The famous letter (Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942)
James Gratz Thompson (born 1915, age 26)
Career details on Thompson
- James G. Thompson came to Pittsburgh in late 1942 to help coordinate Double V campaign for the Courier before enlisting in US Army where he served from 1943 to 1946, along with more than one million other African Americans. Thompson served both stateside and overseas, with tours of duty in the India-Burma theater.
- Married Erma Hortense Britt in 1944 in San Bernadino, CA and lived in Los Angeles California, working for a time as a salesman for a vacuum company while she was a typist. They appear to have divorced in the 1960s.
- In 1950, Thompson was denied a pension because he had enlisted from Pennsylvania without being resident long enough.
Thompson’s rejected 1950 pension application (Ancestry.com)
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Thompson, age 54
In 1969, J. Gratz Thompson was named as a coordinator for the Human Resources Corporation in Kansas City, MO after recently serving as a youth supervisor at a local boys home and as a substitute teacher. The article called him a newspaperman, included a photo, and stated that he had most recently worked on the news desk of the Las Vegas Sun. No mention of the Double V campaign.
- James G. Thompson died in Wichita in 1999. His death notice in the Wichita Eagle, October 15, 1999, listed him as journalist but made no mention of the Double V campaign.
