A bit of casual racism

A terrible story of American racism from the end of World War 2 in the Washington Post.   Here's a gift  link.

The basics:

About two weeks after the end of World War II in Europe, French women were serving U.S. soldiers coffee and doughnuts in a Red Cross tent in France. Two Black soldiers went inside to get some.

This was a breach of norms: In a segregated army, many White American soldiers did not want Black men talking to French women.

The Black soldiers — Allen Leftridge and Frank Glenn — were challenged by a White sergeant, according to a witness. When a White armed guard arrived, he fatally shot the two men. A third soldier — a White man just released from a German prison camp who was not named in documents related to the incident — was caught in the crossfire and killed, a newspaper from the time reported.

Now, there was a court martial, but they acquitted.  

On the most "generous" reading, a fight broke out and the guard acted in self defence;  but it remains hard to believe that he would have been so trigger happy in a fight with a white soldier.  Or, of course, that a white soldier would be in trouble for talking to a white woman.