Segregation shapes the 761st Tank Battalion's route to combat

Johnny Stevens recalled that joining the 761st Tank Battalion did not free him from segregated buses, restaurants or station facilities. Wearing the same uniform and serving for the same purpose still left Black soldiers unable to use the facilities available to white troops. Train travel placed them near locomotive smoke, and they were warned to lower blinds because people had fired at carriages carrying Black passengers. The account attributes the battalion's prolonged training in the United States to reluctance to employ Black soldiers in combat, with heavy tank-crew losses eventually bringing deployment in October 1944. Stevens also alleged that the Army had spread dehumanising rumours about the arriving soldiers and portrayed them as delivering tanks for white men to use.