Fighting Racism in World War II

Fighting Racism in World War II

Author: Cyril Lionel Robert James

Publisher: Pathfinder Press

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 9780913460825

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A week-by-week account of the struggle against racism and racial discrimination in the United States from 1939 to 1945, taken from the pages of the socialist newsweekly, the Militant.


Fighting Racism in World War II

Fighting Racism in World War II

Author: Cyril Lionel Robert James

Publisher: Anchor Foundation

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13:

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"A week-by-week account from 1939 to 1945 of efforts to advance the Black rights struggle in face of patriotic appeals to postpone resistance to lynch-mob terror and racist discrimination until after US “victory” in World War II. These struggles--of a piece with rising anti-imperialist battles in Africa, Asia, and the Americas--helped lay the basis for the mass civil rights movement in the postwar decades."--Publisher's description.


Half American

Half American

Author: Matthew F. Delmont

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2024-01-09

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 1984880411

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The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, by award-winning historian and civil rights expert Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction A New York Times Notable Book of 2022 A 2022 Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and more More than one million Black soldiers served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units while waging a dual battle against inequality in the very country for which they were laying down their lives. The stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the “Good War” fought by the “Greatest Generation.” And yet without their sacrifices, the United States could not have won the war. Half American is World War II history as you’ve likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black military heroes and civil rights icons such as Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the leader of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, who fought to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; and James G. Thompson, the twenty-six-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. An essential and meticulously researched retelling of the war, Half American honors the men and women who dared to fight not just for democracy abroad but for their dreams of a freer and more equal America.


Fighting for America

Fighting for America

Author: Christopher Paul Moore

Publisher: One World

Published: 2007-12-18

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0307415228

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The African-American contribution to winning World War II has never been celebrated as profoundly as in Fighting for America. In this inspirational and uniquely personal tribute, the essential part played by black servicemen and -women in that cataclysmic conflict is brought home. Here are letters, photographs, oral histories, and rare documents, collected by historian Christopher Moore, the son of two black WWII veterans. Weaving his family history with that of his people and nation, Moore has created an unforgettable tapestry of sacrifice, fortitude, and courage. From the 1,800 black soldiers who landed at Normandy Beach on D-Day, and the legendary Tuskegee Airmen who won ninety-five Distinguished Flying Crosses, to the 761st Tank Battalion who, under General Patton, helped liberate Nazi death camps, the invaluable effort of black Americans to defend democracy is captured in word and image. Readers will be introduced to many unheralded heroes who helped America win the war, including Dorie Miller, the messman who manned a machine gun and downed four Japanese planes; Robert Brooks, the first American to die in armored battle; Lt. Jackie Robinson, the future baseball legend who faced court-martial for refusing to sit in the back of a military bus; an until now forgotten African-American philosopher who helped save many lives at a Japanese POW camp; even the author’s own parents: his mother, Kay, a WAC when she met his father, Bill, who was part of the celebrated Red Ball Express. Yet Fighting for America is more than a testimonial; it is also a troubling story of profound contradictions, of a country still in the throes of segregation, of a domestic battleground where arrests and riots occurred simultaneously with foreign service–and of how the war helped spotlight this disparity and galvanize the need for civil rights. Featuring a unique perspective on black soldiers, Fighting for America will move any reader: all who, like the author, owe their lives to those who served.


War without Mercy

War without Mercy

Author: John Dower

Publisher: Pantheon

Published: 2012-03-28

Total Pages: 411

ISBN-13: 0307816141

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WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • AN AMERICAN BOOK AWARD FINALIST • A monumental history that has been hailed by The New York Times as “one of the most original and important books to be written about the war between Japan and the United States.” In this monumental history, Professor John Dower reveals a hidden, explosive dimension of the Pacific War—race—while writing what John Toland has called “a landmark book ... a powerful, moving, and evenhanded history that is sorely needed in both America and Japan.” Drawing on American and Japanese songs, slogans, cartoons, propaganda films, secret reports, and a wealth of other documents of the time, Dower opens up a whole new way of looking at that bitter struggle of four and a half decades ago and its ramifications in our lives today. As Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan, has pointed out, this book offers “a lesson that the postwar generations need most ... with eloquence, crushing detail, and power.”


Facing the Mountain

Facing the Mountain

Author: Daniel James Brown

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-05-11

Total Pages: 562

ISBN-13: 0525557407

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of NPR's "Books We Love" of 2021 Longlisted for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography Winner of the Christopher Award “Masterly. An epic story of four Japanese-American families and their sons who volunteered for military service and displayed uncommon heroism… Propulsive and gripping, in part because of Mr. Brown’s ability to make us care deeply about the fates of these individual soldiers...a page-turner.” – Wall Street Journal From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat, a gripping World War II saga of patriotism and resistance, focusing on four Japanese American men and their families, and the contributions and sacrifices that they made for the sake of the nation. In the days and months after Pearl Harbor, the lives of Japanese Americans across the continent and Hawaii were changed forever. In this unforgettable chronicle of war-time America and the battlefields of Europe, Daniel James Brown portrays the journey of Rudy Tokiwa, Fred Shiosaki, and Kats Miho, who volunteered for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and were deployed to France, Germany, and Italy, where they were asked to do the near impossible. Brown also tells the story of these soldiers' parents, immigrants who were forced to submit to life in concentration camps on U.S. soil. Woven throughout is the chronicle of Gordon Hirabayashi, one of a cadre of patriotic resisters who stood up against their government in defense of their own rights. Whether fighting on battlefields or in courtrooms, these were Americans under unprecedented strain, doing what Americans do best—striving, resisting, pushing back, rising up, standing on principle, laying down their lives, and enduring.


Taps For A Jim Crow Army

Taps For A Jim Crow Army

Author: Christy McGuire

Publisher: University Press of Kentucky

Published: 2014-07-11

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0813148995

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Many black soldiers serving in the U.S. Army during World War II hoped that they might make permanent gains as a result of their military service and their willingness to defend their country. They were soon disabused of such illusions. Taps for a Jim Crow Army is a powerful collection of letters written by black soldiers in the 1940s to various government and nongovernment officials. The soldiers expressed their disillusionment, rage, and anguish over the discrimination and segregation they experienced in the Army. Most black troops were denied entry into army specialist schools; black officers were not allowed to command white officers; black soldiers were served poorer food and were forced to ride Jim Crow military buses into town and to sit in Jim Crow base movie theaters. In the South, German POWs could use the same latrines as white American soldiers, but blacks could not. The original foreword by Benjamin Quarles, professor emeritus of history at Morgan State University, and a new foreword by Bernard C. Nalty, the chief historian in the Office of Air Force History, offer rich insights into the world of these soldiers.


Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II

Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II

Author: Alan M. Osur

Publisher:

Published: 1977

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13:

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This book is based upon a Ph. D. dissertation written by an Air Force officer who studied at the University of Denver. Currently an Associate Professor of History at the Air Force Academy, Major Osur's account relates how the leadership in the War Department and the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) tried to deal with the problem of race and the prejudices which were reflected in the bulk of American society. It tells a story of black racial protests and riots which such attitudes and discrimination provoked. The author describes many of the discriminatory actions taken against black airmen, whose goal was equality of treatment and opportunities as American citizens. He also describes the role of black pilots as they fought in the Mediterranean theater of operations against the Axis powers. In his final chapters, he examines the continuing racial frictions within the Army Air Forces which led to black servicemen protests and riots in 1945 at several installations.


World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights

World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights

Author: Richard Griswold del Castillo

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2010-01-01

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0292779135

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This historical study examines how Mexican American experiences during WWII galvanized the community’s struggle for civil rights. World War II marked a turning point for Mexican Americans that fundamentally changed their relationship to US society at large. The experiences of fighting alongside white Americans in the military, as well as working in factory jobs for wages equal to those of Anglo workers, made Mexican Americans less willing to tolerate the second-class citizenship that had been their lot before the war. Having proven their loyalty and “Americanness” during World War II, Mexican Americans began to demand the civil rights they deserved. In this book, Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard Steele investigate how the wartime experiences of Mexican Americans helped forge their civil rights consciousness and how the US government responded. The authors demonstrate, for example, that the US government “discovered” Mexican Americans during World War II and began addressing some of their problems as a way of ensuring their willingness to support the war effort. The book concludes with a selection of key essays and historical documents from the World War II period that provide a first-person perspective of Mexican American civil rights struggles.