Skip To Content
The Blinding of Isaac Woodard | Digital Short

The War at Home

From the Collection: The African American Experience

Pvt. Booker T. Spicely was one of numerous soldiers slain for purported Jim Crow violations in the 1940s.

On a Saturday evening in July 1944, Booker T. Spicely was riding a segregated bus back to Camp Butner, outside of Durham, North Carolina. He was a uniformed Black soldier returning from a night out in Hayti, the cityā€™s historic Black community. But Spicely never made it back to base that night. The white bus driver fatally shot Spicely after he resisted the driverā€™s order to move to the last row of the bus. THE WAR AT HOME tells the story of this murder and how the U.S. government failed Booker Spicely and countless other African American soldiers.

Support Provided by: Learn More