SSG Edward A. Carter Jr: The Black Hero Of The Spanish Civil War And WWII
Wikimedia CommonsEdward A. Carter Jr. was the first Black soldier awarded the Medal of Honor — over 30 years after he had passed.
Edward A. Carter Jr. was a relentless Black hero who fought in both the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War.
The son of two missionaries, Carter was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1916. However, he was raised in Shanghai due to his parents moving there when he was still very young.
At 15, he ran away and enlisted in the Chinese Army. Though he was sent back to his parents, ambitions for a military career had already taken root. He later enrolled in a Shanghai military school where he received extensive combat training and learned at least four languages including Mandarin, Hindi, and German.
During the Spanish Civil War, Edward Carter Jr. took the opportunity to join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, an American volunteer unit fighting against fascism. After the war, he returned to the United States where he enlisted in the U.S. Army.
Still, Carter’s dreams of fighting on the frontlines were out of reach. During the Second World War, Black soldiers were initially relegated to menial posts.
It wasn’t until the height of the war that the army became desperate for reinforcements and finally allowed Black men and women to join the front lines. Carter was ultimately assigned to the 12th Armored Division under Company Commander Captain Floyd Vanderhoff.
Vanderhoff recognized Carter’s ambition and potential and made him an infantry squad leader. He was later assigned to General Patton’s “Mystery Division,” a group of fearless soldiers and one of the few integrated combat units at the time.
Carter’s abilities as a Black soldier were trusted enough that he was hired as the general’s personal bodyguard. But the open battlefield was where Carter wanted to be. During one encounter, he voluntarily led three men across an open field to take out German gunners.
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Carter had extensive combat training and spoke four languages.
Carter slew six of the eight German soldiers who were shooting at him despite enduring five bullet wounds. He also captured and interrogated the other two and gathered valuable intelligence that helped the Americans continue their advance in the war.
He was relentless, even disappearing from the hospital only to rejoin his unit a few weeks later. Carter served another three-year tour and went on to train a new all-Black National Guard engineer unit.
Sadly, like most of his Black peers, Edward Carter Jr. didn’t receive a Medal of Honor, though most of his white colleagues who served in WWII did. He was instead given the Distinguished Service Cross, the country’s second-highest military honor.
He was later prevented from enlisting again because of his “exposure to Communism” when fighting in Spain and China and was forced to find work as a tire mechanic.
Carter received his dues posthumously in 1997 as part of a government campaign to recognize Black heroes from WWII. Finally, he was given the Medal of Honor, making him one of the first Black Americans from the war to receive the medal.
He didn’t live to see it, though, as he had died on Jan. 30, 1963, from lung cancer.
