![]() "If they stepped even a foot outside of that, they were threatened or attacked by white police or sheriffs," Delmont says. Racial epithets and threats of violence were part of daily life on Southern military bases, and off base, African Americans were restricted to the "Black" sections of town. "The only reason the military maintained this racial segregation during the war was to appease white racial prejudice."īlack servicemen traveling to the Jim Crow South for training would pull down the shades on their train cars so that white townspeople wouldn't throw rocks at the windows. "There was no strategic or tactical reason to do it," Delmont says. ![]() Military segregation was maintained throughout the war, which meant separate barracks and recreation facilities, both at home and abroad. Though more than one million Black Americans served in WWII, their military uniforms couldn't protect them from systematic racism. 23, 1942.įilms and stories about World War II create a narrative of Americans united against a common enemy, but historian Matthew Delmont says the truth of the U.S. Members of the all-Black aviation squadron known as the Tuskegee Airmen line up Jan.
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