Carter, Edward Allen Jr.
1916-1963 · Contribution: 1945-1997
Received the Medal of Honor posthumously in 1997 for extraordinary heroism near Speyer, Germany, in March 1945 — one of seven Black WWII veterans honored after a 1990s Army-commissioned study confirmed systemic racial discrimination had denied Black soldiers fair consideration for the medal
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Impact on the world
Volunteering to lead a three-man patrol across open ground toward a German-held warehouse near Speyer on March 23, 1945, Carter watched two of his men killed and continued alone, sustaining five wounds before eight German soldiers attempted to capture him; he killed six of them and took the remaining two prisoner, using them as human shields to fight his way back to friendly lines with valuable intelligence on enemy positions. Commanders considered him for the Medal of Honor at the time but awarded only the Distinguished Service Cross out of concern the higher honor would not be approved for a Black soldier; the same 1993-96 Shaw University study that recognized Vernon Baker, already profiled in this collection, identified Carter's case for posthumous upgrade, and on January 13, 1997, his son accepted the Medal of Honor from President Clinton on his behalf.
Life & background
Born May 26, 1916, in Los Angeles to missionary parents — an African American father and an Anglo-Indian mother from Calcutta — Carter was raised in India and Shanghai, becoming fluent in Hindi, Mandarin, English, and German; at 15 he ran away to fight with the Chinese Nationalist Army against the invading Japanese in 1932, reaching the rank of lieutenant before being discharged for being underage. He later fought fascism in Spain with the multinational Abraham Lincoln Brigade before enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1941, rising to staff sergeant, then voluntarily surrendering his rank to join a newly formed Black combat infantry platoon after the Battle of the Bulge created a manpower shortage. After the war, his prior service in China and with the leftist Lincoln Brigade triggered Cold War-era suspicion of communist sympathies, and the Army denied his 1949 re-enlistment despite his combat record, costing him civilian jobs as well; he died of lung cancer, attributed to shrapnel remaining in his neck, on January 30, 1963, in Los Angeles. In 1999 the Army formally apologized to his family and corrected his discharge records, and he was reinterred with full honors at Arlington National Cemetery.
Sources
- National Park Service; National WWII Museum; BlackPast.org; Congressional Medal of Honor Society
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