“There are some customs in the U.S. which are stronger than laws”

This article examines a little-known fight by African American veterans to desegregate the Pennsylvania National Guard from 1920 to 1948. This narrative follows the life of DeHaven Hinkson, a Philadelphia doctor, veteran, and one of the driving forces behind the movement. Building on scholarship of post–World War I activism and the Long Civil Rights Movement, this article demonstrates the need for scholars to consider not only widespread and national civil rights activism, but also the local and more traditional movements as influential in breaking the grip of Jim Crow on the United States. This article also suggests the need to examine conservative African American efforts at obtaining civil rights and how that conservatism remained a part of civil rights activism beyond the 1940s

Civil rights · Conservatism · Guard (computer science) · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Spanish Civil War · Law · Race, History, and American Society