Wrongly Accused WWII Vet Finally Gets an Apology

Photo by Richard Patterson

Samuel Snow waited 63 years for the Army to admit it had wrongly convicted him and 27 other black soldiers in the 1944 lynching death of an Italian POW in Seattle. In July, hours after finally getting an official apology from the Army and his honorable discharge, the Leesburg, Fla., resident died at 83.

Snow had steadfastly refused to cash a $725 check for wages lost while in a military jail for 15 months.

"What mattered to him was getting an honorable discharge,” says journalist Jack Hamann, who wrote about Snow’s case in the book On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II. “I don’t think it was accidental that he died so soon after getting it.”