Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad

Name: Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad
Author: Matthew F. Delmont
ISBN: 9781984880406

Matthew F. Delmont

award won

score

Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad

Matthew F. Delmont

award won

score

Half American won the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction and was a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Washington Independent Review of Books. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without their crucial contributions to the war effort, the United States could not have won the war. And yet the stories of these Black veterans have long been ignored, cast aside in favor of the myth of the "Good War" fought by the "Greatest Generation." Half American is American history as you've likely never read it before. In these pages are stories of Black heroes such as Thurgood Marshall, the chief lawyer for the NAACP, who investigated and publicized violence against Black troops and veterans; Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., leader of the Tuskegee Airmen, who was at the forefront of the years-long fight to open the Air Force to Black pilots; Ella Baker, the civil rights leader who advocated on the home front for Black soldiers, veterans, and their families; James Thompson, the 26-year-old whose letter to a newspaper laying bare the hypocrisy of fighting against fascism abroad when racism still reigned at home set in motion the Double Victory campaign; and poet Langston Hughes, who worked as a war correspondent for the Black press. Their bravery and patriotism in the face of unfathomable racism is both inspiring and galvanizing. In a time when the questions World War II raised regarding race and democracy in America remain troublingly relevant and still unanswered, this meticulously researched retelling makes for urgently necessary reading.

Buy this book at Amazon