VETERAN LOOKING FOR JUSTICE

By Keith Landry
Reporter, FOX 35 NEWS
Orlando, FL

LEESBURG, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35, Orlando) – 83 year old Samuel Snow’s story is about justice taking a lifetime to come around.

The Leesburg veteran is still fighting to get it after a segregated U.S. Army made a mistake on his records that hurt him his whole life.

Snow served in a segregated U.S Army during World War Two when he was twenty years old. There were separate barracks and separate mess halls.

“I went from a segregated community to a segregated army,” Snow said. “The Army did the same thing. They treated me bad, and they pushed me down.”

He was stationed at Fort Lawton near Seattle in 1944. A riot broke out between African American soldiers and Italian POW’s. The U.S. Government blamed Snow and twenty-seven black soldiers for the riot. He spent fifteen months in a military jail, waiting for justice.

“I was thinking something’s going to happen,” Snow said. “I’m going to get out.”

The military gave him a dishonorable discharge, and it followed him his whole life. It affected housing, loans and jobs. He spent most of his life working on farms.

“It hurt my life all through,” Snow said. “Because there was nothing I could do. I had no privileges.”

The U.S. Treasury sent him a check last October for $725 for his time in jail. Snow stuck it in a drawer.

”I can get along without it,” he said. “If they don’t want to do more than that they can keep it.”

Snow hopes the government will send him military back pay and retirement funds to right the wrongs, heaped on a man who simply tried to serve America.

Twenty-eight African American soldiers were blamed for taking part in that riot back in 1944. They have all died except Mr. Snow and one other soldier.

Florida Senator Bill Nelson is trying to get the U.S. Government to pay Snow $88,000. That would include interest on the money he would have earned through the years.

Senator Nelson says it may take an act of Congress to get it done, and he’s sponsoring legislation to do it.