don't go back to the 1920s. we actually move forward on this and it's it's a it's a pretty amazing story. so other questions though i preemptive areas. okay. well, thank you to mike and to dr. kurt piehler a round of applause for tonight's speakers.

so today we're going to hear from dr. matthew dumont. matt is prolific author and historian of history and civil rights and the sherman fairchild distinguished professor history at dartmouth. he he received his ph.d. from brown university, and he'll be discussing most recent book, half american the epic story of african-americans fighting in world war two at home and abroad. now to, join this this conversation this discussion is

dr. marcus cox marcus is a fellow with the jenny craig institute. and is also currently the dean of fayetteville state university right outside beautiful fort north carolina. oh the. previously many of you know him from town here where he's associate dean of graduate studies xavier and a graduate ph.d. from northwestern an and an expert on african-american military history. and so it's great to have these two amazing scholars and comrades on the stage with us today. and with that, marcus, i'll turn it over to you. and sir, you much. thank you so much. thank you everybody for being here. thank you, mike. and everyone, this is a great opportunity to learn a little bit more about what's happening in the united states and in particular what

african-americans. i'm honored and very privileged to be up here with dr. matthew delmont. matt is going to start off and do a brief overview of his, and then i'm going to up with some few questions of my own, and then we're going to open it up to the audience. so thank you very much being here, matt. thanks for joining. good afternoon, everybody. let me start by saying how much of a privilege is to be here and thank mike and marcus for the nice introductions before being at dartmouth college, i was at arizona state university, set up to work with our colleagues at the national museum and the really wonderful online master's in world war two studies that they've launched. and it's been thrilling to see it develop. even i've moved to dartmouth and i want to thank nick mueller for being kind enough to write an endorsement of new book. thank you, nick. and i thank you. the audience being the last few days has been inspiring for me as a historian to be in the company of people who love history and love the history of world war two. it's tremendous. and so i would give you a round of applause for everything you're doing. yeah.

to learn and this history. and then take about 10 minutes at the start here and give a kind of high level overview of the key arguments in. my new book that just came out last month, it's called half american the epic story of african-americans fighting water to at home and abroad. i'd like to start with what led me to the project. so my last book projectas african-american newspapers, so i was going through historic newspapers like the chicago defender, pittsburgh courier and. one thing that struck me is when you look at the papers from the war years, you come across images like these this is from the minneapolis spokesman, which is the largest and longest running black in minnesota, where i'm fro these pictures are the kind of things i'd never really seen before. i'm a historian of taught history of over to african history more than a decade. but these kind of everyday photos of the black men and women, more than a million who volunteered were drafted. the military seeing these everyday average photos. it really blew me away. it made me curious because i came across first dozens of

these and eventually hundreds. i started to wonder what more could be there? what more do we know about the black perspective on world war two? just about seven years ago, it sparked my curiosity led me to research this new book. the title of the book, half american, is taken from a letter. this man, james g. thompson wrote. james thompson was a 26 year old in wichita, kansas. he writes a letter to the pittsburgh courier, which was the largt and most influential black and has a series of very pressing, probing questions, including should i sacrifice my life, live half american is america i know worth defending. and one thing i think about here is, the famous quote from historian stephen ambrose, who helped found and tried the vision, the museum. he said, one of the foundational ironies of world war two is that the world's greatest democracy, america went to fight the world's greatest racist hitler with the third great army. men and women like james

thompson were living irony. he's writing this letter in december of 1941, after the of pearl harbor, knowing that he is about to get drafted into a segregated military, he's going to be asked to fight for potentially die for a country that doesn't yet treat him as a full citizen. and just to ground ourselves. remember that the entirety of the war, the is segregated in the army. initially black men can't serve in they're put in to supply the disco rolls in the navy black men are only allowed to serve as mass attendance will serve officers aboard ships at the start of the war. the marine corps isn't allowing any americans to serve. it's that until you get the war, they get the montford point marines, the first group of marines, everything in military life is segregated down to the barracks, latrines, the dining facilities. the red cross is even segregating blood from blood donors, even though there's no scientific basis to do that. so thompson is asking a really powerful question matters to him and matters to hundreds of thousands of other black americans. the pittsburgh courier uses thompson's letter to launch what

they call the double victory campaign double d and becomes the rallying cry for black americans during the war. they're fighting for victory over abroad and victory over in home. ec one of thing that's important is that it's not just a rhetorical device. it's not just a slogan. black people really need it. they really this as a two front battle. they want to do everything they can to help defend their country, to help win the military. but they know that's not enough. it's not enough to fight for freedom and democracy abroad and then come home to segregation, to come home second class citizenship. and so that's why i chose half america as the title, because it really speaks to what was on the minds of black americans at the time. there's three key arguments that the book makes the is that from the african-american perspective, you have to start the chronology of world war two before pearl harbor. this is not dissimilar to argument that richard overy makes in blood, in ruins if you looked at a black newspaper from the 1930s 30 to 3334, you see dozens of articles in editorials about the of fascism in europe.

black americans were among the first to recognize the really serious that hitler and the nazis posed not just to europe, but really to the world. black newspapers covered mussolini and the italian invasion of ethiopia, 1935, and then they cover the spanish civil war and the rise of general franco. and so years before pearl harbor, black americans have already turned their focus to the rise of the war in europe and are explicitly the second world war has started and they're eager to the fight against fascism. langston hughes, the poet, is actually a war correspondent for the baltimore african-american, and he travels to spain to report on the more than 80 black americans who volunteered fight in thepash civil war. and his primary question is why? one of the people he profiles is a woman, solaria kei. she's a 23 year old from harlem who approached her life, travels spain, a country she's never been to before, to be a nurse, to help, help. people are being wounded in the spanish civil war. i'm on the front lines when he's asked key and others, why did

they go to spain? he says it was three things for her. the first is that she's a catholic. she self particularly political, but she saw a country in which peop were in dire, dire of he and she had to help as a catholic and as a nurse, the thing is that she was deeply troubled by the italian invasion of ethiopia in 35. this was a huge deal. black people in the united states, ethiopia was the only independent nation in africa in the 1930s, and for italy to invade it sent shockwaves across the country. and so she was motivated by that. and then thirdly she recognizes that the rise of fascism isn't just a danger to europe. she and others say, you know, this may be going on in spain now, maybe in germany now, but eventually it's going to come. united states, we can't just treat this as a a foreign problem if they can't take a position of isolationism. so she is one of 80 who goes to fight in the spanish civil war. and so my book opens with that chapter trying to understand why these black americans went there. and so it's important to start story before pearl harbor, the

the second argument the book makes is that we have take seriously the military contributions of black troops. it's not enough to have them on the periphery of the story. we have to have them at the center of the story. perhaps the most famous black american to serve during the war is doris miller, who emerges as one of the heroes of pearl harbor. he's a mess attendant on the uss virginia. and as the ship is being torpedoed and bombed in the japanese attack on pearl harbor, miller performs heroically helps to rescue cuban crewmates. he's makeshift stretcher to move his captain. and then when his return asks him, he above board. and even though he has no training and the ship's machine he grabs one of the guns starts firing the japanese planes, potentially hitting one of them. it's a well known story, but it's important to understand what this story meant for black americans that once miller's name is released, it makes clear how foolish and wrongheaded the military's policy of segregation is, that here you have, dorie miller, a young man from waco, who, despite being assigned a

mess attendant where he's going to serve white officers once the tragedy pearl harbor happens, he's ready to to be in a combat role. and so black americans are asking in early 1942 is just give us the chance to fight, give us a chance to defend our country, and we'll do everything we can to do that. one of the hardest parts about this book to write is reading the stories of dozens of black americans who went to volunteer after the bombing of pearl harbor. and they're turned away. they go to the local branches, line up with hundreds of other white citizens. but these black citizens are turned away because at that point, the army doesn't have enough black units to accommodate them and they're just like dumbstruck because want to defend their country. they're deeply deep and they're asking, what's wrong with us? what's wrong with our service, our citizenship that we can't defend our country. and so a lot the language you'll see during the course of the war is again about this idea of double victory and. i think it's nicely captured in these quotes from roy wilkins. he says, we're fighting for a world which will not only not contain a but not hitlerism. it's not just enough to defeat

hitler as a person, as a terrible figure, but the larger ideology that's not unique to nazi germany needs to be defeated. and then even more pointedly, he says, a lily white cannot fight for a free world. a jim crow army cannot fight for a free world. and so if we fast forward ahead to 48, once president truman eventually signs the executive order to serve the military, that's after a decade intense pressure from civil rights activists roy wilkins, who understand that segregation makes no sense for military. it's trying to fight and win global war on this scale. if i leave you with one thing, it's just that segregation made no sense for the military then to do everything and duplicate it was redundant. it served no strategic or tactical purpose. but americans understand that and they want to to do everything they can to push against it. the book also highlights stories of the black americans who performed valiantly in combat. no how it just to hear edward carter if i had to vote for one of the most fascinating soldiers to fight in world war two,

carter is right up there. he's raised by a missionary family. and so he grows up in china and, india, when he's 15. he joins the chinese national army to fight against japanese in shanghai. he later volunteers a volunteer in the spanish civil war. these are the abraham lincoln brigade. i mentioned his foot in hindi, mandarin in german. but when he volunteers for the army just before pearl harbor, they seem to be a cook and a quartermaster unit. and it's a part of the illogic of segregation is it doesn't take advantage of the tremendous skill that black americans had. this is someone who had combat experience, someone who could speak multiple languages and is a sign as a cook. in 1945, when the army is desperate infantry troops, they issue a call for volunteers it's one of the first times black americans a chance to join the infantry and participate in combat cadres. one in 5000 who volunteers that duty he gives up his rank as a staff sergeant to go back to a private just have the opportunity to be on the front lines and he performs amazingly

that work he's attached to general patents. trump's 12th armored division and as that unit pushing towards the rhine, he reads an attachment across an open field to position that's held by german soldiers. he takes heavy fire from small and from an anti anti-tank gun. he ends up killing six nazi troops, captures the other two. and then while wounded within these two, captured back to his unit because speaks german, he interrogates them in german to find out where other nazi units are hidden. and so he gets back to his unit. he's able to report to his commander about other threats they might face. they push towards the rhine. it's a tremendous story. it's the kind of thing you can't you can't make up. vernon and i should say, edward allen was posthumously awarded the medal honor of the 433 medals of honor that are awarded during world war two. none are to black troops. carter awarded the distinguished service cross, the army's second highest award in the 1990s.

the army was an effort to reevaluate a number those words to see who might be upgraded to a medal of honor and carter was one of those vernon. baker is the only one of the seven who still alive to receive that honor in person. and when he gets the call from the white house initially, he's very reluctant to go. he says, i did this in 1945 when i did. i'm not sure if i want to receive this award 50 years later, but ultimately he does. vernon baker was a lieutenant in the 92nd infantry. he took out three machinegun positions and led a battalion charge through headed through heavy fire and enemy minefields till the allies captured german stronghold the mountains of italy. in april 1945, he demonstrated extra heroism, even though it took the army 50 years to recognize that fact. when i favorite quotes from baker, he said i was an angry young man. we were all angry, but we had a job to do and we did. there are other troops are profiled in the book, including the man four marines were at the battles of jima and saipan, the

761st tank battalion who fought for. 160 days consecutively across four major campaigns, including the battle of the bulge. they're nicknamed the black panther tank battalion. and, of course, the tuskegee airmen were the well-known black troops during the war. but of course, most black troops are not in frontline combat roles. and so one of the things i try to show in the book is that the roles that black troops played behind, the front lines, were equally important. when you see pictures of the channel crossing on d-day like this, there was barrage balloons that are dangling above the ships were largely manned by black troops. the 320th barrage balloon battalion battalion, one of the soldiers in that year performed bravely. d-day was waverly woodson. he was a medic with the 320th barrage. but between battalion, he's wounded as the ship is coming to shore. he thinks the shrapnel wounds might kill him. the man next him helps bandage his wounds once. once woodson gets to the beach, he sets up a medical aid

station, and tends to wounds of more than 200 men. he places blood plasma. he has three amputations, just as tremendous tremendous work. the filmmaker john ford was on the beach in normandy doing a camera crew for the coast guard, and he reports the heroism of people like weaver and the black duck drivers who were there that day. there were 1700 black americans who are part of the d-day invasion, even though they're often not featured as part of that sto. i think because everyone here, d-day,ust stood for day of the invasion. there's still d-daylus one, d-day plus two. and it truly is the weeks thereafter are equally crucial to the allies success unit. that's really important to that. part of the story is the red bull express group that w 75% black truck drivers who led this, but a truck convoy that moved pplies from the beaches of normandy and from the terrib port through france and into germany. eventually, as you know, they're pushing their without the red bull express and the black m

who were voting those trucks, it would have been impossible for the armies to at the pace and with the flexibility that they cod. it's one of the ways that the ican army is much more mobile and dynamic than the german army is during same that same time, theregarded par withe combat troops, it's a matter of record that no group soldiers in this theater has done more to make possible allied victory. they liberate no towns, flags, drink, no champagne or kiss happy girls. yet when become critical, the first cry of the high command is give us supplies. so similar to ernie pyle, the white war correspondent, their black war correspondent, to figure prominently in the story people like alice stewart and anderson, dan burley, they were embedded with black units.

and what's powerful about their reporting from 1944 and 1945 is they talk about this vital work that black folks are doing, even though those stories don't make it into our history textbooks. now and so the arguments i try to make, they do make in the book is that world war two wasn't just a battle of strategy. well, it was a battle of supply. if we understand that we can get a clear perspective on the really vital roles that black troops played in helping america and the allies win the war. it's important to say that this wasn't just black men. there were black women who participated in the women's corps and then black women who were in defense industries at home. one group to highlight here was, the 688 central postal battalion, under the leadership of major charity adams. this was the largest of black men to serve in the war. they deployed to the european theater to england in late 1944, and their job was to distribute mail all the european theater, which is actually a really hard job because these units are

moving constantly. and we had a number of men with very common names like johnny smith or, tom jones, they moved 65,000 pieces of mail per shift. and both black and white troops talked about how important that mail was in terms of morale. so these women helped to make possible, i can say definitively, having spent seven years working on this book, that it's impossible to talk about. the history of world war two from the american perspective without talking about the role black americans played to help american allies win the war at their central to the story. so the third argument the book makes is that when black veterans come back to the country they're openly disrespected, but they fight back. they help to lead the civil rights movement. i want to show you just one quote to give you a sense of the tenor of the time. this is james eastland on the floor of the us senate from 1945. at the moment, america is declaring victory in world war two. he says -- soldiers have had disgrace the flag of their country. the -- race is an inferior race.

i am proud that the purest of white blood flows in my veins. i know that the white race is a superior. it is ruled the world. it's given us civilization. this responsible for all the progress on earth. and these should be deeply upsetting to us today. imagine what they sounded like to black veterans, who had just fought for the united states to help defeat the nazis, who who had risked their lives and seen their buddies killed. and to come home to this ink. it's easy sometimes to talk about in american history or segregation in american history in the abstract. it was not at all abstract. these black veterans who came back and had to fear for their lives by veterans were murdered. the war because they were too proud of uniforms. they weren't willing to accept that second class status. that's why the double victory is important and black americans were dedicated to helping to win the war. they wanted to win the military battle, but they also wanted to come home and live in a country they wouldn't be treated as

among the veterans who come back and become leaders in the civil rights movement. medgar evers, he was part of that group of red bull express truck drivers was a cargo loader ana port battalion for red ll express. his group landed at normandy just days after the d-day. he was only 19 years old when he was there and his 21st birthday. he's back at home, 1946, to cater mississippi. he leads a group of black veterans who try to to vote, only to be turned away, a white mob with guns, he said later i had been in omaha beach. all we black soldiers wanted was to be ordinary citizens. we fought during the war. america, mississippi included. now, after the germans, japanese hadn't killed us. it looked as white mississippians would. whatever it was fighting against us that people like james eastland weren't elected democratically. mississippi 48% black population, but only 1% of black people were registered vote because of decades of intimidation. racist tactics like the poll tax. that's what evers was fighting against.

he dedicated his life to civil rights helps investigate the lynching of emmett till in the 1950s until evers is tragically in 1963. so we're thinking about what the greatest generation means. we have to include people like medgar evers, these black veterans. there were thousands of black veterans who came back to form the backbone of the civil rights movement to highlight just a couple here, rosa williams worked alongside dr. martin luther king jr to help found the southern christian leadership conference. williams earned a purple heart for his in europe. debbie johnson roundtree was in the women's army corps. she uses gi bill to attend howard university law and found a firm in washington dc helps a win. very important civil rights cases. and then of course, you know, the brown versus board decision of 1954, linda brown was at the center of that. her father, oliver brown, was a veteran. and part of his desire to fight equal rights is because of his service service. i'll conclude with this. robert madison fought with the 92nd infantry in italy.

his oral history is one of those recorded by the world war two museum here in laurel. in just one piece they use for evidence for this book, madison describes a trip to a bookstore late in his life in the 1920s. in his eighties, he says, he went to the section books on world war two, took up a big, big off the shelf. he flipped through it he saw no reference at all to black soldiers, sailors airmen. and it's quote that stuck with me said we were a forgotten group of people. i wrote this book, black veterans like robert madison. and if you have the opportunity to read it, i hope you'll be inspired like i was by. their stories of patriotism and service that they fought not only militarily for america, but they fought to make america a true democracy. thanks. i look forward to the q&a. thank you. so let's let's let's get into it. so and of course, i did have an

opportunity to read the book. so and i'm very impressed. i want to start off and ask you a little bit about and this is in your introduction in reference to the war often world war two is described as the good war, how america came together and fought a common enemy, how america led the world in the fight for democracy. but the african-american experience in world war two does a necessary early reflect a good war? could you sort of elaborate on that statement and give your idea of of what african not just in the military but also in the work industry and the agricultural industry and just throughout the united states? i think it's a great place to start i think, as most people know, that idea of the good war. the title comes from studs terkel's book from the 1980s, 1984, i think it was. and he has it in quotes in part she wants to call attention to

the kind of double meaning of the good war that what two was certainly good war in the sense that american allies came together to defeat nazi germany and that that was something that had to happen. that was an unequivocal good thing. he also has, in quotes, for the fact that war is, i think, the museum demonstrates is horrible in so many ways that it's not anything we take lightly for black americans. that idea of the good war is troubled by the reality of what the was actually like during world war two for black americans all across country. they could look in to see the kind of day to treatment that black communities received. there was open discrimination in terms of jim crow laws in the south. there were other forms of discrimination in places like new york chicago, los angeles, and then are regular reports of lynchings, both of civilians, but also of some military personnel. the of discrimination encountered in the defense industries. profound. it took organized efforts, even get black americans the chance to participate in defense industries, and then once they were there, white workers held the series of what they called hate strikes over the course of

the war. these were strikes that were officially condoned by unions but were white workers walking off the job because they were upset by any sort of incursion of black workers into the into the workplaces. there's a case in baltimore where a plant shuts down for weeks because white workers won't use integrated. they tried to integrate the bathrooms, this facility. and white workers say that that's a bridge too far. and we won't we won't do that. and so i think for our understanding of the good war part of our as historians is to talk honestly about the and to rely on the honest evidence of the past. and so i think two things can both be true, that, one, americans sacrifice a tremendous amount to help win the war, to help win a war that had to be won. at the same, they weren't willing to racial prejudice. one of the key quotes in the book is from what roy wilkins i mentioned earlier, he said white people would rather this war than sacrifice the luxury of racial prejudice. and i think things like those hate strikes are a good example of that, that when those

factories shut down, it meant, that they were producing fewer tanks. your trucks, less ammunition, that was going to hamper the war effort. if americans were truly pulling together to do everything they could to help win the war, there wouldn't have been segregation in the military and there wouldn't have been these protests of attempts to integrate the defense industries. and i think our job is as citizens today. but as historians or people who care about history, it's good to hold both those truths together. right. the war was certainly a bad war in terms of nazism. the war is much complicated on the home front with the racism and prejudice that remained. and so let me just get you to go a little further on on that point. so know one of the one of the more all the chapters are wonderful. but your chapter on on race riots really depicts the black experience not just in the south, but certainly urban areas. african-americans are moving to the north, to the they're looking for jobs. they're looking for housing and

they came across a communities that didn't want them, which also turned into race riots and became very violent. can you speak that a little bit? in 1943 alone, there were 240 race riots all across the country in big cities and small towns on military bases. and one of things we often forget is that these military bases, largely in the south, became intense of racial conflict. once you started bringing troop from all over the country together in places like detroit, there was massive in-migration, both blacks, the rise, but also white southerners. in 1943, detroit has more southerners, both black and white, than any southern city does. that many people have moved from the south in this in this great migration that, we've seen conflicts because people are competing for the same housing resources. they're competing for the same in these defense industries. and there's open racial hostilities. there are groups that are aligned with the ku klux klan that are formed in places like detroit and and they are openly organizing on the shop floors in

some of these these key plants and defense industries. detroit has the largest race in 1943. there are dozens of people who are killed in that 36 hour, 36 hour riot and it reveals, i think, again just how how tense things were during the war. i think it's important to look that america was not a simpler place during world war two. a lot of the kind of black, white images of the time are maybe hazy recollections will be. yes, i think that. but when you actually look primary sources from that era, things were tense in these in the cities and in small towns in beaumont, texas, there was a right to days after the right in in detroit, where the white community went in and burned down. key parts of key parts of the black business district in, beaumont, texas, including a radio store, a an owner who had sold thousands, thousands of dollars of war bonds. what the image sticks with me from that is a picture ran in

black newspapers afterwards was of a american flag that had been burned in the riot. this is a fire that was flying outside of this this radio industry and the question that editors asked with this with this flag is is why don't white people want to fight like we do? why would they come into this community and and burn our town down and burn our businesses down at a time when we're supposed to be joining together as americans help fight this war? and those are those are hard stories of research. they're stories to write. they're hard stories to tell, but they're important stories to reckon with because that's that was the reality of what the war for a lot of black americans. at the same time, they had people from their communities, some of those images showed earlier, those are people's brothers and uncles and dads. they're all fighting a war while they're encountering this intense, intense racism home. and that it's really difficult to overstate how tense that was for robert kennedy during the war.

one of the other things i would like for you to sort of to speak is that at the beginning of world war two, i think that african-americans as as the war was starting were was sort of looking at the war in terms of previous conflicts. you look at the civil war and, the aftermath, and how violent and difficult that was. of course, you have reconstruct. shinn and then you have jim crow after world war one, where african-american is also supported the war. but then 1919, you have the summer where you have a series of race riots that to this day have never been. there's nothing that has ever come close in terms of the level of destruction and death. but you have w.e.b. dubois is writing about closing ranks. and this is our fight. and then we're fighting for democracy. and then now world war two starts. what is the mindset of most african americans and political at that particular time?

and what's different about this conflict? so one of the reasons the double victory campaign resonates so powerfully is that it's old idea in many ways. as mark was saying, frederick douglass, in the context of what context of the civil war says, going to fight two battles. we're going to fight to change. and north also fighting against the south and slavery. w.e.b. dubois, outset of war, one says we're going to return fighting. right? we're going to close ranks, fight this war abroad. but then we're going to come back and gain equal rights at home. what's different with world war two is the scale that americans have been part of every military conflict united states has ever been involved in going, all the way back to the american revolution in run up to world war two, before america officially joins the war after pearl harbor. it's clear that this is going to be a monumental undertaking and people understand a couple of things. and that's what i mean, jobs both in defense industries, also in the military that having opportunities serve in the military was both a source of patriotism, a source sense of

belonging, and citizenship, but also it was payments that you received to pay for your service in the army or navy that black want a chance to be able to to benefit from and receive training in the military that could be used in the civilian world afterwards. so in 1938, 39, 48, there were organized by civil rights activists and by black newspaper editors to fight for the chance to fight, to try to get the military to open the doors to more black americans, which almost crazy to imagine that black americans to just fight organized for the opportunity to even serve in the military the lead up to world war two that that was how pronounced the prejudice and racism was and the other thing that's important to remember too is because it's not the scale of it, but also who american the allies are fighting against the the ideas of freedom are so much more profound than what we're to, because the nazis are the main force that takes us up against that black americans

want to be able to leverage. that idea that the united states fighting for freedom, democracy abroad to be able to ensure that after the war those same attributes will be true here at home. and so as we talk about the aftermath, world war two and what it really means, not only to the black community but to the nation, one of the things that stood in my mind in your conclusion is when you made reference to the fact that world two is is connected to the present approach to present day protest movement. one of the things i've often told my students is that, look, we study history to understand the present. we also study history to, interpret the future, or predict the future. so what's happening today is grounded in foundationally in what's happened in the past. and so can you kind of talk about that the legacy of world war two the political activism the beginning of the civil rights movement that still is

very very important to this country today. and even of the the racial tension that many people might see today that one thing that's important for least way i teach history is talking about continuities in the way that one period often leads to the next. so almost every major civil rights figure of the 1950s and sixties has some connection. the history of world war two, to say just one example. rosa parks was a civilian seamstress, the maxwell air base in montgomery alabama. it's 1940, fords later in the war in the busses on that base had been desegregated at that point. and so it she describes that on the base she could sit anywhere she wanted to when she was on the bus, she could sit next to her white coworkers and go chat with them when they got to the edge of the base and transfer to the city bus. then she had to go sit in the back of the city bus in montgomery. so in the course of one block, she goes from being a first class citizen who can do whatever she wants to, being a second class citizen as the jim crow section of the bus parks. brother sylvester serves in the

pacific theater. when he gets back, he can't find housing, can't get a job. these were this was sort of in the air for that whole generation of black veterans and black defense industry workers and as that is one quote i mentioned indicates that there was intense intense racism that these black veterans had fight against when they came back. and it's important to understand the reality of what this post years looked like for black, because if you don't, then it looks like the activism of the 1960s came out of nowhere and and it did not that those protests against voting rights protest a school desegregation protest in, terms of employment and housing, all of that had its roots during world war two. and so that's what i mean by continuities. if you don't understand the reality of world war two, then you can't understand the 1960s. and then similarly, if you look at the racial justice protests in the last decade, if you don't understand this longer, it can seem like those came out of nowhere as well. and part of the reason those issues are still with us today around voting rights, around racial inequality, around the

racial wealth gap, is that they have deep, deep roots in history. think the g.i. bill for example at the g.i. bill is one of the most important pieces of legislation in the 20th century. it's what enabled a whole generation of white veterans to be able to enter the middle class because it provided access to low interest mortgages that are backed by the va, access to college tuition, to job training, business loans. by and large, black veterans were not to benefit from the gi bill because it was set up to be distributed at the state level. and everyone in 1945 knew if you did things at the state level were deferring to the racial prejudices of state and local laws. there's a group at brandeis who's tried to calculate what that discrimination has meant. and what they found that over the course of a lifetime, it's about $100,000 difference in terms of what blackwater or two veterans are able to get from gi bill benefits and what white veterans are able to get. and we think about the vast racial wealth in our country today. a lot of that is traced back to those discriminations in policy. and i think so think about these

continuities between past and present. i think one of the things the history can help us do is the world we live in today. and then hopefully us tools to help navigate the future. right. and i say that without regard, whatever anyone's particular political opinions are. right. this history is a history regardless of who's in the white house. right. or who controls congress, any point time. our history is the history. if we can't have a firm grasp what actually happened when things in the present, they again they seem like they came out of nowhere right. history gives us that grounding understand. there's a backstory to almost all of this stuff, and that's part of why it's so important to to study this history and to talk about it, honestly. yeah. and as a history professor, you and i don't teach as much as i to, but i'm a little troubled at the fact that, you know a lot of our young people don't read as

much. and and i remember even ago when i was teaching a history class, i mentioned to my students about reading book and they asked me when was the movie coming out? you know, it's okay, all right. and sometime there's no movies that's going to come out. but but i also think about, you know, and i'm a history nerd, obviously you know, in a in a someone who likes war movies, because it helps me sort of better understand those conflicts. and so when you think about the band of brothers, think about pacific, you think about midway, you know, patton, all these epic that that really describe the human experience during world war two and helps americans understand the sacrifice that took place by by asked by citizens. but yet when you look at stories, you don't see african-americans. you don't see the level of diversity that reflects this nation. you don't see the sacrifice of the african-american or people of color that contributed to the war effort.

and yet we living at a time where a lot of our young people are visual learners, you know, so those movies matter that the multimedia social media, it. can you sort of talk a little bit about the importance of of recognizing the contributions of african-americans and what it means to young people and even students in the future. so i'll start with a confession. another one that's on paper now. but i didn't love history until i got to graduate school. i found history really boring, high school and in college, even because i didn't understand what it actually meant to do history. i would read these books in classroom, read textbooks, and i was often memorizing names and dates and facts for tests. i kind of felt like these books just kind of came from up on high, right? and i was try to, to, to memorize whatever in there and then report it back or regurgitate it back in them in the test format. that's how we history's about

history is about engaging primary sources and trying to those puzzle pieces together to help understand how people experience the past. you work with primary sources, try to analyze them. history is messy. that's the the fun part of. it right. that's what's so dynamic about it. and so i use that as a lead in because when i think about what it means, get young people engaged and interested in history. it's about that showing them not just the end point but the process. i tend to expose them at as early as possible to primary sources and understand what it means to evaluate primary sources in relationship to each other, and then to make arguments based on those primary sources. i don't know if twitter will still be alive when we finish this, but i'm on twitter pretty regularly posting primary sources from this history, and i think it's a great way to try to engage people with what it means to understand history, different perspectives. and as you're saying, we have to be able to understand the contributions of black americans to history that takes away from the many, many contributions of

white americans. this history that we part, the power of history as we can tell all of these stories together. we need to tell all of these stories together because are all american history. right? that's the power. this is what the museum does. so, so profoundly. i i think for young people, it's giving. i always find this like different ladders. help help them hook on to wherever they're going. pick up the story. for some people, it's a video clip or documentary. some people it's a newspaper article. for some people, these oral histories at the museum as it's curated are tremendous. to hear a veteran talk about. their experience of the war, then what it meant to come back to a country that didn't treat as the equal citizen, that does more any number of books on the of jim crow could tell you from a first person perspective. and so our job as educators or our collective job as people who care about history is to find those ways of engaging different generations in this history. i think demographically i to say this audience skews on the older side and.

so then i would. say it's presented as a challenge to you. it's the same challenge. i'm much older than my students, right? as the gray hair, my beard, my hair and the test part of my job is to get them energized about this history. it's not enough to say we're two. history is important you should care about it. professor dolman, i don't care. part of my job to find what angle is going to reach them. they get in my classroom, make it a challenge to you that you care about this history. you wouldn't be for three days if you didn't. for the people are in your networks, your grandchildren, the young people in your lives. find ways of engaging them in this history. in ways that are relevant to them. i think that's that's our challenge as people who care history is to make this history come alive for people in different ways. there's single avenue to that, right? we don't know whether it's going to be, but it's desperately important we have that next generation care as much about history as we all do. yeah. and as a up to that, i'll tell you how i used to handle that. so what i want to ask my students, you know, who likes

history and they would be shy in the kind of sum raise your hand some don't. and i'd say if you didn't like history raging so they raise their hand i'll say well i totally disagree. everybody loves history. most of the most popular books and movies, tv shows, all about history that everyone loves. so what you don't like is boring professors. so i think and i don't think dr. cox or dr. delman have to worry about boring professor. gentlemen, we're going to jump to q&a. but a round of applause for marcus cox and matt belmont. we have a number of questions on carney side so we'll start to your left. towards the front. we'll start with the founder of

the museum first right. well, let me just go first again thank the way you started with shout up arizona state university and stephen watson. i came over there and met with you and because of your enthusiasm initially you went off to dartmouth. that left us in the lurch. stevensville managed to conclude that master's degree online. and actually, i think there's some people out in the audience that are taking that program now. if you are, raise your hands out there. i know we've got some. so here's the here's the founder of that program and. and a shout out to steven watson who spent another year negotiating the difficulties of bringing you partnership together. but as you mentioned, a wrote a little blurb for your your book here. and i think it's one of the great books on the

african-american experience in world war two. and then the blurb think that's on the website. i said it's what americans can learn from african-americans about world war two and i think that's one of your great contribue actions in the way you have written this story and especially the way you put it into context in the late thirties with langston hughes for example in the spanish civil war. and you mentioned that ethiopia and so on but what is really about that is that the african-american and for some of the obvious reasons you've discussed began to understand the fight against fascism as against a fight for freedom and democracy in america and in the world before most americans had a clue. and many americans, as you know, as america first, we are isolationists. we have all leading business leaders, many in the government who were who are some

sympathetic to national and to hitler and in the run up, when you have many african-americans like carter, as you talked about. and hughes hughes, who were over there with hemingway fighting fascism in spain for the larger. and i think that was a really important contribution because you had a start. and of course langston hughes, not only a journalist, but a poet. i mean, would you just talk a little bit about him a little and that early context and how that motivated you to get started? thank you. thinking that langston hughes is such an extraordinary figure and for him, publishing goes to spain is because he's just fascinated by these volunteers and his reporting back. it. as nick mentioned, it's both kind of direct war reporting, but also it's poetry. and so before the war and then during the war, he these tremendous poems that really call out the hypocrisy of a country that is fighting for freedom, democracy abroad, while condoning segregation at home.

he and other black americans are making really explicit connections between the racial hierarchies and germany and the racial policies in jim crow south. and so one things i am able to excerpt in the are a number of his poems both from spain that he writes back but also the war that answer about different points of entry to different corners of history, poetry, song. those are great ways to get people engaged or thinking about how how artists in the past tried make sense of this history. thank you. to your right about halfway back. i want to thank you for talking about this very important subject and topic. i was wondering if you would comment on the experience of sergeant isaac woodard, how that led to the d.c. segregation of the army. thank you. thank you for asking about that. one of the hardest chapters of the book trip was homecoming that describes the tenor of the country when when black veterans came back. as i mentioned, it was it's

distressing the kind of disrespect that was shown to by veterans. things were so bad that by veterans had to change out of their military uniforms as soon as they got home. there's one story of a father bringing so that his son can change in car so that no white people see him in the uniform. but it's just the idea of a black person uniform was upsetting because. they thought that they were going to themselves too proudly as like woodard is one of the more than a dozen black veterans who are either murdered or when they get home. he is attacked in south carolina and route to rejoin his family. he's beaten by police. eyes are gouged out by a sheriff's nightstick and, you know, in many ways it's not dissimilar to the george floyd murder in the summer 2020. it sent shockwaves across the country. his photo with his face mangled by the nightstick is in newspapers. all across the country. it sparked outrage, as it should, among black american civil rights activists, but also got the attention of president truman, president truman, as you

know, as a veteran. and he's outraged that this kind of violence is happening against woodard and others. right. he's he's aware of racism of this united states, but seen black veterans be treated in this way, deeply, deeply upsetting for him as a veteran. it's of the things that leads him to sign the executive order in 1948. it's a piece of the puzzle. i think the other pieces are. he recognizes in a political calculus that black voters are going to be increasingly important part of the party's base. and so he's trying to balance that. the demands of black voters against the southern segregationist part of the democratic party. in the 1940s, and then by that point, there had been a decade of intense protests to try to get the military to be segregated. and then also 48, they're able to benefit from the after action reports of commanders in world war two who recognize that black troops perform extraordinarily well during the war. one of the arguments for maintaining is that there are all these myths that emerged between world war one and world war two, that black troops are

not to be courageous or brave in combat. they don't what it takes to be good soldiers. they're able to prove that wrong on the battlefield. and so truman is able to draw on those different elements to lead him to desegregate the military. but woodard's case, it's a again was a story that's so important to understand because it's helped us understand those those histories of police brutality against black americans have been outrageous for so many decades. we're going to stay to the right towards back. can you stand by? all right? i just finished writing a about based on my father's letters, world war two. and he was based germany both during the war and afterwards and in many of his letters he remarks about how the african-american troops were being treated by the white europeans once they had an experience of actually meeting them and having them in very close proximity, sometimes sharing their homes with. and my father wryly, i think a lot of them might be better off

just staying here in europe than going home. so thank you for mentioning. that's a really part of the story that what your father reported on is accurate, that black soldiers and veterans by troops and veterans described being treated amazingly by british citizens and french citizens. evers had mentioned earlier when he's 19, he spent some time with the french family as his unit is moving through france. is this the first time he's ever been treated as a human being by a white person? it's a 100% different than how he is treated by white. it changes his world view. he thinks he believes, an entirely different way of relating across racial lines as possible. the other part of that story is when white units go abroad, a number of people actually upset, by the way, that black troops are being treated by white europeans. and so they actually try to install a jim crow policies in england in france. and so again, there are intense racial conflicts that happen in england between black white servicemen about these basic

questions about can black troops in the same pub as his white people. next questions with connie. to your far left, please. hello there. the buffalo soldiers, particularly ninth and 10th calvary. the second calvary gets stood up, still dares stood up, stood down again. what can happens those guys after? i think they're stood down in north africa in 43. i mean, these guys were pre-war soldiers with histories back to the indian wars. they're not new units. and people like you know just come with new ideas into the service. they're veterans in one form or another. just what happened with them? thanks for asking. i didn't spend as much time on unit. i don't have as much to say about. we're going to go to your right towards, the back. gentlemen, john john, does your cover the the red tail squadrons? and you didn't even mention it.

that's reason i'm asking. thank you for asking. so it does. it talks about the tuskegee airmen and the red tails. i think that the tuskegee airmen are the best known black troops in the war, and that's one reason they didn't highlight them. here is, i think hopefully they're familiar with most salient the two things the book tries to do is it focuses on one commander in particular benjamin davis jr, who graduates west point in 1936. he's only the fourth black man ever graduate from west point, the first in the 20th century, when he graduates in 36, the army has no idea what to do with him because he want to be a pilot and that time the air corps is not allowing any black men to be pilots. and so it talks about the effort from 36 when he graduates until tuskegee in 41, and then the month by month fight, essentially, they have to wage in order to get the opportunity to first fly and then to serve in combat, which they eventually do in the mediterranean. the other thing with tuskegee that i didn't really know until i got into the research is, there's a whole black world that develops on the air base in tuskegee and so it's not just the pilots. there are dozens of black women

who are nurses. there are hundreds of personnel. there are meteorologists, black men with training from m.i.t. and other stem backgrounds. and so i try to highlight that aspect of the story, think that part is less well known than just a fighter pilot. there's a whole support network of other personnel on the ground there in tuskegee. next questions in the back to your left with connie. dr. denman, thank you for sharing your work today on on thursday morning. dr. bishop's suggested to us that americans could learn a lot from and austrians grappling with the legacy of nazi ism in our own grappling with the legacy of slavery in america and dr. overy suggested there's a night that nazi policy was deeply influenced by imperialism and, colonialism. and we also understand that it was deeply influenced in

hitler's worldview by. american racial war and racial policy was this influence understood in in your research by the people developing the double view campaign? it's my first question and my second question is how can we better better reconcile for america's legacy of enslavement and persecution of formerly enslaved people with the heroism and victory over nazi in the second world war, particularly as we think about the united states history, education, i think those are really good big questions. on the first one, let start that. obviously, the holocaust is world historical unique event. and so there's no entity that compares to that. but in terms of nazi racial, as nick mentioned earlier, black americans are among the first to understand what a serious threat hitler poses because they see that he's drawing explicitly on

american racial policies. and so the language keeps going to use from 1933 on is that nazi racial policy in american racial policy, the kind of racial that's in the jim crow south, are two sides of the same coin, right? that these are our strong and activists keep playing back to that as different things during the war the fact that the military is segregated the fact that blood donors are segregated the fact that you have these white workers walking off the job to protest integration. the that nazi p.o.w.s were treated better than black soldiers were that they could eat in facilities right parts of car train cars that black soldiers couldn't. that's one of the things that really outraged back and so that's absolutely key to the understanding of the double victory campaign because it really was and i can't emphasize just enough it really was two wars that they were fighting. right. it wasn't just enough to to that battle militarily. they had to win at home. and so for black americans, the war doesn't end in 1945, like, yes, those military battles end,

but the other battles continue. the american racial that were very, very similar to not to racial ideology. they're still in place and you still have people like east london in the senate in terms of reckoning with, the history there's so much to say on that topic. but i would with this is obviously slavery is a foundational part of our country's history and we've a lot of public debates the last couple of years about how we should grapple with that, with that part of our history. i think the history of world war two was flown under the radar a little bit that people don't think about this or what we're to as being as controversial or as as fraught as or slavery is. i hope in my book i try to make clear that it was just as fraught that we shouldn't look at world war two as a more peaceful, unified time in our nation's history, because it wasn't. it's a time that america helped out win a tremendously important war while still condoning extreme forms of jim crow, racial segregation in the country.

and so in terms what it means to record this history, i think the first part is just talking honestly about the history with reference to actual actual sources and then thinking about what were the of that history. as i mentioned, the gi bill and that kind of discrimination that that's legacy of this history. it's part of why have the kind of racial inequality we do today. it's one that one of the reasons it's a our job as people to care about history is to to look at the history honestly both the good and the bad parts of it. and if i can just add to that, i think a part of that also is is we're doing today, you know, recognizing contributions of african-americans and other americans to world two and very important parts of our i think the fact that african-americans and others are sometimes left out of the narrative and the story of how this country was built and and the achievements of this nation are very, very important. i think, you know, even right now, as have, you know, some you

groups or whatever want to call them who are very sensitive to certain books and libraries and and trying to try and leave portions our of of our contributions of americans out of out of out of our official histories. that is in opinion is very damaging because you're leaving out a very important part of who we are as a nation. and i think, you know if you want to reconcile past and really look at it, you have to first recognize people's and their value to this this great nation.