Video by Jane O’Brien and Bill McKenna, BBC [dropcap]World[/dropcap] War One brought many social changes – not least, the introduction of jazz to Europe. Thanks to a black American regiment of musicians called the Harlem Hellfighters, the French discovered the joys of syncopation. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] More than a century on, US musician Jason Moran is […]
View MoreCategory: African American Veterans
Africans Played Key, Often Unheralded, Role in World War I | The Afro American
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Amid the fanfare marking the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, little has been said about crucial participants in the conflict: Africans.
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Black WWII veteran from Charleston faced bombs abroad, prejudice at home | The Post Courier
Surgery scars on his knees are the legacy of World War II for Julian Snipe. A mine exploded in Germany, destroying the ammo supply truck he was walking alongside. He woke on the ground in the bitter cold and couldn’t feel his legs. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″] Snipe joined the Army in 1942 as an 18-year-old. He […]
View MoreHow Black World War I vets shaped the civil rights movement | Futurity
The hundreds of thousands of African Americans who served in the US Army during World War I and returned home as heroes soon faced many more battles over their equality in American society, according to historian Chad Williams.
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Frank E. Petersen, First Black General in Marines, Dies at 83 | The New York Times
Frank E. Petersen Jr., who suffered bruising racial indignities as a military enlistee in the 1950s and was even arrested at an officers’ club on suspicion of impersonating a lieutenant, but who endured to become the first black aviator and the first black general in the Marine Corps, died on Tuesday at his home in Stevensville, Md., near Annapolis. He was 83.
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Meet the gallant all-black American female battalion that served in Europe during World War II | Face2Face Africa
The success of the formation of the all black female battalion was thanks to Mary McLeod Bethune, an African American civil rights activist who at the time, appealed to the then-first lady of America, Eleanor Roosevelt, to create more meaningful roles for black women in the army to help balance out the shortage of soldiers.
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Art installation honors African-American military role during Civil War | The DC Line
Museum’s 20th anniversary celebration highlights art’s role in highlighting historical understanding.
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Black female pilot makes history in Alabama National Guard | Stars & Stripes
Freeman’s aviator wings were pinned by retired Col. Christine Knighton, the second black woman in the Department of Defense to earn aviator wings and the first from Georgia.
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At 98, the Army Just Made Him an Officer: A Tale of Racial Bias in World War II | The New York Times
“Decades have gone by and there hadn’t been a measure of basic fairness, of basic justice that was brought to bear,”… “We owe him this commission.”
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Floyd Carter Sr., one of the remaining Tuskegee Airmen and NYPD veteran, dies at 95 | New York Daily News
The decorated veteran of three wars and 27 years with the NYPD died Thursday at age 95, leaving a long legacy as a groundbreaking hero pilot and a city police detective.
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