White violence targeted Black veterans because military service threatened the racial order.

Evidence

White Americans maintained this caste system through wanton racial terrorism. And Black veterans like Woodard, especially those with the audacity to wear their uniform, had since the Civil War been the target of a particularly gruesome violence. This intensified during the two world wars because many white people understood that once Black men had gone abroad and experienced life outside the suffocating racial oppression of America, they were unlikely to quietly return to their subjugation at home. As Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi said on the Senate floor during World War I, Black servicemen returning to the South would “inevitably lead to disaster.” Giving a Black man “military airs” and sending him to defend the flag would bring him “to the conclusion that his political rights must be respected.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 159

Categorization

• XREF: This causal logic — exposure to freedom abroad unsettling the domestic racial hierarchy — echoes the reason the US armed forces remained segregated through WWII, and connects to the reader’s continued 1619 narrative about why origin stories and patriotism clash for Black Americans.