As promised, I've got the rest of the story about Native American Code Talkers. Most people know about the Navajos who developed an unbreakable code that helped the United States defeat Japan and win the war in the Pacific. 

Less well-known are the Comanche code talkers who landed at Normandy, taking part in the D-day invasion of German-occupied France. Like the WWI Choctaw code-talkers I wrote about last week, these men returned home after the war to face yet another fight. Scroll down to meet one of the Comanche code-talkers.

But first, here's a quick note to follow-up the story I told you about Jane Bolin, America's first black woman judge. 

Judge Bolin spent 40 years on the bench in New York City's Domestic Relations Court, dedicated to improving life for children. She dissuaded those who wanted to see her promoted to a federal court judge.

"I'd rather see if i can help a child," she said, "than settle an argument between adults over money."  I love that!

After I wrote that story I discovered Jane Bolin's father was the subject of a story quilt by Faith Ringgold. She's the acclaimed artist who created the famous children's book Tar Beach, which won over 20 awards including the Caldecott Honor and the Coretta Scott King award for the best-illustrated children’s book of 1991.

Jane Bolin's father Gaius Bolin, also a judge, was celebrated in the center of a Faith Ringgold quilt in 1989, 100-years after he became the first black student to graduate from Williams College.

 

The U.S. Army started enlisting men from Native Tribes and training them as code talkers in WWI. The Choctaw and Comanche didn't use code, but simply spoke in their own language. There was no written form of Comanche and few, if any, people outside their tribe could understand them.

 

Native communication was so successful in WWI, the U.S. military continued to build on the concept.  Meanwhile, the German and Japanese sent scholars to the U.S. to research Native American languages. Even before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Comanche code talkers helped develop a code and trained as communication specialists. 

Check out this photo. Fourteen Comanches attended basic training in April 1941, at Fort Benning Georgia. Four years later these men would play a vital role in the largest seaborne invasion in history. 

 

 

In 1917, Native men could not be drafted into the US military because they were considered American citizens. Yet, more than 12,000 volunteered to serve, as indigenous men had since the American Revolution. Today as then, Native Americans join the US military in larger numbers than any other ethnic group in America.

 

Despite the U.S. policy of genocide toward Native Americans and all the indignity and injustice they have survived, serving in the military aligns with their tradition of protecting their people, their home and the lands where there ancestors are buried. 

 

Returning from war in 1918, Native veterans believed they had good cause to be granted citizenship. It was 1923 before Congress agreed. Though they were not allowed to vote.

 

Code talkers who had stormed beaches throughout the Pacific in WWII came home and stormed county election offices for the right to vote.  May 3, 1946, one an army veteran tried to register to vote in New Mexico's McKinley County Clerk's office. Her was refused.  That same day, a native veteran was denied registration in  Apache County, Arizona, and three days later, two Navajos code talkers were not allowed to register to vote in Shiprock, New Mexico  

 

Arizona and New Mexico (in 1948), followed by Utah (1957), were among the last states to allow Native Americans to vote. The restrictive voting laws championed this year by Republican legislators in numerous state would make it more difficult for Natives living on their reservations to vote.

 

Want to hear a Navajo song written specifically for the code talkers? Click here...

Sources books.google.com/books?id=LyVdnQEACAAJ

 

thought the story "fascinating and surprisingly untold."  One day, they will regret this. 😉