Fine grouping of material related to an identified African American World War I soldier, Sherman Terry. The lot includes a handwritten letter from Terry to his parents and an accompanying photograph of him with another African American soldier.

The letter was written in May, 1917 from Camp Sherman, a large Army training facility in Chillicothe, Ohio. Terry shares news from camp with his parents in Cleveland. Terry describes the segregated nature of his barracks, noting that “Cleveland boys are still coming to the camp, ten or more at a time” while “lots of white men have left the camp for Little Rock, Arkansas.” He notes that he is on the football team, and requests that his parents send him a small bag for his personal belongings (which he helpfully sketched in the letter). His upbeat prose suggests a young man really enjoying Army life.

An accompanying picture depicts two African American doughboys, one of which presumably is Terry, standing on the porch of a building on an army base. An American flag is hangs from the porch railing to simulate patriotic bunting, and a sign propped below them reads “Where Do We Go From Here?,” a possible reference to a popular song from the period. The two men radiate pride, clad in their smart new uniforms.

According to military records, Sherman Terry lived at 2223 E. 37th Street, Cleveland Ohio at the time he enlisted- the same address listed on the letter’s accompanying envelope. Terry, who was 21 in 1917, was employed as a chauffeur for the Lederer Furniture Company when he left his parents’ home to enlist. He described himself as ‘tall’ and ‘stout’. Assigned to the 365th Infantry, a historic African American unit, Terry would eventually be sent to fight in France and rose to the rank of sergeant. He survived the campaign and returned to his parents’ home in Cleveland, receiving an honorable discharge in 1919. Terry married, found work as a machinist and raised three children in the same house on 37th Street. He died in 1967 and is buried beneath a military headstone in Highland Park cemetery. This is a wonderful slice of African American life in the early 20th century.




[African-American History, Slave, Slavery, Abolition, Abolitionist, Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln, Civil War, Union, Confederate, Document, Letter] [Civil Rights, Martin Luther King Jr.] [Paper Ephemera] [Spanish American War, Span Am, World War One, World War 1, WW1, World War Two, World War II, WW2]