her on ship paperwork as his spouse. He used varied first names and initials to apparently assist obscure his id.

Jeff Giltz of Hobart, Indiana is the nice grandson of Gertrude “Gertie” Giltz, Garrison’s half-sister by the identical mom, Mary Alice Payne. She was single on the time of his beginning in 1881. Her father, Jack Payne was the son of a Robert Henley Payne, who traveled first from Virginia to Kentucky, after which settled in Indiana, could have been combined race. Throughout the U.S. Census, census takers wrote down the race of family occupants as described by the top of the family. Many light-skinned Blacks thereby entered into White society by “turning White” throughout a census 12 months. It’s unknown when Garrison made his “transition” from Black or “Mulatto” to White.

None of Garrison’s half-siblings, who had been born to his mom after she married Lemuel Ball, share his darkish complexion. When she married, Garrison was despatched to dwell close by along with his uncle, William C. Payne, whose spouse was of combined race. Within the 1900 Census, Garrison is listed as a servant in his uncle’s family, not his nephew.

Taken collectively – Garrison Payne’s darkish pores and skin, the truth that the id of his father was by no means publicly revealed and that he was born out of wedlock with no beginning certificates issued, that he was named for a well-known White Boston abolitionist and newspaper writer,3 that his White mom gave him her final title as an alternative of his father’s, that he was despatched away after his mom married, and the oral historical past of his household – all level to the probability that Garrison Payne was Black.

Within the flip of the century Navy, people had been generally recognized as “darkish” or “darkish complexion” with no racial class assigned. Payne self-identified as White on each of his identified marriage licenses. In response to Jeff Giltz, there are a lot of references to Garrison Payne in on-line family tree, army information and newspaper websites, however none seem on the Navy Historic and Heritage Command (NHHC) web site. His army service seemingly started in 1900.

Rolling Again Racial Progress throughout Modernization

In his 1978 e-book Manning the Navy: The Growth of a Fashionable Naval Enlisted Drive, 1898-1940, former U.S. Naval Academy Affiliate Professor Frederick S. Harrod discusses a number of of the insurance policies enacted throughout that interval that helped formed as we speak’s Navy.4 He describes how the famously progressive Secretary of the Navy (1913-1919) Josephus Daniels, in any other case infamous for banning alcohol from ships, introduced Jim Crow insurance policies to a beforehand partially built-in Navy (enlisted ranks solely) and banned the primary time period enlistment of Negro personnel in 1919, a ban that might final till 1933. No official announcement of the unofficial ban was made, however Prof. Harrod asserts that it was instituted by an inner Navy Memorandum from Commander Randall Jacobs, who later issued the Information to Command of Negro Personnel, NAVPERS-15092, in 1945. President Woodrow Wilson and Daniels had been each staunch segregationists and White supremacists. The Navy turned extra somewhat than much less racially restrictive throughout the Progressive Period due to the lasting results of each Secretary Daniels and President Wilson.

The variety of Negro personnel dropped from a excessive of 5,668 in June of 1919 – 2.26% of the overall enlisted drive – to 411 in June of 1933, a complete of 0.55% of the overall drive of 81,120 enlisted males. A lot of the Black sailors had been within the Stewards Department, and most had been low rating with no authority over White sailors, regardless of their a few years of service and expertise. These only a few “outdated salts” outdoors that department, like Payne, had been tough to assign, because the Navy didn’t need them supervising White sailors, regardless of their experience and seniority.

Following his short-term promotion to the commissioned officer ranks – rising so far as lieutenant on 01 July 1919 – Garrison Payne was finally reverted to Chief Bos’n, till he was given an honorific, or “tombstone”, promotion to the everlasting grade of lieutenant in June of 1940, simply earlier than his retirement. Payne died on 14 October 1952 in a Naval Hospital in San Diego California, and was interred in close by Fort Rosacrans Nationwide Cemetery on 20 October 1952, in Part P, Plot P 0 2765 – not within the Officer’s Sections A or B, regardless of being recognized as a lieutenant on his gravestone. Garrison Payne’s hometown newspaper’s demise discover signifies that he was the grandson of Jack Payne, with no point out of his dad and mom. A handwritten notation on his Internment Management Type signifies that he enlisted on 31 March 1943, making him a veteran of each world wars, as additionally mirrored on his gravestone. His service in World Conflict II – as a volunteer 62-year-old retiree – deserves additional investigation.

Fig. 05: Garrison Payne’s ultimate resting place, in Part P, Plot P 0 2765 of Fort Rosacrans Nationwide Cemetery. Courtesy of U.S. Division of Veteran’s Affairs, Veteran’s Legacy Memorial.

The Navy reluctantly commissioned the Golden 13 in 1945 solely due to political stress from the White Home and from civil rights organizations just like the NAACP, led by Walter F. White, the light-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed Atlanta Georgia native who embraced his Black heritage. In contrast to Walter White, although, Garrison Payne seemingly hid his mixed-race heritage to guard his life, his household, and his profession. When he married Mary Margaret Duffy in 1937, on the age of 54, he travelled greater than 170 miles from San Diego, California to Yuma, Arizona to take action. Why? His new spouse, Mary Margaret Duffy, was 37, and an immigrant from Eire. He had beforehand listed her as his spouse when he transported her to America in 1919. Are there information of this marriage abroad? Would that interracial marriage have been acknowledged, on condition that interracial marriage would stay unlawful in each states for years to return? On their marriage certificates, as with Payne’s first marriage certificates, each spouses are listed as White.

The Navy’s Round Letter 48-46, dated 27 February 1946, formally lifted “all restrictions governing the sorts of assignments for which Negro naval personnel are eligible.” Regardless of that edict, and President Truman’s Government Order desegregating the armed forces in 1948, it could be a long time earlier than the Navy’s officer ranks would come with greater than fifty Blacks.

The tales of a number of early Black chief petty officers are lacking from the Navy’s Historic and Heritage Command’s web site, although it does embrace the story of a recent of Payne’s, Chief Boatswain’s Mate John Henry “Dick” Turpin, a Black man. That Payne, a commissioned officer, is absent and unrecognized might be attributed to at the least 5 potential causes.

The primary is that the Navy didn’t know of his existence, significance, or accomplishments. Desk 5 in Professor Harrods’s e-book is titled “The Coloration of the Enlisted Forces, 1906 – 1940,” and is compiled from the Annual Reviews of the Chief of Navigation for these years, with eleven totally different racial classes, together with “different.” The place Garrison Payne fell in these figures throughout his enlisted service is unsure, however he was current within the Navy for every of these 12 months’s reviews.

The second is that Payne had no direct survivors to inform his story, and nobody could have requested him to inform it. He and his first spouse Rosa seemingly divorced someday after the demise of their solely little one. It’s unknown if his Irish-born spouse Mary Margaret produced any youngsters by Garrison.

The third cause could possibly be that the Navy could have saved his story quiet for his personal safety, and that of the Woodrow Wilson administration and the Indiana political management. Garrison Payne was commissioned by the identical President Woodrow Wilson who screened the film Beginning of a Nation on the White Home in 1915, re-segregated the federal authorities places of work in Washington DC, refused to publicly condemn the racial violence and lynching throughout the “Purple Summer time” of 1919, and whose Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, was one of many masterminds behind the 1898 Wilmington Revolt, which violently overthrew an elected built-in authorities in Wilmington, North Carolina. Acknowledging Payne as a adorned and profitable Black naval officer would have been a humiliation to Wilson, Daniels, and undercut their political and racist agendas.

Black veterans had been particularly focused after each world wars, by each civilians and army personnel, to reassert White supremacy. Payne was from Indiana, the place the Ku Klux Klan was revived in 1915, and have become a really highly effective group within the 1920’s. Such organizations could have sought out and harassed Payne and his household, had they identified that this Black Indiana farm boy, born to a White mom, had not solely acquired a fee within the U.S. Navy however had commanded White males in fight.

The fourth cause is that the Navy could have wished to cover his racial id. His report of accomplishment as a Navy Cross recipient and ship’s C.O. would have undermined the widespread perception that Black males couldn’t carry out efficiently as leaders, a lot much less adorned army officers. He was not commissioned as a part of some social experiment or social engineering, however as a result of the Navy wanted skilled, dependable males to man a rapidly-expanding fleet and prepare inexperienced crews. Garrison Payne did simply that, throughout years of harmful responsibility at sea.

The fifth cause could also be that Payne acknowledged the advantages of passing for White to his life and profession, which can have compelled him to take action. He was raised in a largely white society, by white-appearing relations. Had he not efficiently “handed,” he seemingly wouldn’t have been commissioned.

Whatever the causes prior to now, it’s now time to herald the courageous naval service of Garrison Payne. The Navy Historic and Heritage Command, the Smithsonian Establishment, the Indiana Historic Society, the Hampton Roads Navy Museum, and others ought to work collectively to carry his superb story out of the shadows.

Why Garrison Payne’s Story Issues

For years, many Black naval officers have searched in useless for tales of their heroic forebearers. Actions taken by politicians relating to nominations to army academies for a lot of the twentieth century helped make sure that Black army officers remained a rarity, notably these hailing from Southern states.5 The life story of Lieutenant Garrison Payne must be completely documented and publicized as a result of illustration issues. On a private notice, understanding of his story whereas I used to be serving as one of many few Black officers within the Navy would have impressed me immensely. Garrison Payne served as seemingly the one Black officer within the Navy for his total profession. He confirmed what was potential. Heralding his trailblazing profession can solely positively affect the discussions concerning the future composition of the U.S. Navy’s officer corps because it conjures up generations of sailors. Historians and researchers ought to proceed the work of archival analysis to realize a fuller understanding of his story and significance. My hope is that veteran’s organizations and nationwide establishments such because the Smithsonian Establishment start the trouble to flesh out the story of Lieutenant Garrison Payne.

Reuben Keith Inexperienced, Lieutenant Commander, USN (ret) served 22 years within the Atlantic Fleet (1975-1997). After 9 years within the enlisted ranks as a Mineman, Yeoman, and Equal Alternative Program Specialist, he graduated from Officer Candidate Faculty in 1984 after which served 4 consecutive sea excursions. Each a steam and fuel turbine certified engineer officer of the watch (EOOW), he served as a Tactical Motion Officer (TAO) within the Persian Gulf, and as government officer in a Navy hydrofoil, USS Gemini (PHM-6). He holds a Grasp’s diploma from Webster College in Human Assets Growth, and is the writer of Black Officer, White Navy – A Memoir, not too long ago revealed by College Press of Kentucky.

Endnotes

1. Besides as in any other case cited, analysis on this article is predicated on paperwork within the writer’s possession and oral historical past interviews with Mr. Jeff Giltz.

2. Conflict and Race: The Black Officer within the American Navy. 1915-1941, 1981, Gerald W. Patton, Greenwood Press

3. All on Hearth: William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery, 2008, Henry Mayer, W. W. Norton and Firm

4. Manning the New Navy: The Growth of a Fashionable Naval Enlisted Drive, 1899-1940, 1978, Frederick S. Harrod, Greenwood Press.

5. The Tragedy of the Misplaced Technology, Proceedings, August 2024, VOL 150/8/1458, John P. Cordle, Reuben Keith Inexperienced, U.S. Naval Institute.

Featured Picture: SC 83 underway, steaming below a bridge. (Picture by way of Subchaser.org)



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