Download or read book The African American Experience during World War II written by Neil A. Wynn and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2010-05-16 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Neil A. Wynn combines narrative history and primary sources as he locates the World War II years within the long-term struggle for African Americans' equal rights. It is now widely accepted that these years were crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement through the economic and social impact of the war, as well as the military service itself. Wynn examines the period within the broader context of the New Deal era of the 1930s and the Cold War of the 1950s, concluding that the war years were neither simply a continuation of earlier developments nor a prelude to later change. Rather, this period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. Black self consciousness at a national level found powerful expression in new movements, from the demand for equality in the military service to changes in the shop floor to the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. As the nation played a new world role in the developing Cold War, the tensions between America's stated beliefs and actual practices emphasized these issues and brought new forces into play. More than a half century later, this book presents a much-needed up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship. Accessible to general and student readers, it tells the story without jargon or theory while including the historiography and debate on particular issues.

Download or read book African Americans at War 2 volumes written by Jonathan Sutherland and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-12-05 with total page 844 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating chronicle of the endeavors of African Americans who fought for their country: this book recounts their stories, their bravery, and their contributions. African Americans at War puts a human face on this neglected area of history. From pre-Revolutionary fighting against the French to cutting-edge combat against Saddam Hussein, these A–Z volumes underscore significant military contributions from African Americans. The two volumes provide comprehensive coverage of aspects including important historical figures; key battles, legislation, and rulings; honors awarded; regiments, formations, and squadrons; and significant places. Individuals portrayed include celebrated Revolutionary hero Crispus Attucks and Lieutenant Vernon J. Baker, who led his platoon in a near suicidal attack on German positions in 1945. Often marginalized in support functions and frequently given suicidal missions, African Americans have served with distinction and honor in all U.S. conflicts. Their stories, endeavors, and bravery are now chronicled in one accessible resource. This set investigates each war, the interwar years, integration periods, and acceptance of African American men and women on the military team. This is a fascinating compendium spanning all U.S. history.

Download or read book African Americans at War 2 Volumes written by Jonathan Sutherland and published by ABC-CLIO. This book was released on 2004 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating chronicle of the endeavors of African Americans who fought for their country: this book recounts their stories, their bravery, and their contributions. African Americans at War puts a human face on this neglected area of history. From pre-Revolutionary fighting against the French to cutting-edge combat against Saddam Hussein, these A-Z volumes underscore significant military contributions from African Americans. The two volumes provide comprehensive coverage of aspects including important historical figures; key battles, legislation, and rulings; honors awarded; regiments, formations, and squadrons; and significant places. Individuals portrayed include celebrated Revolutionary hero Crispus Attucks and Lieutenant Vernon J. Baker, who led his platoon in a near suicidal attack on German positions in 1945. Often marginalized in support functions and frequently given suicidal missions, African Americans have served with distinction and honor in all U.S. conflicts. Their stories, endeavors, and bravery are now chronicled in one accessible resource. This set investigates each war, the interwar years, integration periods, and acceptance of African American men and women on the military team. This is a fascinating compendium spanning all U.S. history. 250+ A-Z entries on the individuals, themes, and concepts surrounding African American military efforts Substantial chronology of black contributions to the military, from Colonial America to the present Listing of websites with historical significance for African Americans in the military Over 100 illustrations Thematic bibliography

Download or read book African Americans and the Pacific War 1941 1945 written by Chris Dixon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-20 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dixon provides the first comprehensive study of African American military and social experiences during the Pacific War.

Download or read book African American Troops in World War II written by Alexander Bielakowski and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 2007-11-20 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Osprey's study of the African Americans' involvement in World War II (1939-1945). Despite the contribution of black units to the American Expeditionary Force in World War I (1914-1918), and the commissioning of hundreds of black officers to lead them, the small interwar US Army continued to regard them as unsuited to both leadership roles and handling modern technology. Although African Americans had to strive against prejudice for every chance to show what they could achieve, in fact the wartime US Army conceded opportunities for leadership unparaleled in American civil society at that date. In World War II tens of thousands served in segregated units. While the majority were denied the opportunity of combat, a minority of all-black, black-officered units proved their worth in all theaters and a number of roles: black officer fighter pilots (the "Tuskegee Airmen") blazed the trail, followed by several tank and tank-destroyer battalions and a few field artillery units; and more than 20,000 black infantrymen served under both white and black officers. The Army also created the first fully integrated units, whose success prompted President Truman to order the complete integration of the military in 1948. The US Navy and Marines were slower to allow blacks to serve in combat roles and to commission black officers, but by 1945 two complete ships' companies were composed of African-Americans (though with white officers).

Download or read book Double Victory written by Cheryl Mullenbach and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: &“Allow all black nurses to enlist, and the draft won't be necessary. . . . If nurses are needed so desperately, why isn't the Army using colored nurses?&” &“My arm gets a little sore slinging a shovel or a pick, but then I forget about it when I think about all those boys over in the Solomons.&” Double Victory tells the stories of African American women who did extraordinary things to help their country during World War II. In these pages young readers meet a range of remarkable women: war workers, political activists, military women, volunteers, and entertainers. Some, such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Lena Horne, were celebrated in their lifetimes and are well known today. But many others fought discrimination at home and abroad in order to contribute to the war effort yet were overlooked during those years and forgotten by later generations. Double Victory recovers the stories of these courageous women, such as Hazel Dixon Payne, the only woman to serve on the remote Alaska-Canadian Highway; Deverne Calloway, a Red Cross worker who led a protest at an army base in India; and Betty Murphy Phillips, the only black female overseas war correspondent. Offering a new and diverse perspective on the war and including source notes and a bibliography, Double Victory is an invaluable addition to any student's or history buff's bookshelf.

Download or read book Fighting for Hope written by Robert F. Jefferson and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2008-11-24 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integrating social history and civil rights movement studies, Fighting for Hope examines the ways in which political meaning and identity were reflected in the aspirations of these black GIs and their role in transforming the face of America.

Download or read book Fog of War written by Kevin Michael Kruse and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is a timely reconsideration of the intersection between two of the dominant events of twentieth-century American history, the upheaval wrought by the Second World War and the social revolution brought about by the African American struggle for equality. Scholars from a wide range of fields explore the impact of war on the longer history of African American protest from many angles: from black veterans to white segregationists, from the rural South to northern cities, from popular culture to federal politics, and from the American confrontations to international connections. It is well known that World War II gave rise to human rights rhetoric, discredited a racist regime abroad, and provided new opportunities for African Americans to fight, work, and demand equality at home. It would be all too easy to assume that the war was a key stepping stone to the modern civil rights movement. But the authors show that in reality the momentum for civil rights was not so clear cut, with activists facing setbacks as well as successes and their opponents finding ways to establish more rigid defenses for segregation. While the war set the scene for a mass movement, it also narrowed some of the options for black activists.

Download or read book African American Urban History since World War II written by Kenneth L. Kusmer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-08-01 with total page 552 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have devoted surprisingly little attention to African American urban history ofthe postwar period, especially compared with earlier decades. Correcting this imbalance, African American Urban History since World War II features an exciting mix of seasoned scholars and fresh new voices whose combined efforts provide the first comprehensive assessment of this important subject. The first of this volume’s five groundbreaking sections focuses on black migration and Latino immigration, examining tensions and alliances that emerged between African Americans and other groups. Exploring the challenges of residential segregation and deindustrialization, later sections tackle such topics as the real estate industry’s discriminatory practices, the movement of middle-class blacks to the suburbs, and the influence of black urban activists on national employment and social welfare policies. Another group of contributors examines these themes through the lens of gender, chronicling deindustrialization’s disproportionate impact on women and women’s leading roles in movements for social change. Concluding with a set of essays on black culture and consumption, this volume fully realizes its goal of linking local transformations with the national and global processes that affect urban class and race relations.

Download or read book Peace Be Still written by Matthew C. Whitaker and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2014-01-01 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise, engaging, and provocative history of African Americans since World War II, Peace Be Still is also nothing less than an alternate history of the United States in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Organizing this history around culture, politics, and resistance, Matthew C. Whitaker takes us from World War II as a galvanizing force for African American activism and the modern civil rights movement to the culmination of generations of struggle in the election of Barack Obama. From the promise of the post–World War II era to the black power movement of the 1960s, the economic and political struggles of the 1970s, and the major ideological realignment of political culture during the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, this book chronicles a people fighting oppression while fashioning a dynamic culture of artistic and religious expression along with a program of educational and professional advancement. A resurgence of rigid conservative right-wing policies, the politics of poverty, racial profiling, and police brutality are ongoing counterpoints to African Americans rising to political prominence and securing positions once denied them. A history of African Americans for a new generation, Peace Be Still demonstrates how dramatically African American history illuminates the promise, conflicts, contradictions, hopes, and victories that all Americans share.

Download or read book Roi Ottley s World War II written by Mark A. Huddle and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2012-08-14 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When black journalist Vincent "Roi" Ottley was assigned to cover the European theater in World War II, he provided a perspective shared by few other war correspondents. But what he really saw has taken more than sixty years to come to light. Already famous as the author of New World A-Coming-in which he decried the hypocrisy of America fighting for freedom in Europe while denying it to blacks at home-Ottley was sent to cover the experiences of African American soldiers that neither white journalists nor the American military felt obliged to report. But while his dispatches documented this assignment, his personal diary reveals a different war-one that included mess hall brawls between Southern white soldiers and their black counterparts, the British public's ignorance toward their own black soldiers, and other subtle glimpses of wartime life that never made it into print. That journal remained buried in a collection of Ottley's papers at St. Bonaventure University until Mark Huddle discovered it in the school's archives. With this book, he offers us a new look at World War II as he brings a forgotten figure out of history's shadow. While Ottley may have had an agenda in his published articles of proving the worth of black soldiers, his diary is rich in personal reflections-from his fears while enduring a bombing raid in London to his true feelings about fellow reporters to his encounters with celebrities such as Ernest Hemingway and Edward R. Murrow. And at every turn Ottley kept a keen eye on race issues, revealing a highly political as well as entertaining writer while reflecting a growing awareness that the African American freedom movement was part of a larger international struggle by peoples of color against Western imperialism. Huddle's introduction frames Ottley's career and contributions, and his annotations throughout the book provide additional context to the reporter's experiences. Huddle also includes thirteen of Ottley's published dispatches to demonstrate the differences between his personal musings and his professional output. The publication of this lost diary restores the reputation of a trailblazing figure, showing that Roi Ottley was both a brilliant writer and one of America's keenest observers of race issues. It offers all readers interested in race relations or World War II a more nuanced picture of life during that conflict from a perspective rarely encountered.

Download or read book Blood on German Snow written by Emiel W. Owens and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emiel Owens served his country in the 777th Field Artillery, involved in actions from Omaha Beach to the occupation army in the Philippines. Like the rest of the U.S. Army at the time, the 777th was a segregated unit. Remarkably few memoirs by African Americans have been published from the World War II era, making Owens's account especially valuable. Because he situates his military experience in the larger context of his life and the society in which he lived, his story also reveals much about the changing racial climate of the last several decades. A native Texan, Owens recounts his early experiences in a small, rural school outside Austin during the hard times of the Depression. In 1943, he was drafted into the army, landing in England in August 1944. Ten days later he was on Omaha Beach. By November 3 Owens and his unit were supporting the 30th Infantry Division as it attacked German towns and cities leading into the Ruhr Pocket and the Huertgen Forest. Owens starkly portrays the horror of the Kohlscheid Penetration. He was awarded a certificate of merit for his actions in that theater. With help from the G.I. bill, Owens returned to college and then to graduate school at Ohio State University, since universities in his home state were still closed to African Americans. He earned a Ph.D. in economics, which led to a productive academic and consulting career. This is a uniquely captivating story of an African American man's journey from a segregated Texas town to the battlefields of Europe and on to postwar success in a world changed forever by the war Americans--black and white--had fought.

Download or read book Black Soldiers in Blue written by John David Smith and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2005-10-12 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired and informed by the latest research in African American, military, and social history, the fourteen original essays in this book tell the stories of the African American soldiers who fought for the Union cause. An introductory essay surveys the history of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) from emancipation to the end of the Civil War. Seven essays focus on the role of the USCT in combat, chronicling the contributions of African Americans who fought at Port Hudson, Milliken's Bend, Olustee, Fort Pillow, Petersburg, Saltville, and Nashville. Other essays explore the recruitment of black troops in the Mississippi Valley; the U.S. Colored Cavalry; the military leadership of Colonels Thomas Higginson, James Montgomery, and Robert Shaw; African American chaplain Henry McNeal Turner; the black troops who occupied postwar Charleston; and the experiences of USCT veterans in postwar North Carolina. Collectively, these essays probe the broad military, political, and social significance of black soldiers' armed service, enriching our understanding of the Civil War and African American life during and after the conflict. The contributors are Anne J. Bailey, Arthur W. Bergeron Jr., John Cimprich, Lawrence Lee Hewitt, Richard Lowe, Thomas D. Mays, Michael T. Meier, Edwin S. Redkey, Richard Reid, William Glenn Robertson, John David Smith, Noah Andre Trudeau, Keith Wilson, and Robert J. Zalimas Jr.

Download or read book Ebony Pictorial History of Black America Reconstruction to Supreme Court decision 1954 written by and published by Barrie Publishing. This book was released on 1971 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Bitter Fruit written by Maureen Honey and published by University of Missouri Press. This book was released on 1999 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the participation of African American women in all aspects of home-front activity during World War II, advertisements, recruitment posters, and newsreels portrayed largely white women as army nurses, defense plant workers, concerned mothers, and steadfast wives. This sea of white faces left for posterity images such as Rosie the Riveter, obscuring the contributions that African American women made to the war effort. In Bitter Fruit, Maureen Honey corrects this distorted picture of women's roles in World War II by collecting photos, essays, fiction, and poetry by and about black women from the four leading African American periodicals of the war period: Negro Digest, The Crisis, Opportunity, and Negro Story. Mostly appearing for the first time since their original publication, the materials in Bitter Fruit feature black women operating technical machinery, working in army uniforms, entertaining audiences, and pursuing a college education. The articles praise the women's accomplishments as pioneers working toward racial equality; the fiction and poetry depict female characters in roles other than domestic servants and give voice to the bitterness arising from discrimination that many women felt. With these various images, Honey masterfully presents the roots of the postwar civil rights movement and the leading roles black women played in it. Containing works from eighty writers, this anthology includes forty African American women authors, most of whose work has not been published since the war. Of particular note are poems and short stories anthologized for the first time, including Ann Petry's first story, Octavia Wynbush's last work of fiction, and three poems by Harlem Renaissance writer Georgia Douglas Johnson. Uniting these various writers was their desire to write in the midst of a worldwide military conflict with dramatic potential for ending segregation and opening doors for women at home. Traditional anthologies of African American literature jump from the Harlem Renaissance to the 1960s with little or no reference to the decades between those periods. Bitter Fruit not only illuminates the literature of these decades but also presents an image of black women as community activists that undercuts gender stereotypes of the era. As Honey concludes in her introduction, "African American women found an empowered voice during the war, one that anticipates the fruit of their wartime effort to break silence, to challenge limits, and to change forever the terms of their lives."

Download or read book African Americans at War written by Jonathan Sutherland and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Amongst My Best Men written by Gerard T. Altoff and published by Perry Group - Friends of Perry's Victory & International Peace Memorial. This book was released on 1996 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The War of 1812 is without doubt one of the least known of all of America's wars. Mere mention of the war conjures in the average American's mind a series of illusions, misconceptions, and false assumptions. Chief among those fallacies is that the United States won the war, closely followed by numerous supposed truisms perpetuated by individuals reluctant to admit that the United States rushed headlong into an avoidable war, blundered through ill-conceived military campaigns, suffered defeat in most of the land battles, and nearly lost the war outright. Thus, it is not surprising that the role of African-Americans in the War of 1812 is as misunderstood as the war itself ... Even though there occasionally may be no specific information pertaining to African-American participation, black soldiers and sailors did serve in virtually every land and naval engagement of the war of 1812"--Preface.