Harlem at War : The Black Experience in WWII

by Brandt, Nat

• ISBN13: 9780815603245
• ISBN10: 081560324X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-02-01
• Publisher: Syracuse Univ Pr

Summary

By the spring of 1943 more than a half million blacks were in the U.S. Army, but only 79,000 of them were overseas. Most were repeating the experience of their fathers in World War I - serving chiefly in labor battalions. Domestically, clashes between blacks and whites vying for the same jobs in boomtown defense-plant cities and the wretched treatment of northern black draftees in the South - where Jim Crow discrimination was prevalent - were all too common. In Harlem at War, Nat Brandt vividly recreates the desolation of black communities during World War II and examines the nation-wide conditions that led up to the Harlem riot of 1943. Wherever black troops were trained or stationed, Brandt explains, "rage surfaced frequently, was suppressed, but was not extinguished". Using eyewitness accounts, he describes the rage Harlemites felt, the discrimination and humiliation they shared with blacks across the country. The collective anger erupted one day in Harlem when a young black soldier was shot by a white police officer. The riot, in which six blacks were killed, seven hundred injured, and six arrested, became a turning point in America's race relations and a precursor to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	xi
Preface	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
Prologue	3	(4)
E Pluribus Unum	7	(9)
Urban Migrants	16	(8)
Negro Harlem	24	(11)
``Nigger Heaven''	35	(9)
Dress Rehearsal	44	(11)
The Black Dilemma	55	(9)
The Battle Before the War	64	(8)
Prewar Maneuvers	72	(13)
Priorities	85	(15)
The Experience of War	100	(13)
A Conditional Surrender	113	(7)
Images	120	(5)
Advances and Retreats	125	(7)
Violence on the Home Front	132	(12)
A State of Siege	144	(9)
Leaders	153	(12)
Conflicts	165	(11)
The People's Voices	176	(7)
The Harlem Riot	183	(24)
Recriminations	207	(9)
Victory Abroad	216	(11)
Epilogue	227	(6)
Notes	233	(26)
Bibliography	259	(6)
Index	265