Reflecting on Equality during World War II
Recently, I was looking at the archives of my high school, The Lawrenceville School. More specifically, I was glancing at a letter from Thomas G. Buchanan Jr. (Lawrenceville class of 1935), a student who went off to fight in World War II, to the Head of School’s wife, Mrs. Heely. I found a particular section of this letter very compelling, which I attached below along with a transcription:
Transcription: “They have ridiculed the democratic philosophy as ‘decadent’ and they have fought for the dictatorship of an ‘elite’ of which they fancied themselves as members — and for this reason, we have come here with our allies to destroy them. In France and Belgium, we have learned to trust the workers, who fight by our side, but along the 400 families we find many who prefer the slogans of Victory To Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Teach your boys to believe what long ago we fought to prove to the world, that ‘all men are created equal.’ For if they go out into America, after so many of us over here have sacrificed so much, still believing in their hearts that because they have had the good fortune to be educated at Lawrenceville, they are thereby chosen rulers of the earth and that men are basically inferior to them, then all that we have done will have to be done again. History is not generous with a race that learns slowly.”
I believe this letter connects with a previous article I wrote, entitled “The Classic American Contradiction: America’s Hypocrisy with Freedom and Minorities during World War II.” The United States entered World War II purportedly to protect our “Four Freedoms,” in the words of FDR. It was a war to preserve democracy, liberty, and individualism. Yet, the army was racially segregated. A rigid system of inequality oppressed people of color on the homefront. What this letter does is remind us that among all the bad — the prejudice, the racial intolerance, etc. — there truly was some good. Buchanan implores the Lawrenceville administration to teach students to get rid of their superiority complexes. He argues that these feelings of superiority are what trap human beings in futile war — and the only way to have peace is to truly embrace the notion of equality. This is especially important given Lawrenceville’s context — in the 1940s, it was an all-boys school that had students predominately of white and high-class backgrounds.
Buchanan’s letter is the first step in building the walls of a more equitable world. We must first acknowledge our history, and acknowledge our shortcomings and inherent biases. Once we do, the prospect of change becomes more in reach.
