"I often wonder what happened to my men I spent all that time with." (Video Interview, 28:34)

Roscoe Tyson Spann

Roscoe Spann at time of service War: World War II, 1939-1946 Branch: Army Unit: 92nd Infantry Division ("Buffalo"); 93rd Infantry Division Service Location: Fort Huachuca, Arizona Rank: First Lieutenant Place of Birth: Mounds, IL

Roscoe Spann was in medical school in 1941 when his local draft board notified him. Feeling that his education to be a doctor was more important, he managed for six months to ignore the notice, but the FBI finally caught up to him. He decided to make the most of his service and attended Officer Candidate School at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where he confronted segregated conditions. Assigned to Ft. Huachuca to train troops of the 92nd and 93rd Divisions, Spann was told he was too good a trainer to be assigned overseas. He spent most of the war in the Arizona desert, where a cold war between black and white officers never thawed. Spann was court-martialed for striking a white officer, and though he was found guilty, he was given a promotion several months later. A request by him and his fellow officers to meet with General Benjamin O. Davis, the highest ranking black officer in the Army, failed to ease the tensions.