Their Gold Was Not Tarnished: Loved Ones of the Fallen

Mothers and widows of soldiers killed in action during World War I were invited by the United States government to take a pilgrimage to view the burial places of their sons and husbands in Europe. Of the 17,389 women eligible for the pilgrimage, 624 were African American. Even though the sacrifices of their sons and husbands were equal, the travel accommodations for the mothers were not.

African American Gold Star mothers sailed to France aboard the American Banker in 1933, on a mission to visit the graves of their loved ones killed in World War I. After World War I, women who lost a child during the war received special recognition as Gold Star Mothers. Between 1930 and 1933, the government sponsored Gold Star Mother Pilgrimages overseas for the mothers of soldiers buried in European graveyards. African American Gold Star mothers weren’t allowed to sail on the same ship with the white Gold Star mothers, but instead traveled separately on a “second-class vessel.” Black male journalists outraged by the program’s segregationist policies wrote articles with the hopes of pressuring the government to give African American mothers the same treatment as white mothers. Approximately 25 women canceled their reservations and never made the pilgrimage. 279 mothers and widows comprised six all-Black groups that traveled between the years of 1930 and 1933.

Sources: Dick Lewis/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images; American Battle Monuments Commission; timeline.com; Smithsonian/National Museum of African American History and Culture