[Music] foreign [Music] montia and you're watching PBS books PBS books and The Institute of Museum and Library services are partnering on visions of America all stories all people all places August conversation commemorates the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the Armed Forces well led by imls director Crosby Kemper Scholars Matthew Delmont and Jeffrey Sammons as well as Brigadier General Terry Williams they explore the important role that people of color played in the armed forces in American history to see the conversation go to visionsofamerica.org well today we have a treat we are speaking as part of the promotion of the visions of America third virtual conversation with Matthew Delmont he is the author of The acclaimed half American the Epic story of African Americans fighting World War II at home and abroad we're so excited to have him here today to discuss his book welcome Matthew hi Heather thank you for having me we're here to discuss your book can you share a little bit about your book and where the name came from so the book is about what World War II looked like from the black perspective the title of the book comes from a letter that a man named James G Thompson wrote to the Pittsburgh Courier in 1941. it was December of 1941 after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Thompson who's a 26 year old from Wichita Kansas had a lot on his mind at the time he was wondering what it would mean for him and other black Americans to be drafted into a surrogate military so he writes this letter to the Pittsburgh Courier which was the largest and most influential black newspaper of the time and it's a powerful Dynamic letter it asks in part should I sacrifice my life to live half American is the America I know worth defending and that phrase should I sacrifice my life to live half American it really stuck with me and it's why I chose half American as the title of the book the Pittsburgh Courier used Thompson's letter to launch what was called the devil Victory Campaign which became the rallying cry for black Americans during the war because black Americans saw themselves as fighting two Wars at the same time they're fighting both to defeat fascism abroad but also to defeat racism at home they recognize it wasn't enough to win the war militarily if they came home to racism and white supremacy at home so the book half American tries to tell that entire story it looks at what the war looked like from the black perspective it starts before the Bombay Pearl Harbor traces the vast contributions that more than a million black Americans made to help him win the war and then talks what it meant for black veterans to come home and just keep fighting but they had to keep fighting for civil rights once they came home after the war so how did you get the idea for this book so this book actually grew out of my last book project which was a project called black quotidian in which I looked at African-American newspapers papers like the Pittsburgh Courier and Chicago Defender I was looking at historical newspapers try to understand how black communities experience history as it unfolded when I was looking at those papers from the 1930s and 1940s it kept coming across stories about World War II particularly from the 1940s I saw all these pictures and anecdotes and stories about some of the more than a million black men and women who were drafted or volunteered to serve in the military during World War II and these weren't famous people these were average black Americans from Minneapolis from Chicago from Cleveland from New York and seeing these stories first I saw a dozen of them and eventually hundreds and hundreds of them it made me curious because you know I'm a historian I'm a teacher I've taught about this topic in the classroom for more than a decade but I'd never seen this many examples of black Americans serving their country during order two and so it was really that Curiosity from that last project that led me to start the research that became this project on World War II American it's really extraordinary throughout your book it seems that you're you're saying that without the contributions of African Americans in World War II the war would have been lost in what roles did African Americans play in World War II so one of my favorite things about being a historian is that you get surprised when you do the research and so at the start of This research maybe seven years ago I had no idea that I'd be making this argument that black Americans are absolutely vital to helping America and the Allies win the war but when you actually get into the records look at the military records look at the anecdotes in the the Recollections of officers and Alyssa personnel and War corresponds at the time it becomes really clear that not only were black Americans there in best numbers but they were playing really essential roles that helped American the Allies win I think the best example of this would be a group called The Red Ball Express they were a group of truck drivers a black Chuck Convoy who helped move Goods after the D-Day invasion I think most Americans are familiar with D-Day June 6 1944 but D-Day just stood for data The Invasion there was still D-Day plus one D-Day plus two and it was really the weeks and months after the invasion that turned the tide of the war it turns out that black Americans were absolutely vital to that stage of the war because they were the ones who were loading the ships that crossed the channel the downloaded those ships then they voted trucks and drove those trucks across France and eventually into Germany that red ball express truck driver group moved 400 000 tons of ammunition food and fuel across France into Germany so it made it possible for the Allied Forces to move as quickly as they did and to keep the the Nazis on their heels the reality is that black Americans were the the backbone the foundation of the Allies Supply effort it's not the Glamorous story we usually tell about World War II but it was the story about how the war was won part of the argument the book makes is that World War II wasn't just a battle of strategy at will it was a battle of Supply when you understand it from that perspective they're really important contributions that black troops made become old more apparent what were some of the challenges that that African Americans who were contributing that they faced at home and especially abroad it's important to remember that the entirety of the military was racially surrogated during World War II at the start of the war the Marine Corps doesn't allow any black Americans to serve at all it's not until late 1942 that the Marine Corps has the first cohort of black marines called the mod for Point Marines and so racism discrimination were part of the day-to-day experience of black men and women who served in the military during World War II and it was true both while they're still training in the United States and when they deploy one of the sources of research I drew from were a number of letters that were written by black soldiers to the NAACP to Thurgood Marshall who's the lead lawyer for the nwacp at the time and these were black soldiers who were stationed on military training bases in Mississippi Alabama and Georgia and they were describing the kind of violence and harassment they experienced both on base from White officers and illicit men and then when they were in town by white policemen and sheriffs and white townspeople things got so bad they said they feared for their lives and in some cases black troops were actually killed here in the United States while they're training to fight the war these black troops who wrote the letters said that they literally feared for their lives they felt like they're at War here in the United States they said they'd feel safer once they deployed to the European theater or the Pacific Theater than they felt here in the United States and so one of the things the book tries to do is bring that reality to the foreground I think it's easy to talk about the history of World War II sometimes and talk about this period of national unity in some ways the United States was unified during World War II but it was also a very fraught time period racism racial discrimination racial violence was everywhere in the United States during World War II and it's important when we talk about the history that we're able to tell those two stories together the stories of the military Courage The Bravery the amazing things that military service men and women are able to do but also the fact that these black military men and women they're doing those amazing feats while also fighting in some cases fighting for their lives Fighting For Freedom here in the United States both during and after the war so in your book you share stories um and I was wondering if you could share a few of the names that probably people recognize some of the stories that you share in your book so to the short stories I would share one would be Doris Miller who's perhaps the best known black American to serve in World War II he was one of the heroes of Pearl Harbor Doris Miller was a young mess attendant from Waco Texas who is on the West Virginia and again it's important to remember the only role black men could take on these Navy ships at the start of the war was as mess attendants where they essentially waited on white officers they did the cooking cleaning down the ships so that's what Doris Miller's job was yet when the bombing started at Pearl Harbor he performed heroically he helped attend the wounds of wounded men on a ship he went above deck he made a makeshift stretcher to move his captain to a safer spot in the deck and then when his officer orders him to go to one of the anti-aircraft guns Miller goes over there and starts firing at the Japanese planes that are circling overhead potentially hitting and Downing one of them it was an amazing story and it really galvanizes black Americans all across the country because they're saying look if you just give us the opportunity to participate in combat we have the ability to be brave we have the ability to be courageous we just need the opportunity so Miller's story is one of those that the book tries to bring to the foreground it's also important that Miller isn't the only black mess attendant there was another young man named Julius Ellsbury who actually lost his life at Pro Harbor he was just 20 years old he was on the USS Oklahoma and he was the first person black or white to be killed from Birmingham Alabama during the war his picture was posted all across businesses and homes in Black Birmingham with the phrase remember Pearl Harbor and so by trying to foreground those stories of Doris Miller Jewish Elsberry it tries to give readers today a clear sense of how black Americans experience these iconic pivotal moments in our nation's history that they were absolutely invested in helping win the war but they were telling different kinds of stories as the war was unfolding I wanted to talk about the the disparities that your your book discussed when African Americans and servicemen return home after the war um they don't have access to GI bills to Home Loans to other benefits that white veterans had access to can you discuss that further and can you also talk about if they did receive recognition and when for their service so one of the important and challenging parts of telling this story from the black perspective is that the war doesn't really end in 1945. yes the military victories are complete but that whole generation of black veterans comes back and they just keep fighting in this case they're fighting for civil rights fighting for freedom fighting for democracy here in the United States they're fighting for voting rights they're fighting to be able to live their lives safely there were numerous cases of violence against black veterans and the book details those and it gives us a much clearer understanding of what the what the context of the post-war period looked like for those black veterans but as you're asking in terms of policy black veterans disproportionately were unable to benefit from the GI Bill benefits in the same way that white veterans were of course the GI bill was essentially America's reward or repayment to that generation of veterans it's what enabled a whole generation of white veterans to be able to move into the middle class because it provided access to low interest mortgages access to college tuition benefits um loans be able to start businesses it really enabled social Mobility for a whole generation of white veterans by and large though black veterans weren't able to participate in that and that was really by Design as the legislation was being drafted it's determined by primarily white southern congressmen that it's going to be distributed at the state and local level as opposed to the federal level and everyone the time understands what that means if you do things at the state level in 1945 it means there's going to be discrimination based on state policies and that's what happens black veterans try to access these benefits but they're generally given the runaround or their denied benefits or given a more watered down version of them there's a group of economists at Brandeis University that's calculated what the long-term impact and cost of this discrimination was and what they found is there's about a hundred thousand dollar gap between what white veterans are able to get from these benefits from World War II and what black World War II veterans are able to get when we think about the vast racial wealth Gap in the country a large part of that can be traced back to the GI bill and the Discrimination that was written into it that's extraordinary it's very interesting and I'm glad your book is and and you're able to share all of this information with us can you discuss what events led to Truman signing executive order 9981 so it's another important part of the story is that black Americans had been fighting to disaggregate the military well before the start of World War II and that activism really escalates before and during the war and continues after the war and thankfully by 1948 President Truman signs an executive order that desegregates the military there are a few factors that come together to really encourage President Truman to do that one is black political power he recognizes the activism that's been going on in the decade prior to 1948 and he feels compelled by it he recognizes that black voters black activists are going to be an increasingly important political voice particularly for the Democratic party and so he sees in key swing states in the North and the Midwest black voters are going to be playing a much larger role in determining who gets elected and that's one of the things that influences President Truman to make this Choice a second is President Truman was a veteran he served in World War one and he is deeply impacted by the the violence that black veterans encountered at the end of World War II particularly the story of Isaac Woodard who is a veteran of the Pacific Theater trying to get home to his family in South Carolina who has beaten so badly by a white Sheriff they actually lost his eyesight his his eye was essentially gouged out by the the sheriff's night stick that sent shock waves all across the country and it horrified President Truman He was shocked in aghast that this kind of violence could happen in America to Black veterans who had just served their country and so that sense of moral outrage influenced Truman as well and then the third Factor was the the Cold War reality of what America was doing and competing with internationally in the years after World War II America wants to present itself to the world particularly to these newly independent nations and the Nations that are fighting for Independence America wants to present itself as a beacon of freedom and democracy but it's really hard to do that when you condone segregation including in your military and so part of the calculus that Truman's making is that the decoration military is one thing that was under his control a lot of other things he had to get legislation passed through Congress that given the Dynamics of the time just wasn't feasible but he could sign an executive order that would lead to the segregation military and that would take a step towards making America a more democratic country so that as it's trying to extol itself extol its virtues International especially compete with the Soviet Union it would have a stronger Foundation to be able to stand on so you were here because we were discussing the the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the military and I just want to underscore how important your book is and and the timing I mean it it came out last year is that correct that's right it came out last October um and already it's just it's so many people have just said so many brilliant things about it so I just want to thank you for taking the time but also before we close I just want to ask is there anything that you'd like to share because I think every author has a big takeaway they want their readers to understand and if you had to pick one takeaway what would that takeaway be you'll be the same thing I tell my students in the classroom all the time that the stories we tell about the past matter and say it's truer today than it ever has been it's important to be able to reckon honestly with our nation's history and I think this book hopefully does part of that the reality of World War II is that it was a very fraught time period the stories I tell in the book are stories of bravery and courage that should be uplifting and inspiring but they're also stories of racism and violence that should be very troubling both those parts are are true parts of our nation's history that this book is fully American history with black Americans put at the center of it and it's a story that I hope all Americans are able to read discuss and reckon with honestly well thank you Matt thank you so much to learn more please pick up half Americans so you can engage more with this really important educational content in addition we hope that you will go to pbsbooks.org to watch our visions of America virtual conversation which delves into the 75th anniversary of the desegregation of the military with a great conversation with Matthew Delmont Professor Jeffrey Sammons Brigadier General Terry Williams and imls director Crosby Kemper until next time happy reading [Applause]