The African American Experience during World War II

by Neil A. Wynn, Jacqueline M. Moore (Series Editor), Nina Mjagkij (Series Editor)

Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Neil A. Wynn combines narrative history and primary sources as he locates the World War II years within the long-term struggle for African Americans' equal rights. It is now widely accepted that these years were crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement through the economic and social impact of the war, as well as the military service itself. Wynn examines the period within the broader context of the New Deal era of the 1930s and the Cold War of the 1950s, concluding that the war years were neither simply a continuation of earlier developments nor a prelude to later change. Rather, this period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. Black self consciousness at a national level found powerful expression in new movements, from the demand for equality in the military service to changes in the shop floor to the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. As the nation played a new world role in the developing Cold War, the tensions between America's stated beliefs and actual practices emphasized these issues and brought new forces into play. More than a half century later, this book presents a much-needed up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship. Accessible to general and student readers, it tells the story without jargon or theory while including the historiography and debate on particular issues.

200 pages, Hardcover

First published June 16, 2010

About the author

Neil A. Wynn has taught on international programs at Central Missouri State University and at the Maastricht Center for Transatlantic Studies in the Netherlands, of which he was a director. In 2003 he was appointed Professor of 20th-Century American History at the University of Gloucestershire.

Reviews

[Fay]

This is good information. I found this book while researching my father’s WWII service record.

[Emily Hanamann]

Yep, you guessed it. Needed it for my thesis.

[Theophilus (Theo)]

It is a history book after all, but a very good one. More of the untold story of African Americans in America. Not just Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Good build up to WWII. The chapter of documents referred to in the book is by itself worth reading the book. There are some great articles by W.E.B. Dubois, A. Phillip Randolph, and a poem by Langston Hughes, and others written during the period discussed in the book. It takes the civil rights movement beyond the stories of Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. where mainstream media and education seems to have pigeon-holed it.

[Mills College Library]

940.53089 W988 2010