In Dorchester, Black veterans celebrated for their ‘sacred sacrifice’
To hear Brigadier General Enoch “Woody” Woodhouse II tell it, it was his mother’s idea.
After the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s declaration that the nation was at war, for Woodhouse’s mother, there was no question what her two sons needed to do: enlist.
Woodhouse, now 97, recalls his mother telling him, “Our country is at war, and you must serve your country.”
“Can you imagine a Black woman saying that to all she had in the world: her two boys,” said Woodhouse at a brunch honoring Black veterans on Saturday at Dorchester’s Prince Hall Lodge.
Woodhouse said he grew up in a housing development off Boston’s Shawmut Avenue with photographs of lynchings of Black Americans burned into his consciousness.
“But we still served,” he said.
He enlisted in the US Army Air Corps on his 17 th birthday, according to the city, and his brother joined the Marines.
Woodhouse, who would go on to graduate from Yale, become a lawyer, and serve in the Air Force Reserves for decades, was among those feted at the Saturday luncheon. And notably, he is among the last living Tuskegee Airmen, who were the first Black military pilots in the nation’s history.
“He is a living legacy,” said Boston Mayor Michelle Wu before Woodhouse was presented with the inaugural Boston veterans “legacy award.”
Robert Santiago, Boston’s veterans services commissioner, praised Woodhouse’s “exceptional advocacy for veterans and military families,” and called the Roxbury native “a Beacon of inspiration.”
Santiago pointed out that despite Woodhouse facing “clear racist challenges” during his time in the Army, he joined the Air Force Reserves after he was discharged from active duty in 1949. He would serve in the reserves until he retired in 1997.
The hall was packed with veterans, their relatives, and local political luminaries. A spread of macaroni and cheese, rice, salad, and pastries was served. The
Boston Black Catholic Gospel Choir sang to entertain the crowd.
Among the other Black veterans recognized was the late Ralph Francis Browne Jr., a Bostonian who served with the last all-Black military unit, the 272nd Field Artillery Battalion of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, according to city authorities.
Browne, a Korean War veteran who died in 2012, would go on to be a well-known local advocate serving in various capacities in local civic organizations. He pushed for Juneteenth to be a recognized holiday and for there to be a memorial to Black veterans in Boston, something that came to fruition last summer with the unveiling of the General Edward O. Gourdin African American Veteran Memorial Park in Roxbury’s Nubian Square.
His widow, Wilma Browne, was presented with a posthumous award for her husband on Saturday.
“I know my husband is looking down and smiling,” said Browne, an 89-year-old lifelong Bostonian. “This is a great moment.”
Addressing the crowd, Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune said, “Hats off to so many of you for the ways in which you have shown up for this county . . . even when this country doesn’t show up for you.”
Wu echoed those sentiments in her remarks.
“To be a Black service member is to offer a sacred sacrifice,” said the mayor. “We know that throughout all of our country’s history it has meant signing up to defend a country that hasn’t always returned the favor.”
Woodhouse also addressed the legacy of racism in the nation and the city, praising Boston’s racial progress and noting that Wu is the first elected mayor in the city’s history who is not a white man.
He said that when he became the city’s first Black assistant corporation counsel, there were few Black faces in the city’s halls of power. Now, he said, City Hall’s leadership team is much more diverse.
He also shared an anecdote of traversing the country in a military uniform with $8 in his pocket en route to his duty station. When he got to St. Louis, he was kicked off the train. A Black porter explained to him that that train was for white people exclusively, that “we don’t ride that train.” He had to wait seven or eight hours for another train to continue his journey.
“That taught me a lesson,” he said.
Later on in his speech to the crowd, he added, “I hope one day we won’t see Black veterans, we’ll just see veterans.”