Divisions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American People ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Military ◽  
Freedom Struggles

Divisions examines racism and resistance in America’s World War II military. The military built not one color line, but a complex tangle of them, involving every imaginable aspect of military life. Who served? Who fought? Who died? Who gave orders and who was forced to follow them? Who received the best ratings and jobs and pay and promotions? Who was court-martialed? Who received furloughs and leaves? Who received honorable or dishonorable discharges? Who ate at the officers’ club? Who danced at the post’s main recreation center? Who drank at the best pub in Cherbourg, France, or swam in the nicest pool in Calcutta? Color lines, which divided American troops in various configurations, often spoke definitively in all these matters and more. Taken together, they represented a sprawling structure of white supremacy and of African American, Japanese American, and other nonwhite subordination. Varied freedom struggles arose in response, democratizing portions of the wartime military and setting the postwar stage for its desegregation and for the flowering of civil rights movements beyond. But the costs of the military’s color lines were devastating. They impeded America’s war effort, undermined the nation’s Four Freedoms rhetoric, traumatized, even killed, an unknowable number of nonwhite troops, further naturalized the very concept of race, deepened many whites’ investments in white supremacy, especially anti-black racism, and further fractured the American people.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Secondary Source ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Color Line ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
The Military

This introductory chapter outlines the book’s main arguments regarding its two primary themes -- racism and resistance. The military represented a sprawling structure of white supremacy and of African American, Japanese American, and other nonwhite subordination. And varied freedom struggles arose in response, democratizing portions of the wartime military and setting the postwar stage for its desegregation and for the flowering of civil rights movements beyond. The chapter also describes the book’s source base -- more than one hundred distinct archival collections, oral histories, published primary sources, and the vast secondary-source literature on World War II. It also discusses its key concepts, especially the terms division, color line, boundary, and divide. Finally, the chapter explains the particularities of the US military and the need for its long-overdue intensive study.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 370-388
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Guglielmo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Military Service ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
American People ◽  
World War ◽  
American Military ◽  
Postwar America ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Military

The conclusion traces the ways that racist boundaries waxed and waned in the final stages of World War II military service and addresses the larger impact that these boundaries had on American troops, the American military, and the nation. In the end, black-white lines, if blurred some, still defined many troops’ last days in uniform. White-nonwhite lines also appeared here and there, but still lacked the same institutionalization, reach, and force. And this broader complex of lines fundamentally shaped postwar America in numerous, complicated, and too often forgotten ways. They politicized a varied and substantial group of veterans, who returned home prepared and determined to democratize the military and the nation. But the cost of these lines was enormous. They impeded America’s war effort, undermined the nation’s Four Freedoms rhetoric, traumatized, even killed, an unknowable number of nonwhite troops, further naturalized the very concept of race, deepened many whites’ investments in white supremacy, especially anti-black racism, and further fractured the American people and their politics.

scholarly journals The Scientists and the Shrub

2021 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-98
Author(s):  
Jonathan van Harmelen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Japanese Americans ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
World War ◽  
Private Industry ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Government Bureaucracy ◽  
Experimental Project ◽  
The Military

During World War II, Japanese American scientists and engineers imprisoned at the Manzanar War Relocation camp were engaged in an experimental project to grow guayule and process it into latex, a needed war materiel. In this way, they contributed to the American war effort, despite their race-based incarceration. The guayule research project undermines the rationale for the wartime confinement of West Coast Japanese Americans. The laboratory at Manzanar partnered with universities, private industry, and government bureaucracy as an early instance of the military-industrial complex.

Black Soldiers in World War II America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Military Training ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
American Military ◽  
The Military ◽  
American Racism

The history of the African American military experience in World War II tends to revolve around two central questions: How did World War II and American racism shape the black experience in the American military? And how did black GIs reshape the parameters of their wartime experiences? From the mid-1920s through the Great Depression years of the 1930s, military planners evaluated the performance of black soldiers in World War I while trying to ascertain their presence in future wars. However, quite often their discussions about African American servicemen in the military establishment were deeply moored in the traditions, customs, and practices of American racism, racist stereotypes, and innuendo. Simultaneously, African American leaders and their allies waged a relentless battle to secure the future presence of the uniformed men and women who would serve in the nation’s military. Through their exercise of voting rights, threats of protest demonstration, litigation, and White House lobbying from 1939 through 1942, civil rights advocates and their affiliates managed to obtain some minor concessions from the military establishment. But the military’s stubborn adherence to a policy barring black and white soldiers from serving in the same units continued through the rest of the war. Between 1943 and 1945, black GIs faced white officer hostility, civilian antagonism, and military police brutality while undergoing military training throughout the country. Similarly, African American servicewomen faced systemic racism and sexism in the military during the period. Throughout various stages of the American war effort, black civil rights groups, the press, and their allies mounted the opening salvoes in the battle to protect and defend the wellbeing of black soldiers in uniform. While serving on the battlefields of World War II, fighting African American GIs became foot soldiers in the wider struggles against tyranny abroad. After returning home in 1945, black World War II-era activists such as Daisy Lampkin and Ruby Hurley, and ex-servicemen and women, laid the groundwork for the Civil Rights Movement.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Gershenhorn
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Educational Opportunity ◽  
Racial Segregation ◽  
Voter Registration ◽  
Equal Educational Opportunity ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Era

During the twentieth century, black journalists played an essential role in the struggle for equal rights in America. Operating in the racially oppressive South, determined black publishers, editors, and journalists illuminated racial discrimination, while advocating black voter registration and equal educational opportunity. Austin, who edited and published the Carolina Times from 1927 to 1971, was one of the most fearless and effective of these journalists. He boldly challenged white supremacy and racial segregation for over four decades, from the years prior to World War II through the modern civil rights era.

Quaker Brotherhood

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan W. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Interracial Relations ◽  
History Of

This is the first extensive study of the American Friends Service Committee's interracial activism in the first half of the twentieth century, filling a major gap in scholarship on the Quakers' race relations work from the AFSC's founding in 1917 to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the early 1950s. The book tracks the evolution of key AFSC projects, such as the Interracial Section and the American Interracial Peace Committee, that demonstrate the tentativeness of the Friends' activism in the 1920s, as well as efforts in the 1930s to make scholarly ideas and activist work more theologically relevant for Friends. Documenting the AFSC's efforts to help European and Japanese American refugees during World War II, the book shows that by 1950, Quakers in the AFSC had honed a distinctly Friendly approach to interracial relations that combined scholarly understandings of race with their religious views. Highlighting the complicated and sometimes controversial connections between Quakers and race during this era, the book uncovers important aspects of the history of Friends, pacifism, feminism, American religion, immigration, ethnicity, and the early roots of multiculturalism.

Die Abteilungen für Luftfahrt an deutschen Universitäten unter dem NS-Regime

STADION ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-85
Author(s):  
Alexander Priebe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Military Training ◽  
World War ◽  
Universities And Colleges ◽  
Aviation Training ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Training And Research ◽  
Aeronautical Engineering ◽  
The Military ◽  
Scientific Fields

On 17 November 1934, the Reich Education Ministry (REM) issued a decree on the “cultivation of aviation in schools and universities”. It aimed at “ensuring the next generation of aviation professionals in the practical, aeronautical, technical, and scientific fields”, the importance of which, according to the REM, “had even increased with the resurgence of the German Luftwaffe”. Hence, universities and colleges of physical education were deemed responsible for further civil and - increasingly - military training and research in aviation, whereas research in aeronautical engineering was carried out at technical universities, under the enforced auspices of the Reich Ministry of Aviation. From 1934 onwards, aviation training would be coordinated by departments of aviation, which were also responsible for the gliding training of students and, above all, sports instructors. The recast decree of 30 December 1939 would expand and enforce training and research defined as “essential for the war effort”. This crucial development, which essentially bolstered the military strategy of the Nazis before and during World War II, i.e., the so-called “Blitzkrieg”, is presented in a detailed overview, based on recently discovered archival sources.

Edward M. Almond and the US Army

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. Lynch
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Us Army ◽  
Greatest Generation ◽  
Virginia Military Institute ◽  
The Us ◽  
Military Institute ◽  
The Military

This biography examines the long career of Lt. Gen. Edward M. Almond, who was born to a family of modest means in rural Virginia. His early education at the Virginia Military Institute, steeped him in Confederate lore and nurtured his “can do” attitude, natural aggressiveness, demanding personality and sometimes self-serving nature. These qualities later earned him the sobriquet “Sic’em, Ned,” which stuck with him for the remainder of his career. Almond commanded the African-American 92nd Infantry Division during World War II. The division failed in combat and was re-organized, after which it contained one white, one black, and the Army’s only Japanese-American (Nisei) regiment. The years since that war have seen the glorification of the “Greatest Generation,” with all racist notions and ideas “whitewashed” with a veneer of honor. When war came to Korea, Almond commanded X Corps in the Inchon invasion, liberation of Seoul, race to the Yalu. When the Chinese entered the war and sent the US Army into retreat, Almond mounted one of the largest evacuations in history at Hungnam -- but not before the disaster at Chosin claimed the lives of hundreds of soldiers and marines. This book reveals Almond as a man who stubbornly held onto bigoted attitudes about race, but also exhibited an unfaltering commitment to the military profession. Often viewed as the “Army’s racist,” Almond reflected the attitudes of the Army and society. This book places Almond in a broader context and presents a more complete picture of this flawed man yet gifted officer.

Breaking White Supremacy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Dorrien
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Christian Leadership ◽  
Civil Rights Movements ◽  
Southern Christian Leadership Conference ◽  
Martin Luther King

Breaking White Supremacy analyzes the twentieth-century heyday of the black social gospel and its influence on the Civil Rights Movement. Asserting that Martin Luther King Jr. did not come from nowhere, it describes major figures who influenced King, offers a detailed analysis of King’s leadership of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and his catalyzing and unifying role in the southern and northern Civil Rights Movements, and interprets the legacy of King and the black social gospel tradition.

World War II Soldiers of Color in James Baldwin’s Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone and Rudolfo Anaya’s Bless Me, Ultima

MELUS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-193
Author(s):  
Jose Fernandez
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Mexican American ◽  
Social Activism ◽  
Social Protest ◽  
World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
War Experiences

Abstract Critics have explored James Baldwin's Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (1968) and Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima (1972) through the emergence of their protagonists as artists, while other scholars have focused on Tell Me How Long's emphasis on black nationalism or Bless Me, Ultima's engagement with Mexican American identity; however, the tensions between art and social protest in both novels has not been explored by scholars in relation to the novels' treatment of the experience of soldiers of color in World War II. This article focuses on the novels' depiction of the military service by soldiers of color, their transformation by those experiences, and how the protests and activism against the racism and discrimination experienced by soldiers of color contributed to the long civil rights movement. I argue that through the war experiences of the protagonists' older brothers in Tell Me How Long and Bless Me, Ultima, both narratives similarly present the contributions and experiences of soldiers of color during the war effort as they faced the dilemma of fighting a war for their country only to be denied full citizenship rights at home, which increased their social activism. Tell Me How Long describes the heroic service of an African American in battle in the Italian front that has a historical antecedent in the 92nd Infantry Division known as the Buffalo Soldiers, while Bless Me, Ultima focuses on the effects of the mobilization period in Mexican American communities in the Southwest and the war's psychological effects on returning soldiers.

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