ABSTRACT
The ways in which African American inchoate understandings of disability had developed alongside the rising tide of black campaigns waged against unemployment and housing displacement during the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s provide us with a critical chapter for examining the Modern Civil Rights Movement that has been largely unwritten until now. Not only that, but the black struggle for equality took place in some of the most unlikely of places in the Northeast and had engaged the energies of one of its most committed constituents. Consider Hartford, Connecticut, and the activities of Vasco Hale in the late 1940s, for instance. In January of 1948, members of the Hartford Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) arranged a radio program to discuss the pressing living conditions that African Americans faced in the city. During the half-hour segment, city dwellers from all walks of life heard remarks made by then Mayor Cyril Coleman followed by NAACP Executive Secretary Walter White. Piped in from the New York City National Office, White spoke of his personal experiences with racial discrimination and the bouts of prejudice encountered by black people all across the country. At the end of his address, however, the NAACP head threw down a gauntlet of sorts when he specifically called attention to the housing conditions in Hartford and the need for its membership to strengthen its forces in order to wage their fight on the local level. 1
Hundreds of Hartford NAACP members heard White’s message of unity and struggle, which resulted in renewed efforts by the branch to reevaluate the structure of the organization and the techniques used to gain access to adequate housing. Among the members who engaged in such a reorienting process was Vasco Hale-a relatively recent newcomer to the Insurance City. A former mathematics schoolteacher, Hale left his hometown in West Virginia in 1942 to join the military and enlisted in the U.S. Army before attending Officers Candidate School at Fort
Belvoir, Virginia. After becoming a commissioned officer, he reported to Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where he was assigned to the all-black U.S. Ninety-third Infantry Division. Two months later, the division travelled to Louisiana in the spring of 1943 to participate in maneuvers with the Third Army. That May, his military career reached new heights when the Army promoted Hale to first lieutenant and subsequently assigned him as the executive officer to Company C of the division’s 318th Engineering Battalion during its desert training at Camp Clipper, California. There, he took on the job of acquainting new division members in live grenade throwing. By the fall of 1943, Hale had earned a reputation among his men in his unit as a brilliant, determined, and soft-spoken leader.
