A Civil Rights History for National Blood Donor Month

 

Fifty-five years ago, on December 31, 1969, President Richard Nixon proclaimed the first National Blood Donor Month in January 1970 to honor voluntary blood donors and to encourage people to give blood. January 20th is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday established in 1983. The holiday has transformed a decade later to include a National Day of Service honoring Dr. King’s activism and service that paved the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both of these January commemorations are connected in significant and perhaps unexpected ways, especially if one goes back to the era of World War II.

World War II was the first war in which the banking and transporting of blood products to battlefields and military hospitals saved countless lives, thanks to Dr. Richard Drew, an African-American doctor who was born in Washington DC in 1904. In 1928, Drew began medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he studied with a visiting professor from Great Britain, Dr. John Beattie, an expert in blood transfusion medicine at a time when there was growing interest in blood banking. The Nobel Prize in physiology in 1930 was awarded for the discovery of blood group antigens (blood typing), which made compatible blood transfusions possible. But in 1933, when Richard Drew received his Doctor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degrees from McGill, the logistics of blood donation were still largely impracticable, since whole blood had a shelf life of only one week.

In 1938, as a Rockefeller Fellow at Columbia University’s Presbyterian Hospital in NYC, Dr. Drew studied the storage and distribution of donated blood, and developed new and practical methods to separate blood plasma so that it had a shelf life of two months. Though the plasma couldn’t carry oxygen as effectively as whole blood, it was invaluable to victims of trauma. After completing his dissertation, “Banked Blood: A Study in Blood Preservation,” Richard Drew was tapped by the US government in 1940 to be the medical director of the Blood for Britain campaign. This campaign began when Great Britain was suffering the effects of heavy bombing from the German Luftwaffe. The United States knew it was only a matter of time before America entered the war and could benefit from having the infrastructure and know-how in place to ship blood products overseas.

The following year, when the Blood for Britain campaign finished, the US Red Cross recruited Dr. Drew to start a pilot program for blood collection and distribution that included community donation centers like store fronts, factory floors and “bloodmobiles,” which became one of Dr. Drew’s defining innovations. But not long after his appointment, Dr. Richard Drew felt compelled to resign from the Red Cross. At the behest of the racially segregated US military, in 1942, the organization implemented a policy to identify and segregate all collected blood units by race, to ensure that a white patient would never receive blood from a black donor. Upon his resignation, Dr. Drew boiled his objections down to three reasons: 1) an official department of the government should not willfully humiliate its citizens 2) there was no scientific basis for the practice, and 3) US soldiers needed the blood. He returned to his home city of Washington, DC to be chief surgeon at Freedmen’s Hospital.

While continuing to research and advocate for change, Dr. Drew became a sought-after speaker. One of his very first speaking engagements in May of 1942, was in Shreveport, Louisiana, when he spoke at the annual conference of the Louisiana Medical, Dental, and Pharmaceutical Association. Later known as the Louisiana Medical Association, this organization was Louisiana’s African-American medical professional association.

1942 was also the year when the Shreveport Memorial Blood Bank (now LifeShare Blood Center) opened to serve northwest Louisiana as one of the country’s first community blood banks, using their own blood banking machine, a dried plasma system. Blood collected there was intended for homefront use by local hospitals, and was banked in case of a regional emergency. The Red Cross continued its collection for wartime use at its collection centers in major cities. By the time of the Korean War, however, this wartime collection for military use had expanded to Northwest Louisiana, anchored by a blood center in the science building at Centenary college in Shreveport.

A blood mobile unit operated from the blood donation center at Centenary, and Bossier City was proud to be the recipient of this mobile unit’s very first trip when it stationed itself at Bossier High School on January 11th, 1952. The visit was coordinated by V.V Whittington, president of the Bossier Bank and Trust Company. By then the Red Cross had ended its policy to require segregated blood donations, having done so by 1950. Following the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Louisiana was the last state to overturn blood segregation requirements in 1972.

If you have local World War II, medical history or other family photos or stories to share (we will also scan and return originals if that is your preference), please visit or contact us at the History Center. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive (formerly called 850 City Hall Drive) just across Beckett Street from the old Central Library and History Center in Bossier City, LA. All Bossier Parish Libraries locations will be closed Wednesday, 1/1/2025. Normal operating hours for Bossier Central Library and History Center are M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Charles R. Drew, MD postage stamp, 1985, courtesy of the National Postal Museum, Smithsonian Institution.
• “American Blood for British Air Raid Victims,” 8 January 1941. Courtesy of the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center Howard University, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. Charles R. Drew Papers. https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/101584649X42.
• Blood Drive sponsorship, The Planters Press, 1 February, 1945.

Article by: Pam Carlisle 

Mysterious Disappearance of Barksdale General and Airmen Still Unsolved

Throughout history there have been many intriguing and mysterious disappearances that remain unsolved such as the Lost Colony of Roanoke, the crew of the Mary Celeste, Amelia Earhart, and the men of Flight 19. One such disappearance has ties to Barksdale Air Force Base, and, although not as well-known as these more famous cases, it nonetheless is still mystifying 74 years after it happened.

In early 1951, the U.S. Air Force’s Strategic Air Command (SAC) established the 7th Air Division and assigned it to England to help counter the growing threat from the Soviet Union. SAC bombers stationed there could serve as a deterrent to Soviet hostilities. Brigadier General Paul Cullen was chosen to command the division and oversee its operations.

Born in 1901, Cullen joined the military at a time when aviation was still developing. According to his official Air Force biography, he entered service as a flying cadet in June, 1928. Only a year earlier, Charles Lindbergh had become the first person to fly solo, nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean. Cullen would become proficient in photo reconnaissance, and his biography states that, among his career achievements, he commanded the Air Force Photo Unit during Operation Crossroads, the atom bomb tests conducted just after World War II.

Cullen’s association with Barksdale came as commander and later vice commander of the 2nd Air Force, which was headquartered at the base beginning in 1949. And it was at Barksdale that Cullen boarded the flight which would carry him and 52 others into the unknown.

The Douglas C-124 Globemaster II departed Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico on March 21, 1951 and flew to Barksdale where Brig. Gen. Cullen and his staff joined the other passengers, which included experts in various air defense operations. England was their destination where Cullen would take charge of the 7th. According to Flying Magazine, the Globemaster was an aircraft which “tended to shake a lot, even in calm skies, earning it the nickname ‘Old Shaky.’” It was in these somewhat uncomfortable conditions that the flight made a brief refueling stop in Maine before heading out over the open North Atlantic on Friday, March 23rd. Checking in with weather ships along the route, the flight’s radio operator reported the plane’s position Friday evening as being approximately 800 miles from the coast of Ireland. All seemed to be going well, but that suddenly changed.

An article titled “Last Flight, the Missing Airmen, March 1951” on the Walker Aviation Museum website states that the C-124 gave out a mayday call, reporting a fire in the cargo crates and saying that the plane would have to set down in the ocean. “The aircraft was intact when it touched down,” according to the website. “All hands exited the aircraft wearing life preservers and climbed into inflated 5-man life rafts. The rafts were equipped with cold weather gear, food, water, flares, and … hand-crank emergency radios.” Having survived the forced water landing, the crew and passengers awaited rescue. It came too late.

An Air Force B-29 was sent from England and located the men and circled their position, but had to return to base after running low on fuel. According to the Walker Aviation Museum website, “Not one ship or a single aircraft returned to the position … until Sunday, the 25th of March, 1951.” When help did come, rescuers found nothing other than “some charred crates and a partially deflated life raft,” the website states. The 53 men were gone, vanished without a trace. A search lasting several days proved futile.

Despite the passage of time, answers to the mystery of what happened to Cullen and the others haven’t been forthcoming. Could a sudden storm have created rough seas that swamped the life rafts? Did the Russians, as some have speculated, snatch the men? The website for the Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives states that “… it was revealed that Soviet submarines and surface vessels were active in the area.” The website also notes, “Due to their expertise in nuclear and other defense matters, Cullen and the other men on the airplane would have been an intelligence windfall to the Soviets.”

Questions have been asked about the delay in help arriving. Could the men have been saved if rescue had come sooner? Perhaps one day, we’ll know. Perhaps a long-secret document will come to light that will provide some sense of closure for the men’s families. For now, the “Last Flight” article may sum up the situation best. “We do not know what fate befell these men,” it states.

If you have any photos or other information relating to Bossier Parish history, the History Center may be interested in adding the materials to its research collection by donation or by scanning them and returning the originals. Call or visit us to learn more. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org. We can also be found online at https://www.facebook.com/BPLHistoryCenter/ and http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/

Images: 

• Brigadier General Paul Cullen/courtesy United States Air Force 
• C-124 Globemaster II/courtesy United States Air Force

Article: Kevin Flowers

What’s in a Name: Tycoons or Plain Dealers?

Happy New Year – it’s the first day of 2025! Have you come up with your New Year’s resolutions? If you’re the trendy type, perhaps you’ve eschewed New Year’s resolutions for a business or even personal “rebranding.” Let’s take a look at a historical rebranding in Bossier, when the community of Guernshein became known as the town of Plain Dealing in 1890. The names themselves represented two very different images of life in America in the late twentieth century.  

The name Plain Dealing came from the expansive cotton plantation (5000 acres) owned by James Oglethorpe Gilmer, whose land became the subdivided site for the town. The name was meant to represent Gilmer’s honesty to potential cotton traders and represented a more agrarian society. 

In the 1880s, prior to Plain Dealing’s incorporation, but when its train depot for the Cotton Belt Railroad was already built and busy and the subdivision home lots were being sold, the community was named Guernshein or Gernshein. According to local histories, the name was for a prominent railroad investor, sometimes noted as an investor in the Jay Gould railroad syndicate (of which the Cotton Belt eventually became a part). 

Jay Gould controlled railroads from coast to coast by sometimes underhanded (to put it mildly) tactics. He was known as one of the original Robber Barons, or less-scrupulous titans of industry of the Gilded Age. The Gilded Age in U.S. history, from the late 1870s to the early 1900s, was a time of great industrial growth and accumulation of massive and ostentatious new wealth among industrial owners. It was also a time of growing economic inequality and of political corruption. Railroads that Gould owned included the Missouri Pacific railroad, the St. Louis and Iron Mountain, the International and Great Northern, the Richmond Terminal, the Texas Pacific, the Union Pacific, the Wabash, the St. Louis Southwestern (the official name of the Cotton Belt), and the Manhattan Elevated Railroad. He also owned the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, and the Western Union Telegraph Company.

       

                                           

Gernshein himself was not identified in Plain Dealing histories beyond his last name and the simple description of “railroad investor”, but research into railroad investors of the time points to Michael Gernshein (spellings varied) of Manhattan, New York City. He was a German immigrant who worked as a banker, stockbroker, and railroad investor. He was an early general partner (from 1875 – 1881) of the most influential investment banking house of the Gilded Age in New York - Kuhn, Loeb and Company. It was a major competitor of the J.P. Morgan Company in financing America's swiftly growing railroad industry. The bank has since merged with Lehman brothers, and later with American Express.

 

Despite changing its name from Gernshein, which harkened back to its railroad, and not its agrarian roots, Plain Dealing’s history with the railroad was inextricably linked. The young town prospered due to its connection to the Cotton Belt. Ornate Victorian homes sprung up in the town in an area previously known for simple, practical dog-trot style log cabins (with two living areas separated by a wide-open hallway) and it became the site of the parish’s first brick building, Plain Dealing High School. The first high school building was actually funded by the vice-president of the Cotton Belt, S.J. Zeigler, whose daughter was among its first pupils. 

From the staff of the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center, we wish you all a happy New Year. If you have any information, stories, or photos of old Plain Dealing or other communities in Bossier Parish, we would love to add them (or scanned copies) to our History Center’s research collection. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive (formerly called 850 City Hall Drive) just across Beckett Street from the old Central Library and History Center in Bossier City, LA. All Bossier Parish Libraries locations will be closed Wednesday, 1/1/2025. Normal operating hours for Bossier Central Library and History Center are M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Jay Gould clipping from Bossier Banner-Progress   January 27, 1887
• Bond of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway Company 1891 Image By Edhac-Edham - Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53837122
• Map of the St. Louis Southwestern Railway (Cotton Belt) system as of 1918, with trackage rights in purple.  modified 2008 from Bureau of Transportation Statistics North American Transportation Atlas Data). Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5283506
• Lyndhurst, Jason (Jay) Gould mansion, Tarrytown, NY, Photo by Elisa Rolle, Shared under the Creative Commons license https://creativecommons.org/

Article by: Pam Carlisle

A Snowed-in SAC Christmas, 1968

The goal to be home for Christmas was almost just a dream for the more than a thousand drivers and passengers caught in Cozad, Nebraska in a crippling Christmastime blizzard in 1968. The small southcentral Nebraska town of Cozad lived up to the reputation for midwestern friendliness, and pitched in to help the stranded travelers of all ages from all parts of the country. Though nothing about the unplanned overnight with kind strangers was planned or expected, some of the stranded travelers got extra-unusual accommodations on the night of December 22, 1968. They climbed aboard an RBS (Radar Bomb Scoring) Express train, a train that was sent across the country for a decade under the 1st Combat Evaluation Group at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana to train bomb crews for the Strategic Air Command (SAC).

The Strategic Air Command was established in 1946 to deter nuclear warfare by making the threat of U.S. retaliation believable and ever-present. SAC was the US Air Force’s plan to show a rival superpower, chiefly the rapidly expanding Soviet Union, that the U.S. was in a perpetual state of readiness to launch a major counterattack (within a mere 15 minutes) in the event of a missile attack. The goal was to a create a détente, or state of preserving the peace despite continued hostilities.

For measurable practice conducting targeted missile drops, SAC had radar bomb scoring (RBS) sites at set locations around the country. Under General Curtis LeMay, SAC bomber crews trained constantly. It didn’t take long before the fixed targets became comfortably familiar to the crews, making training sessions less challenging with each go. RBS units on modified trains were the answer to keeping these vital training sessions fresh.

The three “RBS Express” trains were under the command of the 1st Combat Evaluation Group at Louisiana’s Barksdale Air Force Base beginning in 1961. These trains could move RBS training sites to anywhere with a siding, a short section of track that allows a train to pull off the main line. The trains could stay in one location for up to 6 months and carried a crew of 60 Air Force personnel. They were comprised of 4 radar cars, which were flat cars with vans and training equipment such as ground radar, computers, and electronics, plus 17 support cars. These included a generator car, two box cars for maintenance, a dining car, two day-room cars, supply cars, an administration car and 4 Pullman-style sleeper cars. The sleeper cars contained 4x7 foot ‘rooms’ with a fold-up bunk that doubled as a table, a closet, and a large picture window, with darkening curtains for those who worked the night shift. In the center of the Pullman cars were toilets, showers, and a laundry area.

On the night of December 22, 1968, as reported in the January 3, 1969 Observer, a Bossier City-based newspaper for Barksdale Air Force Base, a blizzard raged through south and central Nebraska (and other parts of the Great Plains) that tied up holiday road traffic for miles in all directions. The local police requested help from Lt. Col. Fred Davidson, commander of the RBS Express that had located just west of Cozad, Nebraska on US Highway 30 (which ran parallel and not far from interstate 80). Davidson welcomed 33 stranded passengers aboard the train. The youngest was a 2-month old baby.

The civilian guests came aboard the RBS train at dinnertime, so they were fed a meal from the train’s galley, shown the movie Dr. Zhivago, and given a presentation on the mission and operations of the RBS Express. This latter activity, at least, was common for the train’s crew, which frequently hosted tours to both top military brass and local students. Since the day was a Sunday and Protestant Chaplain from Nebraska’s Offutt AFB, Major J.E. Davis, happened to be on board, there was a church service for crew and visitors alike. Overnight, the guests were given sleeping accommodations in the train’s sleeping cars.

Space was ample (by railroad standards, anyway) since most of the RBS Express crew was also traveling for the holiday. The next morning, the weather had cleared enough that the guests were able to continue their travels.

An article in the newspaper The Cozad Local on Wednesday, January 1, 1969, reported that one of the RBS Express train guests, Tom Lyon of Colorado Springs, Colorado had already returned to Cozad “to see what it was like without a blizzard in progress.” More pressing, perhaps, was that he stopped by the newspaper’s office to both express his appreciation for the “impressive” hospitality shown him on the train, and to pick up the Local’s blizzard issue, since no one back home believed his story about having to spend the night on a USAF Strategic Air Command train!

From the staff of the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center, we wish you all the best this Christmas and holiday season. If you have any information, stories, or photos about Christmas and other holiday traditions in Bossier Parish, we would love to add them (or scanned copies) to our History Center’s research collection. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive (formerly called 850 City Hall Drive) just across Beckett Street from the old Central Library and History Center in Bossier City, LA. All Bossier Parish Libraries locations will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, 12/24 and 12/25. Normal operating hours for Bossier Central Library and History Center are M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images:

• RBS Train 1962, Barksdale AFB. Photo courtesy of the Don Ross of Don's Depot Rail photos.
• Emblem of the 1st Combat Evaluation Group of the Force USAF, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
• Omaha World-Herald photo showing a five-car smashup on Interstate 80 east of Waco, NE, as seen in the US Dept. of Commerce ESSA Weather Bureau Central Region Technical Attachment, The Snow, the Cold, and the Flood Potential, Upper Midwest, Winter and Spring 1968-1969

Article by: Pam Carlisle

Holiday Viands (Good Food!) in Old Bossier

During the holiday season in Bossier Parish, delicious food is always on the menu. From the parish formation in 1843 to today, treasured recipes are the backbone of family gatherings and community events. Newspaper articles from the 19th century are full of words and delicacies we might not recognize now, but the celebratory spirit and impulse to gather with special friends and family and favorite foods remain.

Rupert Peyton, newspaperman and a recorder of Bossier Parish history, was born in 1899 in Webster Parish and grew up as a child and young man on a farm in the Plain Dealing area of north Bossier Parish. He recalled, “Of all the seasons of the year Christmas time was the most enjoyable. Though we seldom received many presents such as toys, we always had plenty of good things to eat, oranges, apples and candies. It was also the time for feasting on such things as roast turkey, cakes and pies. It also meant family reunions. We usually gathered for Christmas day at some relative’s home there to play and enjoy ourselves with our many cousins … Eggnog was one of the delights of the day for both old and young. The older folks would spike the nog with whiskey, which they drank and it added to the gayety of the occasion. We children, however, got no whiskey in our nog, it was served to us unspiked, but that made little difference with us children.”

For 19th century Bossier Parish residents, Christmas eve was an especially celebratory time. Clare M. Nelson wrote in her August 28, 1987 independent study paper, “Christmas Customs of the Northwest Louisiana Pioneers, 1850-1880,“ that following a night of dancing, which rarely ended before midnight, “Christmas morning came early and usually brought visits from friends and family.” These visitors enjoyed eggnog offered by hosts and hostesses.

Ms. Nelson continued that the main Christmas meal was served at mid-day. It included the usual fare of meat, vegetables, relishes such as chow-chow (made typically from pickled, chopped green tomatoes, onions, cabbage, and seasonal peppers or other vegetables), cucumber pickles, and pickled peaches. Cornbread and “beaten biscuits” (that were more like a slightly soft cracker than the fluffy, airy biscuits popular today) were eaten with freshly-churned butter. She pointed out that oysters were a special Christmas treat and therefore a popular hostess gift.

The desserts would include cakes, puddings and pies. As an example of the ingenuity of nineteenth century homemakers, “vinegar pie” would be made when no fruit was available or affordable and were said to taste remarkably like lemon pie. The most delighted-in cake might be the fresh coconut cake. Since they cost as much as an extravagant ten cents each, coconuts were also a special Christmas present. After the milk had been drained from the coconut and the meat grated for a cake, the shell was carefully saved and used as a dipper bowl or an ornament.

A tongue-in-cheek article in the Shreveport Times of January 18, 1883, which began with the premise that remote Bellevue, the parish seat until 1888, “is the Paris of Bossier Parish,” remarked that the town earned its high-tone reputation for its renowned whiskey. The article continued the story of Bellevue with less mockery when it described Bellevue’s “Holiday Week,” which exemplified many of the traditions described among the “Christmas Customs” article, above:

“On Thursday night (likely December 20th) the ladies gave a church fair in the courthouse. They had a great many tables filled with choice viands (a fancy, archaic word for fancy foods) of every description; also, an abundance of presents or gifts, alluring to the eye but very painful to the purse….The big ball that followed the fair was attended by some of the fairest ladies in Bossier and Webster. She whose rosy lips had been dallying with a pound or so of salad, nuts and cakes a few minutes ago, was now whirling gracefully in the mazy waltz, coquetting behind her fan with auburn haired gentleman who erstwhile had ravenously tackled a turkey, etc. The enchanting strains of the Bellevue string band infused with life and gaiety everyone present, and upon the midnight air the sounds of revelry and joy broke, and youth and beauty and innocence reigned supreme.”

From the staff of the Bossier Parish Libraries History Center, we wish you all the best this Christmas and holiday season. If you have any information, stories, or photos about Christmas and other holiday traditions in Bossier Parish, we would love to add them (or scanned copies) to our History Center’s research collection. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive (formerly called 850 City Hall Drive) just across Beckett Street from the old Central Library and History Center in Bossier City, LA. All Bossier Parish Libraries locations will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, 12/24 and 12/25. Normal operating hours for Bossier Central Library and History Center are M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org

For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.

Images: 

• Photo of beaten biscuits, which were traditionally made by literally beating the dough against something hard (like a tree stump) with any number of tools at-hand, like a hammer or sideways axe. Photo by Stuart Spivack from Cleveland, Ohio, USA - Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7587136.
• Rupert Peyton, who once wrote for the Shreveport Journal, the Bossier Press and the Bossier Tribune and other local publications.
• Picture of Bellevue, C 1900 - 1910.

Article by: Pam Carlisle