Creighton Victory cowboys adopt a Polish boy to their crew

The seagoing cowboys on the S. S. Creighton Victory trip of July 4, 1946, to Poland were a special crew of interracial students recruited by the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen for UNRRA to determine if they could send integrated crews to Europe. The practice up to that time had been for cattle tenders to be segregated into all white or all black crews.

Fellowship of Southern Churchmen interracial seagoing cowboy crew at Hampton Institute, July 1946. Courtesy of Ben Kaneda.

When this Fellowship Crew reached Poland, they took on a special mission of their own – as described in the newsletter they published during their trip called “The Atlantic Daily.” In it, they included profiles of the entire crew. Profile #36 describes their mission:

The thirty-sixth member of the Fellowship Crew could only be Rog Stanislaw, 12-year-old Polish waif literally adopted by the cattlemen. Rog (pronounced Rook) won the admiration of everyone of the S. S. Creighton by his ever-smiling good nature, his good manners, and his honest desire for cleanliness.

The first evening that Rog left the Creighton after visiting with the men aboard, one of the ship’s regular crewmen gave him enough money in the form of Polish zlotych to enable him to buy himself a pair of shoes. Although Rog could speak only one or two words of English and German, his pride of his new shoes was apparent when he returned aboard the Creighton the next day.

Rog Stanislaw aboard the S. S. Creighton Victory in Nowy Port, Poland, July 1946. Photo courtesy of Ben Kaneda.

In spite of the fact that Rog often protested taking gifts from crew members, he was loaded down with soap, candy, apples, oranges, and gum when he had to leave the ship in the evening. Knowing this affable young boy who never asked for a single thing provided the other side of the picture to the large number of Polish children who followed American seamen by the hoards asking for gifts of all kinds.

Polish children beg for treats from Creighton Victory cowboys. Photo courtesy of Ben Kaneda.

On the last evening in port in Poland, the Fellowship Crew took up a collection of 633 zlotych and presented it to Rog who was both bashful and filled with gratitude.

There were tears in the eyes of Rog Stanislaw as the ship prepared to leave Poland. He wanted very much to go to America too. As he stood on the dock waving, waving, and waving, he became a mere speck in the distance as the Creighton Victory headed her bow in the direction of the Untied States of America, the land of plenty.

The suffering of all Poland was brought home to members of the Fellowship Crew time after time in visits to city and rural areas around Danzig but certainly no more lasting impression of the grief and need that exists there could have been seen than the young tow-headed Polish Rog Stanislaw, homeless waterfront wanderer who wanted to become a part of America so badly that he cried openly when his new American friends pulled out for home leaving him standing on the dock . . . alone.

Hats Off to Archivists!

I just learned recently that October is American Archives Month. I’m interrupting my stories on seagoing cowboys today to take my hat off to the many archivists who have helped me gather my own archives of historical materials from which I write this blog.

Over the past nearly twenty years, I’ve been traveling around the country gathering materials from archives and individuals to document this little-known history of UNRRA’s and Heifer International’s seagoing cowboys. And what a rich history it is! I could not be telling it without access to the gems of primary source materials which I have found in the archives I’ve visited.

Searching through Heifer International historical materials at Vital Records Control, Maumelle, AR, 2011. Photo credit: Rex Miller

Kudos to the many archivists who have assisted me at:

• The Brethren Historical Library and Archives [BHLA] in Elgin, Illinois – home of the historical materials of Heifer International founder Dan West and the many Brethren leaders and organizations that helped usher in the Heifer Project. A special tip of the hat to the late Ken Shaffer and the recently retired archivist Bill Kostlevy.
• The United Nations Archives and Record Management Section in New York City – home of the archived materials of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration [UNRRA], a precursor to the UN.
• The Manchester University Archives – home of alumni seagoing cowboy records and Brethren history. Kudos to archivist Jeanine Wine.
• The Mennonite Church USA Archives when they were located at Goshen College in Goshen, Indiana – home of records of Mennonite seagoing cowboys. My thanks to former archivist Dennis Stoesz.
• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library – home of the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen records.
• And last, but not least, the many staff members of Heifer International who have been caretakers of Heifer International’s historical materials while they were located at Vital Records Control in Maumelle, Arkansas, and are now located at Heifer’s headquarters in Little Rock. May these precious materials one day find a dedicated archival home. Many, many thanks to retired staffer Kathy Moore, herself a seagoing cowgirl, for her organization of Heifer’s historical materials before I started my research. You made my search for relevant documents ever so much easier than it would have been.
  

  Kathy Moore receiving Heifer International’s “Make a Difference Award” during their 70th anniversary celebration, March 2014.

“Archivists bring the past to the present. They’re records collectors and protectors, keepers of memory. They organize unique, historical materials, making them available for current and future research.”
— Lisa Lewis for the Society of American Archivists

Thank you to archivists everywhere who help us navigate the present by understanding the past.

Special Crew #3: Interracial crew works and studies together — Part II

What an amazing undertaking the interracial seagoing cowboy crew of July 4, 1946, was, at a time when Jim Crow laws ruled across the southern United States.

       It came about when applications of many Negro fellows were refused by UNRRA or they were shunted into an all-Negro crew. After successive protests from men both white and Negro and southern, UNNRA said if a southern organization, preferably a religious one, would recruit one interracial crew and that if they had good experiences, they would not segregate successive crews.
       The Fellowship accepted responsibility and recruited 34 men from 21 different southern schools, six nationalities, and with the three major faiths represented. One Negro and one white skilled veterinarian worked with the crew. One Negro and one white minister went along to conduct the religious and educational program planned by the Fellowship for the trip.
       The practice of segregation stopped immediately in UNRRA.¹

So states an undated report of the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen regarding use of a $1200 grant from the Hazen Foundation for this and other projects during 1946.

In September 1945, when Martin Luther King, Jr., was a student at Morehouse College, his mentor, Morehouse President Benjamin E. Mays, was applying for the FSC’s Hazen Foundation grant. In the application, Dr. Mays wrote:

       One of the three things the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen is interested in doing is to extend the area of Christian Fellowship across racial lines.
       . . . . There should be exchange of students in Negro and white colleges and visits from Negro colleges to white colleges and vica [sic] versa. Negro and white college students living in the same city or state of the south are further apart than are the students of Europe and Asia. They know practically nothing about each other. This gap should be bridged and a program can be worked out to this end.²

The Fellowship seagoing cowboy crew was a part of that program, as was a series of interracial work camps held in the South.

Rev. William G. Klein, Director of the Rural Project of Union Church in Berea, Kentucky, coordinated the recreation and group activities for the cowboy crew. In a letter reporting to FSC’s Secretary, Nelle Morton, following the trip, he wrote:

       Personally the whole experience just from the inter-racial and inter-cultural viewpoints alone was a most valuable experience. Our ship crew was also inter-racial (CIO-BNMU) so that we found a most congenial atmosphere for complete fellowship, and then I think that the work experience together was one of the most if not the most valuable means of achieving a unity of spirit and purpose. The discussions, somewhat curtailed because of the rough weather on the way back, would not have had the value they had, if we had not had the previous work experience together….Luther Neal, a Methodist minister-student from Augusta, Georgia…felt that this fellowship trip removed almost entirely a consciousness of race, and because of this he deprecated tendencies among Minority groups, including his own, to retaliate against discrimination with a reverse kind of ‘Jim Crow’ and exclusiveness. The group, in sympathy with this viewpoint, were highly in favor of mixed faculties at Negro as well as at non-Negro institutions.³

Reflecting on this interracial crew experience of 1946 and the current racial and cultural tensions in our country makes me wish for more interracial, intercultural, and interfaith opportunities like this livestock trip for our citizens, young and old alike, where people can work side by side to lessen the gap that continues to divide us.

All photos are from the scrapbook of Ben Kaneda, the “token” Oriental on the trip, as he says, recruited from the only northern college represented, Temple University in Philadelphia. Through the help of a Quaker, he enrolled at Temple straight out of a Japanese-American internment camp where he and his family were forced to sit out the war in rural Arkansas.

1,2,3 — All quotes are from materials found at the Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Collection #03479: Fellowship of Southern Churchmen Records, 1937-1986.

 

Special Crew #3: Interracial crew works and studies together — Part I

Seventy years ago this week, on July 4, 1946, an interracial seagoing cowboy crew of college students recruited by the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen left Newport News, Virginia, on the S. S. Creighton Victory bound for Poland. The Church of the Brethren Gospel Messenger published the following article several months later:

from Gospel Messenger, November 2, 1946. Used with permission of Brethren Press.

Peggy Reiff Miller Collection, courtesy of Ben Kaneda

More to come on this crew in my next post.