Mixed Race Studies

The children born to Black American GIs and white British women during Second World War

The Bristol Post
Bristol, England, United Kingdom
2021-10-08

Hannah Simpson

The children, who came to be known by the British press as the nation’s “Brown Babies”, grew up in post-war Britain

During World War II, around one million American troops arrived in England to prepare for the invasion of Europe and to assist Great Britain in the fight against Nazi Germany.

Of these GIs, 130,000 were African American who landed in cities such as Bristol between 1942 and 1945.

For many Brits, this was their first time meeting a person of colour, but in Bristol, the public were incredibly welcoming to their American visitors, with some pubs such as The Colston Arms refusing to adhere to US segregation practices.

America’s stringent Jim Crow laws were not limited to the United States alone, as the army was officially segregated until 1948…

…Professor of social and cultural history at Anglia Ruskin University, Lucy Bland said: “From all accounts a lot of local people much preferred the Black GIs…

Read the entire article here.

Enemies in Love: A German POW, a Black Nurse, and an Unlikely Romance

The New Press
May 2018
288 pages
5½ x 8¼
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-62097-186-4

Alexis Clark, Adjunct Faculty
Columbia Journalism School, New York, New York

A true and deeply moving narrative of forbidden love during World War II and a shocking, hidden history of race on the home front

This is a love story like no other: Elinor Powell was an African American nurse in the U.S. military during World War II; Frederick Albert was a soldier in Hitler’s army, captured by the Allies and shipped to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Arizona desert. Like most other black nurses, Elinor pulled a second-class assignment, in a dusty, sun-baked—and segregated—Western town. The army figured that the risk of fraternization between black nurses and white German POWs was almost nil.

Brought together by unlikely circumstances in a racist world, Elinor and Frederick should have been bitter enemies; but instead, at the height of World War II, they fell in love. Their dramatic story was unearthed by journalist Alexis Clark, who through years of interviews and historical research has pieced together an astounding narrative of race and true love in the cauldron of war.

Based on a New York Times story by Clark that drew national attention, Enemies in Love paints a tableau of dreams deferred and of love struggling to survive, twenty-five years before the Supreme Court’s Loving decision legalizing mixed-race marriage—revealing the surprising possibilities for human connection during one of history’s most violent conflicts.

1944 We Were Here: African American GIs in Dorset

Lulu
2014-10-06
103 pages
5.83 wide x 8.26 tall
0.57 lbs.
Paperback ISBN: 9781291278170

Louisa Adjoa Parker

1944 We Were Here: African American GIs in Dorset explores the stories of the black soldiers who came to Dorset to train for D-Day. Told through the eyes of local people as well as the children of the GIs themselves, this is an important addition to Dorset’s rich and diverse history. Here we discover stories of friendship, love, murder, racism and the segregation that was a fact of life in the US for African Americans at this time.

Fear of Small Numbers: «Brown Babies» in Postwar Italy

Contemporanea
Volume XVIII, Number 4, October-December 2015
pages 537-568
DOI: 10.1409/81438

Silvana Patriarca, Professor of History
Fordham University: The Jesuit University of New York

By drawing in an interdisciplinary fashion on a variety of different sources (some of them archives only recently made available to the public), the essay examines the way children of Italian women and non-white Allied soldiers born in Italy during WWII and in its immediate aftermath were racialized and treated in the postwar years. It shows significant continuities between pre- and postwar ideas about race and «racial hybrids» in various segments of the Italian population and argues that these children were considered a «problem» in spite of their small numbers (rather as happened in Germany and Great Britain in the same years). Because of their origin in «illegitimate» relations, either consensual or forced, and because of the color of their skin, they often encountered hostility and contempt and were seen as not really belonging in the national community even though they were almost always Italian citizens in virtue of ius soli. The Italian case, however, has its own specificity, namely the extent to which prominent figures of the Catholic world, at times former supporters of fascism, were involved in trying to «solve» this socalled «problem». The vicissitudes of these children show the need to further investigate the history of racism in the Italian democratic Republic.

Read or purchase the article here.

Professor Silvana Patriarca’s Research on Race and Nation in Post World War II Italy

History at Fordham University
Fordham University: The Jesuit University of New York
2016-03-31

Aurora Pfefferkorn

Dr. Silvana Patriarca

Professor Silvana Patriarca is a faculty member in the Fordham University History department and specializes in modern Italian history. She is currently exploring the interaction between ideas of nation and “race” and working on a book about the history of racism in post-World War II Italy. Her new book will focus on “mixed-race” children born in Italy during the Allied occupation. These children were born to Italian mothers and non-white Allied soldiers, and were highly racialized in the post-war period.

Dr. Patriarca had initially started her research with a different topic in mind, but became interested in the post-war period when she discovered a lack of scholarship about race and racism in Italy after 1945. She began to focus on the experiences of mix-raced Italian children when she came across a 1961 Italian anthropometric study of a group of mixed-race children born during and right after WWII. The children had been measured in all sorts of invasive way to determine the physical, intellectual, and psychological traits that distinguished them, as if they were a group apart from a racial standpoint. “I found the book offensive and asked myself what do we know about the experiences of these children? I wondered what happened to them at that time and after [these studies were finished]?” Dr. Patriarca said. She saw these racial studies as linked to the large issue of Italian identity, the war experience, and the trauma of defeat. Fascist and racist ideas still circulated throughout Italy after World War II and permeated the scientific community especially. “Of course mentalities are slow to change,” Dr. Patriarca explained “It was troubling that many historians could still not see the intersection of nation and race in the postwar period and the lingering effects of fascism and racism on national identity.”…

Read the entire article here.

Rising Sun, “Rising Soul”: Mixed Race Japanese of African Descent

University of Southern California, University Park Campus
Los Angeles, California
Montgomery Ross Fisher Building (MRF)
Montgomery Ross Fisher Auditorium (340)
Friday, 2016-02-26, 14:00-17:00 PST (Local Time)

Rising Soul is a documentary film that explores the question, “What is the impact of Afro-Japanese offspring and their origins as children of Japanese war brides?” At the end of World War II, many Japanese women married American men of African descent and immigrated to the United States. While several stories examine the lives of Japanese war brides who married white Americans, none delve deeply into the history of Japanese war brides who married African Americans, and the journeys of their mixed-race children. Rising Soul explores the transnational juncture of Japanese and African American cultures embodied in the African-descent offspring of Japanese war brides, women that not only faced the challenges of life in the U.S., but who also confronted the adversities of interracial marriages to African Americans – hardships that emanated not only from white society, but also from Japanese including other Japanese war brides married to whites, from African Americans, and from Asian Americans. The documentary seeks to de-mystify Asian and Black identity from a perspective that does not see it as an anomaly or a subset of Hapa or Haafu identity but as something very real, primary, and organic to mixed race. Through interviews, glimpses into cultural phenomena, and historical artifacts, the film illuminates the complexity of that identity, and the betwixt and between and fusion that multiple heritages of color can foster. A panel will feature Rising Soul producer Monique Yamaguchi, screenwriter Velina Hasu Houston; and subjects from the film including Linda Gant, Sumire Gant, Kiyoshi Houston, Curtiss Takada Rooks, and Rika Houston. Excerpts from the film also will be screened.

For more information and to RSVP, click here. View the flyer here.

Augusta Chiwy, ‘Forgotten’ Wartime Nurse, Dies at 94

The New York Times
2015-08-25

Sam Roberts, Urban Affairs Correspondent

Augusta Chiwy was honored in 2011 for saving Americans during World War II. Credit Eric Lalmand/European Pressphoto Agency

Augusta Chiwy, a Belgian nurse whose unsung bravery in saving countless American soldiers wounded in the Battle of the Bulge was belatedly celebrated in 2011, died on Sunday near Brussels. She was 94.

Her death was confirmed by her biographer, Martin King.

Ms. Chiwy (pronounced CHEE-wee) was mentioned in passing only as “Anna,” a black nurse from Congo, in Stephen Ambrose’s book “Band of Brothers.” She was played by Rebecca Okot in an episode of the television series based on the book.

It took Mr. King, a British military historian, to trace her to a retirement home near Brussels, overcome a condition called selective mutism, which prevented her from speaking about her wartime experience, and finally identify her in a 2010 book published abroad titled “The Forgotten Nurse.” His TV documentary “Searching for Augusta: The Forgotten Angel of Bastogne” was released last year.

As a result of Mr. King’s efforts, 67 years after her battlefield heroism, Ms. Chiwy was awarded the Army’s Civilian Award for Humanitarian Service “for selfless service and bravery” and knighted by the king of Belgium…

A book in 2010 about Ms. Chiwy’s experiences.

…Augusta Marie Chiwy was born on June 6, 1921, in a village near the Rwandan border that is now part of Burundi. Her father, Henri, was a veterinarian from Belgium. Her mother was Congolese.

Her father took her to Bastogne when she was 9. She planned on becoming a teacher, but when the war began she turned to nursing.

She married a Belgian soldier, Jacques Cornet, in 1950. They had two children, Alain and Christine, who survive her.

She later worked in a hospital treating patients with spinal injuries. She rarely spoke about her wartime experience…

Read the entire obituary here.

Revealed: How Britons welcomed black soldiers during WWII, and fought alongside them against racist GIs

The Telegraph
2015-12-06

Patrick Sawer, Senior Reporter

This was no ordinary Saturday night punch-up outside a pub.

At the height of World War Two, with the country gripped in a life or death fight for freedom against fascism and dictatorship, dozens of local drinkers fought alongside black soldiers against white Military Police officers harassing them outside a Lancashire pub.

It was just one extraordinary example of the active support shown by ordinary Britons for the thousands of black American troops stationed amongst them during the war – in stark contrast to the vicious racist abuse they received from their fellow countrymen.

The Lancashire riot was just one of hundreds of cases of simple humanity displayed by ordinary Britons towards black soldiers.

Details of the riot are revealed in a new book exploring the experience of black GIs stationed in Britain during the war.

While white GIs sought to have them banned from pubs, clubs and cinemas and frequently subjected them to physical and verbal assault, many ordinary Britons welcomed the black troops into their homes – and on several occasions physically stood up to their tormentors.

The book, Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War, also reveals how in June 1943 there was a public outcry when four black servicemen were refused service in a bar in Bath, for no reason other than the colour of their skin…

…While most people have heard of the GI babies the US troops left behind, few have considered that many of these children were of mixed-race, the offspring of affairs between local white women and the black soldiers they encountered.

Many of those “brown babies” only came to know their fathers in later years, with some of their descendants now embarking on a search for their American grandfathers.

Miss Hervieux said: “Given the racial tensions that exist in Britain today, as in other countries, it is hard to believe that the UK was once a relative racial paradise for African Americans. Britons were willing to open their hearts and minds to fellow human beings who were there to help them…

Read the entire article here.

Once unknown, story of WWII Latino Tuskegee Airman uncovered

Fox News Latino
2015-11-20

Bryan Llenas, National Correspondent

Among the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first African-American military air squadron which heroically fought in World War II, was a little known about Hispanic pilot named Esteban Hotesse.

Born in Moca, Dominican Republic, but a New Yorker since he was 4 years old, Hotesse served with the Tuskegee Airmen for more than three years before he died during a military exercise on July 8th, 1945. He was just 26.

As a black Dominican, Hotesse was a part of a squadron credited for single-handedly tearing down the military’s segregation policies, while helping to change America’s perception of African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.

Enlisted on February 21, 1942 Hotesse was part of the 619 squadron of the 447 bombardment group known as the Tuskegee Airmen. Though his squadron never flew in combat, he took part in the battle for civil rights at home…

Read the entire article here.

Interracial relationships and the ‘brown baby’ problem: black GIs, white women and their mixed race offspring in World War II Britain

University of Cambridge
Department of History and Philosophy of Science
Seminar Room 1
Tuesday, 2015-11-17, 17:00-18:30Z

Lucy Bland, Reader in History
Anglia Ruskin University

For more information, click here.