Morgan Maxwell Jr. can still remember when Fort Huachuca Mountain View Colored Officers Club was built back in 1942 because African-Americans weren’t welcome in the same room as white officers.
“There was a white officers’ club and a black officers’ club,” Maxwell says. “Just like there was a colored officers’ swimming pool and a white officers’ swimming pool.”
Maxwell, 84, has seen a lot change when it comes to segregation in America. He grew up as the son of the Morgan Maxwell, who served as principal of Dunbar School, which was built to educate Tucson’s black students, who were not allowed to attend elementary and middle schools in Tucson.
Because hotels and motels refused to rent rooms to blacks in Tucson, his father often put up soldiers at his home.
“In Mexico, we were more welcome,” Maxwell remembers. “We could go to Aqua Prieta or Nogales and have a beer. In Tucson they wouldn’t let any black officers stay in the hotels.”
Maxwell was among those on hand last week at a press conference to call attention to the threat of demolition facing the Mountain View Black Officers’ Club. The building made the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of America’s 11 Most Endangered Historic Places last week. Among the other landmarks on the list: Houston’s Astrodome, Gay Head Lighthouse in Martha’s Vineyard and the historic rural schoolhouses of Montana.
The National Trust noted in a press release that the Mountain View club “is one of the most significant remaining examples of a World War II-era military service club in the United States built specifically for African-American servicemen and women.”
Until a few years ago, the Mountain View Colored Officers Club had been leased to a local chapter of the Buffalo Soldiers, which had undertaken efforts to restore the building. But the U.S. Army declined to renew the lease and is considering adding the building to a list of structures scheduled for demolition. An Army Corps of Engineers study determined there was not enough historical value to the building to make it worth saving.
But members of the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation nominated the building for the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s endangered list.
Retired general Julius Parker wants to see the building saved.
“To some, the Mountain View Officers’ Club is an old, splintered WWII building that has no relevance in our society, but to me it is an integral part of the history of the United States Army and America,” said Parker. “The preservation of this structure … will acknowledge the fact that, even during the darkest days of this country’s racial evolution, blacks remained loyal to this country and continued to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
The effort to save the building also got a boost last week from former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, retired astronaut Mark Kelly.
“The building symbolizes patriotism in the face of the ongoing struggle against racism,” the couple wrote in a letter. “This building celebrates and honors Black military history by linking the past to the present so it can be remembered and treasured by future generations. The ‘Mountain View Colored Officers’ Club’ deserves designation as a national landmark and monument as a record in its own right, and as a tribute to the men and women who heroically served there.”
Maxwell says it’s “terrible” that the building could be demolished.
“I certainly hope they will save it,” Maxwell says. “It is true Arizona and American history. Why not show our true history? Why try to hide it?”
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2013.
The Mountain View Officers Club is a building of great historical significance and should be saved. Few are aware today of the “separate but unequal” American armed forces which went to war in the 1940s to fight fascism but didn’t live up to the ideals they were fighting for. Black men were conidered by most white politicians and generals as unfit to fight – they were used mostly as truck driver, laborers and stevedores. The two combat divisions that were formed from black troops – the 92nd and 93rd – trained at Fort Huachuca before being deployed to Europe (92nd) and the Pacific (93rd). Although Fort Huachuca has a fine museum that does a very good job of telling the story of the contribution of black fighting men, the Mountain View Club elaborates on that story. There is another important military landmark in Cochise County that needs public support: Camp Naco, located right on the border south of Bisbee, is an intact adobe army fort built in 1919 and garrisoned largely by black troops during its existence as an active post during the Mexican revolution and subsequent period of turmoil, to protect nearby communities from border incursions. The post, now owned by Huachuca City, is being stabilized and slowly restored by dedicated volunteers under the auspices of the non-profit agencies Naco Heritage Alliance and Archaeology Southwest. Camp Naco and the Mountain View Officers Club are representative of an important part of American history that has long been overlooked.
Yes this history should be preserved, although this being Arizona I doubt that will occur. We grew up knowing the Maxwell family one that we were proud of. The history of AAs in Arizona continues to be erased each decade and soon will be forgotton. The Tucson Community Center demolished Black businesses in the heart of Tucson; there were boarding houses, barber shops, dry cleaners, a myriad of commercial enterprises. Whatever chance there may have been for AAs to reinvest, Grijalva ruined it by insisting on having the sports complex on Ajo. C’est la vie