black market

Soldier convicted for diverting American supplies to French black market.

Wilson Daily Times, 26 December 1944.

A Turner Harris registered for the World War II draft in Union County, Pennsylvania, in May 1945, and his registration card was sent to a local draft board in Washington, D.C. Harris was born 8 September 1923 in Rocky Mountain [sic; Mount], North Carolina; lived at 67 N Street N.W., Washington; and his contact was mother Maggie Whitehead. However, if this is the man the Times speculated about when “it was learned later,” the paper seems to have placed blame on the wrong Turner Harris. The Turner Harris whose family moved to Washington, D.C., did not register for the draft until five months after Harris the black marketeer was convicted and sentenced to 30 years.

However, records of United States Army Enlistments, found online at Ancestry.com, show that a Turner Harris, born in 1922, resident of Wilson, N.C., enlisted at Fort Bragg, N.C., on 3 June 1941. I have found no other details of his service.