It’s like sitting at the VFW, listening to old war stories that were told in a whisper but that need shouting.Īuthor Matthew F. The stories in here are stunning and quite moving, but also frustrating, even 90 years after the fact. This is one of those books that fills in the blanks on the things you missed in history class – or the things you were never told in the first place. On the topics of racism and war, “Half American” will tell you some tales. No matter how much you think you know a subject, there are always stories you’re missing. These dual war aims coalesced under a slogan that came to define the Black American experience during the war: Double V.” Victory would be incomplete unless it also uprooted white supremacy….

Thurgood Marshall, chief lawyer for the NAACP, became “energized” by his work for equality, particularly that of Black Americans who wanted to volunteer to “serve their country without being degraded by their countrymen.”īut, says Delmont, that “was only half the fight. Philip Randolph organized a march on Washington for the rights of soldiers and homefront workers. soldiers had to battle racism within the ranks first. Davis, says Delmont, “desperately wanted to be a pilot” but such opportunities weren’t then available to a black man, no matter what his accomplishments. Davis graduated from West Point in 1936, and had his sights set on a career in the military. While in Spain, he described the “realities of war,” but he also noticed something that astounded him: “‘in this anti-fascist army,’ Hughes wrote, ‘Negroes and whites marched, trained, and fought together’.”īenjamin O. Their efforts caught the attention of writer Langston Hughes, who was hired by a Black-owned newspaper to follow the American soldiers, and report about it. The rise of fascism during the Spanish Civil War was of particular interest to them because “fascism was Jim Crow with a foreign accent.” Eighty Black Americans even volunteered to fight against the Nationalists. In the time before America entered World War II, Black Americans kept their eyes on what was happening overseas, particularly in Spain.

Half American by Matthew F. Delmont