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Burying Sergeant Rice: Racial Justice and Native American Rights in the Truman Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2004

DEAN J. KOTLOWSKI
DEAN J. KOTLOWSKI
Affiliation:
Salisbury University, Maryland 21801, USA.
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Abstract

“A disgrace to the State of Iowa”, moaned the Des Moines Register concerning the events that had transpired at Sioux City's Memorial Park Cemetery. On 28 August 1951, mourners had departed after paying their last respects to Sergeant First Class John Raymond Rice, an eleven-year veteran of the United States Army who had been killed in the Korean War, when cemetery officials halted the burial before the casket had entered the earth. Lots at Memorial Park, it turned out, had clauses in their contracts restricting burial to Caucasians, and Rice was Native American, a member of the Winnebago tribe. The insult enraged many Americans, including President Harry S. Truman, who soon arranged for the soldier's burial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , August 2004 , pp. 199 - 225
Copyright
2004 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

Research for this article was made possible through grants from the Harry S. Truman Library Institute in Independence, Missouri and the Charles R. and Martha Fulton School of Liberal Arts at Salisbury University. For their counsel and helpful comments, the author thanks Terry Anderson, Dean J. Fafoutis, George “Buzz” Gering, Ricky Earl Newport, Elizabeth Ragan, Polly Stewart, and G. Ray Thompson. He also thanks Elizabeth Safly and Dennis E. Bilger for their friendly assistance with collections at the Harry S. Truman Library.