Dancing with Redshoes

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a 1943 American war film starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. Based on the 1940 novel of the same name by Ernest Hemingway, the film is about an American International Brigades volunteer who is fighting in the Spanish Civil War against the fascists (Wikipedia).

Virginia Grey was an American actress who appeared in over 100 films and several radio and television shows from the 1930s to the early 1980s (Wikipedia). Grey was one of the celebrities who joined John Basilone on his war bond tour in 1943 (Wikipedia). She is portrayed by Anna Torv in The Pacific.

Betty Hutton was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedian, dancer, and singer. She was one of Paramount Pictures' most valuable stars, appearing primarily in musicals. She was noted for her energetic performance style (Wikipedia). In late 1944 and early 1945, Hutton toured with the United Service Organization to the Western Pacific, visiting Guam, Saipan, Tinian, the Marshall Islands, the Gilbert Islands, and Iwo Jima. She said of the tour, "Nothing else, no other feeling in the world, could possibly compare with how I felt inside bringing joy to those young men. Everyone would gather close as we exchanged hugs and kisses. Most often, I would sing a few bars from one of my songs, or one they might request. It was difficult for those boys to believe a popular movie entertainer would crawl down into a hole to perform just for them. It wasn't crazy to me at all. I wouldn't have exchanged the precious minutes I had with those guys for anything. I did it as much for me as I did for them, but who actually received the most from the exchange is anyone's guess" (Betty Hutton Estate).

The Andrews Sisters were an American singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: LaVerne, Maxene, and Patricia (Patty). The sisters appeared in 17 Hollywood films (Wikipedia, The Great American Songbook). In the years just before and during World War II, the Andrews Sisters were at the height of their popularity, and the group still tends to be associated in the public's mind with the war years. They had numerous hit records during these years, some of which had service or military-related themes, including "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy", "Three Little Sisters", and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree (with Anyone Else but Me)" (Wikipedia). The song Chuckler is singing in the brig, "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree", is about two young lovers who pledge their fidelity while one of them is away serving in the war.

The Hollywood Canteen operated at 1451 North Cahuenga Boulevard in the Los Angeles, California, neighborhood of Hollywood between October 3, 1942, and November 22, 1945, as a club offering food, dancing, and entertainment for enlisted men and women, who were usually on their way overseas during World War II. Even though the majority of visitors were US servicemen, the canteen was open to allied countries as well as women in all branches of service. Their tickets for admission were just their uniforms, and everything at the canteen was free of charge. The canteen was co-founded by actors Bette Davis and John Garfield (Wikipedia). Side note: John Garfield was also one of the celebrities who joined John Basilone on his war bond tour (Wikipedia, Raritan Online).

(You can view some photographs taken during the club's operation here [via Historic Hollywood Photographs])

Rita Hayworth was an American actress and dancer. She is one of the most renowned actresses of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and was the second top pin-up girl for GIs during World War II, after Betty Grable (Wikipedia).

Side note: While her most famous film, Gilda (1946), was in release, it was widely reported that an atomic bomb that was scheduled to be tested at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean's Marshall Islands would bear an image of Hayworth, a reference to her "bombshell" status (Wikimedia Commons). Although the gesture was intended as a compliment, Hayworth was reportedly deeply offended at the sentiment.

Betty Grable was an American actress, dancer, model, and singer. Throughout her career, Grable was a celebrated sex symbol. Her bathing-suit poster made her the top pin-up girl of World War II. The photo was later included in Life magazine's project "100 Photographs That Changed the World" (Wikipedia).

Below are Rita Hayworth's most famous pin-up and Betty Grable's famous pin-up:

The photo of Betty Grable in H Company's tent appeared in the August 1942 issue of Esquire magazine:

It’s raining again. Part of her hopes the weather will be too bad for them to fly tomorrow morning. She knows she should be hoping for all missions to go off as planned, but she’s so tired. She’s tired of the planes coming back all beat to hell and she’s tired of the realization that some haven’t come back at all. 

If they don’t fly, they’ll all be in one piece for another day.

“Marie?” A quiet voice interrupts her musings. 

“Rosie?” She asks, squinting into the darkness. 

“What are you doing out here?”

“Under orders to go to bed.” She says wryly. “You?” 

“Can’t sleep.” He mutters. He smiles softly at her. “Want some company to get back?” 

“Sure.” She says, returning his smile as he offers her his arm. Rosie is one of a kind. She’s never met someone who is so genial he makes friends wherever he goes, including enemy territory. 

“You’ve been at the tower all this time?” He asks. “You missed dinner.”

She shrugs. “One of the girls grabbed me something. I’m alright.”

“As long as you don’t pull a Harry Crosby on us, Marie.”

Mortifyingly, she feels close to tears. She’s never had people care for her in this way, not people outside of her family. She has friends, close friends even, but it doesn’t compare to this. The way they so deeply care for each other is simply based on the fact that they’re all in this together. It didn’t require years of friendship, and it isn’t transactional. It just is. 

“You’re one of the good ones, Rosie.” She says, voice thick, and his arm tightens around hers in return. 

“You are too, Marie.” He says as they slow to a stop outside of her hut. “Take care of yourself a little better, will you?”

“I’m just nervous for tomorrow.” She admits. 

He nods, lips turned down. “I get it. But listen– you can’t put it all on your shoulders. Everyone will do their jobs, and do the best they can. That’s all you can hope for.” 

She looks off in the distance. Somewhere out there, are the men who didn’t make it back. The ones dead and alive. She still has to hope that this war will end soon. She has to keep hoping. That’s all she can do.

“Thanks, Major.” 

“Go get some sleep. We’ll see you in the morning.” He says, leaving her with that earnest smile as she heads inside.

For once, she sleeps soundly.

.

In the morning, the airfield is a hive of activity. It’s a massive mission today, with nearly every crew flying. 

Her chest is still tight, but her mind is blessedly clear. She’s kept busy in the morning, taking notes during the flight briefing and confirming weather reports. In the corridor, she’s so busy shuffling paperwork in her hands that she collides right into someone. Her folders go flying, and the wind gets knocked out of her.

“Fernandez—”

It’s Blakely, because of course it is. 

“You all right?” He asks, steadying her with a tight grip on her upper arm. 

“Jesus,” she exhales. “Yes, I’m fine. Sorry– you–” 

“Here,” he interrupts whatever she was going to say, leaning down to gather the loose sheets of paper that have scattered across the glossy floor. 

It’s only as he shifts that she realizes he’s wearing his flight suit, leather jacket thrown on haphazardly like he did it in a hurry.

“What are you doing?” She asks. 

“Trying to help you,” he replies. “Here.”

“No,” she says, grabbing the paperwork without thinking, hands moving on autopilot. “Why do you look like you’re about to get in the cockpit?” 

He frowns. “I’m a pilot, Marie.” 

“You’re not on the list.”

“Eleventh hour substitution. Millington is too sick to fly.” 

It’s like something inside of her begins to unravel. Or, really, it’s been unraveling for weeks, and now it snaps, it breaks, and she feels like she might be sick. 

“Woah, hang on,” Blakely says as he maneuvers her to one side, away from prying eyes and curious onlookers. “Fernandez.”

She doesn’t respond. What can she say? You can’t go. You can’t fly. You might not come back. 

“Lieutenant Fernandez.” His voice is a little harder now, the way it sounds when he talks to his crew or the many people who are now under his command. But underneath that, there’s a tremble, an emotion she can’t exactly identify but she thinks is fear. “Talk to me, Marie.”

She tries to steady herself, tries to take a huge, deep gulp of air. She can’t get enough, she feels like she’ll never breathe normally again. Her ribcage can’t expand, it can’t take this, this never ending stress and panic and worry. 

“You have to come back.” She says, her voice barely a whisper. 

He looks— stunned. Like she’s slapped him, really. It almost makes her laugh. She has said far worse things to him in a much worse tone than this. 

For Blakely, it’s the plaintive way she’s looking at him. The pleading look in her eyes. That’s not the Marie Fernandez he knows. 

“‘Course I will,” he says quickly, anything to get that look off her face. He’s still got his hands on her shoulders, he realizes, and he drops them to give her some space. 

“You say it like you’re so certain.” She says, her voice bitter. 

“Where would I go, huh?” He leans in, ducking so he can meet her eyes. “Except right back here.” 

“I’m serious!” She says, some of that fire returning to her eyes. “I’m so tired of—“ she gestures helplessly, “I’m so tired of this. This damned war. Of losing everyone I—“

“Everyone you care about.” He finishes softly. “I know.” He shifts his weight. “Rosie says you’re not eating. Barely sleeping.” 

Her eyes flick up to his. He can see it, now that he knows what to look for. The dark circles under her eyes, the way the light has gone out of them. This isn’t the same woman who was threatening his life a few weeks ago and practically vibrating with anger as she sparred with him. 

Marie is doing her best to fight off the tears that so desperately want to come. She won’t do it, not now and certainly not in front of him. 

She can barely believe she’s even talking to him like this. This is Ev Blakely. She doesn’t understand why she’s having such a visceral reaction to seeing him in his flight gear. 

Because he’s supposed to be safe. He’s supposed to be exempt from being in danger all the damn time. 

“Marie?” 

She glances up, wonders how long she’s been staring at him. “I’m just tired.” She whispers again, like autopilot. 

“How’s this,” he says. “I’m going to go fly this plane, and I’ll be back in, say,” he checks his watch. As if he’s running an errand. “Four hours, give or take. That work for you?”

She gapes. “For what?”

“Dinner. My treat. When I come back.” He shuffles his feet, suddenly uncomfortable. “Gotta get your energy back up, because who else am I supposed to fight with?”

Her jaw drops open. “Sorry?”

“Well I can’t yell at Croz. He gets that kicked puppy look too easily. And Rosie— you see him. He’s impossible to fight with. Too much of a good guy.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “And I’m so awful, that’s it? That’s why you don’t mind fighting with me?”

His expression softens and he looks at his boots like he can’t quite meet her eyes. “You’re a real firecracker, Fernandez. Don’t let this thing take that from you.”

She’s speechless. 

“I gotta go.” He says, checking his watch again. “You make sure to meet me on that tarmac later, alright? Don’t make me come looking for you. You’re going to eat a full meal if I have to carry you to the mess myself.”

“The mess?” She sputters, "You said dinner was on you!”

He’s starting to walk backwards, away from her and her narrow eyed gaze. “I’m not made of money, Fernandez.”

“You’re a cheap date, Blakely.”

He stops short, almost trips over his feet. “A date?” His eyes brighten. 

“Fuck off, Ev!” She says, trying and failing not to laugh. 

Something inside him settles hard at the sound of his name coming out of her mouth like that. It’s something about the smile on her face, the nickname that rolls off her tongue so easily, and— he hates to admit it— she’s never been lovelier than when she’s cursing like a sailor.

“Later.” He says, pointing at her. 

“Yeah. Whatever.”

He gives her one last wink before he turns away, and then he hears her, so quiet he thinks maybe he’s not supposed to hear her at all. 

“Be safe.”

It’s all he can do not to turn around and look at her one more time. He knows if he does, he’ll never get in the seat. 

He comes to a halt at the edge of a clearing in the woods. His heart seizes up, claws its way toward his throat, wedges itself in the part of his brain that pleads in silent no no no with the sight before him. His hand finds his weapon seconds after. He raises it, more in warning than in any form of retaliation, and hisses out the ache that settles in the burns on his skin.

“Get away from him.”

He knows Manny is dead. There’s a pallor to his skin that’s never been there before – not on Manny, whose tanned skin survives even the toughest winters – and the man is eerily silent. Manny’s loud in the way all his friends are. He’s never quiet for long. He’s not the type to play a prank this fucking cruel, either, not when life is already so uncertain and so many things come to an end.

Manny’s dead. The woman kneeling beside him certainly is not.

“I said,” he repeats, voice stronger and louder now, “get away from him.”

She raises her head and tilts it slowly. Dark, near-black eyes meet his gaze. A smile curves around her bloodied mouth a moment. It creases the dirt and white scars upon her skin fleetingly, so swiftly that he thinks he has imagined it. The set of her mouth hardens into something akin to cruelty the longer he looks at her. Her eyes burn. Her eyes don’t release him.

He gasps out a breath. Coughs as his lungs constrict in warning. His weapon shakes as his hand begins to tremble.

“Don’t make me,” he rasps out between one breath and the next, desperate for air as much as he is for this fight, “put a bullet between your eyes.”

Her laughter rings out in the clearing. He hears the rustle of feathers overhead, though the rest of the forest seems to go utterly silent at the sound of her voice. There’s something of honey and molasses in the sound of her amusement, thick and syrupy in a way that clings to skin and throat, but there’s something darker in the lower notes that makes him shudder.

“Brave, aren’t you?”

He takes a step back at that. There’s too much approval in her voice. Too much warmth, heat, fire in her gaze. He almost thinks to turn away altogether, but Manny’s still at her feet as she rises to face him. Manny’s body lies on the ground between them. He will not leave his friend to a god so cruel. To one so capricious, which this one seems to be.

Her laughter dies abruptly. There’s a chill in the air.

“If you’re going to shoot me, caro,” she says, caressing the Italian pet name in a way that makes him shiver, “you’d better be quick about it. Do you think yourself faster than me?”

The shadows in the forest blur. Her form blurs a moment, too, and the dark wraps around her as the golden light fades from the trees. He snarls out what could be a warning – would be a warning, again, because he was raised to not raise a hand against a woman like that at all – and then finds his back against the tree and her body pressed up against his.

He lowers his weapon. Drops it to the floor. Thinks he sees disappointment in her eyes, those dark cruel hard searing burning eyes, and almost laughs a challenge into her ear to tell her you didn’t get to me just yet.

“Are all gods like you? So quick to show off?”

“Some.”

She smiles a hunter’s smile. Gazes at him as though he’s a mouse she’s going to catch and release half a dozen times before she eats him. He bares his teeth at the thought. He will not comply. He will not be taken, not like this, not by any god and least of all by her, and he doesn’t need a weapon to get that point across.

His hand wraps around her throat. Squeezes. Squeezes tighter than he would if she were human, if she were anything but the destructive god who caused the world to bend to her whims and wants. His nails dig into her skin hard enough to draw blood.

“I’m not faster,” he breathes, “but I’ll rip you apart if you pull that trick on me again.”

“You’ll try.” Her laugh, though rasping, is too delighted by far. Her voice drops into a purr even when his grip turns firmer still. “I like that about you, John.”

There was a young woman now with the maitre'd, and Marion sat up straighter in her chair. She looked just like him - hard to mistake the color of her eyes, and the height. And there was something, too, about the way she commanded the room. She would have been trouble, if she'd come to Europe, Marion thought to herself, tucking the smile away for another time. Her father's daughter, through and through.

She rose as the waiter brought the young woman over, hand resting on her pocketbook next to her napkin. There should have been two, but - beggars and chosers. "Thank you for meeting me, Helen. I took the liberty of ordering tea - it...it should be here, soon. It's very nice to finally meet you."

The younger woman looked her over like she'd been expecting something different - a cat fight, perhaps? "Are we going to be civilized about this?"

"I thought we could try," Marion said, all too aware of the barely hidden contempt in Helen's tone. "Is ....Clare not coming?"

"My sister's not ready to admit her parents are divorcing, Miss Brennan, let alone meet her father's mistress," Helen said cuttingly. "She's at home bawling her eyes out and thinking it's her fault. You'll forgive me if I don't shake hands."

They sat, Helen tucking herself into her chair with the kind of resolve that looked odd on a woman of just twenty. Marion could remember a lot of pinched faces like that, after bad mission days - girls in her command who knew that the only thing for it was to soldier on, without complaint.

A server brought the tea, pouring two cups and leaving the teapot and a plate of small cakes and tea slices, the little silver tongs perched like a little bird on the side. Marion picked up the tongs, but Helen made a short gesture, and Marion contented herself with putting one of the petit-fours on her own plate. For a moment neither spoke.

"It was very kind of you to come today."

"I'm not kind. And I'm not doing this for you - or him. I'm doing it for Clare."

"So she didn't have to come?"

Helen nodded. "You weren't at all what I pictured. When Mom had said he'd had an affair. I thought you'd be younger. That's usually how it goes, isn't it - a younger, prettier woman?" She sniffed. "But you haven't changed a bit. You look exactly the same as the photograph."

"Which photograph was that?" Marion asked, delicately, thinking of more than a few moments which, in hindsight, should not have been committed to a camera.

"Group photo, from the war. Station staff. You're sitting next to him in the front row. He had it up in his den, after he got home." She thought about this for a moment. "You know, I admired you, for a little while. Looking at that photo. He'd say "That's Captain Marion Brennan, Helen. One of the smartest women in the outfit. One of our Intelligence officers. Ran that office neat as a pin." And the way he said it, you just - you wanted him to say something like that about you." There was a quiver of betrayal in her words, and Marion got a certain sense that she was angry with her younger self. What, Helen, for not knowing? How could you? That photo was taken long before - well, but it doesn't matter. "Not smart enough to stay away from him, though, were you?" she added, bitterly. "How'd it start, then? Late night in the file room feeling lonely? Or were you always looking to bag a man with rank?"

"Nothing like that at all."

"Well?"

"We'd just lost three hundred men and the whole world felt like it was in a nosedive." Marion stared at the proud, angry woman across the table and watched as her eyes widened in horror. Yes, it really was that awful, Helen. Three hundred men, and the floor had fallen out of the world. "I'm not...proud of that, Helen. I wish I could sit here and say it was as tawdry as you wanted it to be, that there were...birds and flowers and pretty words and lace. The simple fact is that your father was in charge of the welfare and well-being of three thousand air crewmen, and to do that and do it well, he needed something solid. That night neither of us knew where the ground was. For several months we were a solid place for each other." She looked down at her teacup, the still untouched little mound of the petit-four. "Did he ever...tell you, about what the war was like?"

Helen's hackles seemed to go right up. "He knew we didn't need to know. He wanted to protect us."

"And he was right to do that," Marion affirmed. "He carried a lot of heavy things - his decisions, the boys who died because he told them to fly to a place and drop a bomb. And they were boys, Helen - not much older than you and Clare. He knew that intimately. They were his sons, each and every one of them, and he worried about them so much it made him ill. There were days he would forget to eat. There were days he would forget to sleep. And the only way I could get him to do anything, some days, was to remind him that he would not be of any use to any of them if he were also dead."

Helen was quiet for a moment. "He said that. To Mom. That you were the only reason he came home alive." A pause. "She threw a vase at him for it."

"I made sure he saw a doctor, before his condition got worse," Marion acknowledged, going as carefully as she could. "I ...saw things he did not let anyone else see - because we were intimate and he could not hide them from me. So yes - that is true - but not, perhaps, the way your mother heard it," she added, almost wryly. "I reminded him daily that he had people waiting for him at home."

"Did it help?" Helen's lip trembled, and her voice, for the first time this whole conversation, sounded small.

Marion considered this - the wounded animal look in Helen's eyes, hiding behind the anger she was wearing to make her seem larger. She nodded. "It did, I think."

For the first time since they’d sat down, the silence did not seem immediately hostile, and Marion let that be for a moment while Helen took a tiny sip of her tea. Her cup rattled against the saucer.

"Helen, I'm not here to tell you what to think. You have good reasons to dislike me, and I respect those. But if you hate me because you think I have...stolen your father's love, I can only say that he has never once stopped loving you, or Clare. And I hope he never does - it is one of the things I admire about him - the love he has for his daughters. You do not for one moment have to like me, but I would ask that you try to give him a second chance. He asked for this meeting because he wants us to be friends. I think you and I both know it is rather soon for that. But it will mean the world to him knowing that you came and gave me the chance."

Helen nodded.

“Now, are you sure you won’t have some cake? It’s quite good here.”

Helen looked glumly at the table, almost overwhelmed by all of it, and then gave a very small nod, holding up her plate in a sign of silent surrender, not trusting herself to speak. Marion nodded and picked up the tongs, expertly maneuvering a piece onto the younger woman’s plate and watching, pleased, as Helen took a few bites and swallowed with something that could have almost been a smile. 

The waiter circled back, making his rounds through the room. “Anything else for you ladies? Another round of cake?”

“Thank you, no. I think we’re nearly done,” Marion said strongly, covering for Helen’s half-drunk cup and her own nearly full one. “But I would love if you could put some of this in a box. Someone wasn’t able to join us today and I’d hate for her to miss out on a treat.”

The waiter nodded, taking away the plate and Marion contented herself with the tea in her cup, lukewarm now after sitting for so long. 

The cakes returned in a white pasteboard box, tastefully tied with pink string. “Is this meant to be a bribe?” Helen asked, still a little viperish, considering the box like it might have contained a bomb.

“It’s meant to be whatever you like,” Marion said equitably. “You’re the one taking it home.”

Helen sniffed, but she still took the box, rising from the table with her purse in one hand and the box in the other. Some of the old defensiveness was back in her shoulders, but that was to be expected - there were too many new variables here, too many things that had not been as she had planned them to be. 

“It was very nice to meet you,” she said, finally, and set the box down for a moment, her hand held out with definitive straightness. Marion held out her own to meet it, and they shook for a brief moment before Helen picked up the box and made straight for the door.

Technical Sergeant William E. Thomas and PFC Joseph Jackson of the 969th Artillery Battalion, which received the Distinguished Unit Citation for providing vital fire support for the 101st Airborne Division during the siege of Bastogne (source)

GENERAL

African Americans in Nazi Germany - U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

Every Forgotten Black Combat Unit in WW2 Explained - War Insider

'Half American' Explores How Black WWII Servicemen Were Treated Better Abroad - NPR

Honor Deferred: Black Veterans and the Medal of Honor - National WWII Museum

How Nazi Germany Weaponized the Race Card Against the US Army - U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow - History

Patriotism Crosses the Color Line: African Americans in World War II - History Now

The Nazi Persecution of Black People in Germany - U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Red Cross and Segregation of Life-Saving Blood Donations From African Americans - Our History Now

PHOTO COLLECTIONS

Historical Image Gallery - Samuel de Korte

Pictures of African Americans During World War II - National Archives

See World War II Through the Lens of an African American Soldier - National Museum of American History

EUROPEAN THEATER

A Distant Shore: African Americans of D-Day (2007) - History Channel

African American D-Day Heroes - Warfare History Network (if you hit a paywall, try opening in a new private window in your web browser)

Black U.S. Soldiers Fought Nazis and Liberated Concentration Camps—Only to Be Treated like Second Class Citizens Back Home - People's Dispatch

How a Black War Correspondent Fought to Tell the Story of the 761st Tank Battalion - History

Major Charles L. Thomas and the 614th Tank Destroyer Battalion - National WWII Museum

On the Road to Victory: The Red Ball Express - History Net

Red Ball Express: The Legendary Lifeline - Warfare History Network (if you hit a paywall, try opening in a new private window in your web browser)

Sacrifice: The 333rd Field Artillery at the Battle of the Bulge - National WW2 Museum

The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion - DetailedPedia

The 969th Field Artillery Battalion - DetailedPedia

The Black World War II Army Unit Tasked with Burying America's Fallen - History

The Tuskegee Airmen - National WWII Museum

The Tuskegee Airmen: An Interview with the Leading Authority - National WWII Museum

The Wereth 11 - American G.I. Museum

Unstoppable: The African American 784th Tank Battalion - National World War II Museum

PACIFIC THEATER

How Black Combat Engineers Did The Most Dangerous Job in the Pacific - War Insider

My War on Two Fronts: An African American Seabee Recalls His Battle with the Japanese—and Jim Crow - Warfare History Network (if you hit a paywall, try opening in a new private window in your web browser)

The 555th Parachute Infantry Company “Triple Nickles” - National Museum of the United States Army

The 93rd Infantry Division: The African-American Soldiers in the Pacific - Warfare History Network (if you hit a paywall, try opening in a new private window in your web browser)

The Few, the Proud, the Black Marines in World War II - Warfare History Network (if you hit a paywall, try opening in a new private window in your web browser)

The Marines of Montford Point: Fighting for Freedom - Sabrina Miller

The Right to Fight: African-American Marines in World War II - Marine Corp Historical Center

BLACK WOMEN IN THE WAR

6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion - Veterans History Project

Personal Narratives of African American Women in World War II - Veterans History Project

Siren of the Resistance: The Artistry and Espionage of Josephine Baker - National WWII Museum

The SixTripleEight: No Mail, Low Morale - National WWII Museum

Victory at Home and Abroad: African American Army Nurses in World War II - NMAAHC

When Black Nurses Were Relegated to Care for German POWs - History

Women’s Work: Fighting to Serve — Black Nurses in World War II - Saturday Evening Post

CIVILIAN INTERACTIONS

A Roman Holiday? African Americans and Italians in the Second World War (abstract) - Wiley

Black GIs in Britain - The Mixed Museum

Black Liberators During World War II - Europeana

Black Troops Were Welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow Wasn’t: The Race Riot of One Night in June 1943 - The Conversation

(TW: SA) Second World War’s Legacy of Racism - YaleGlobal Online

'They treated us royally'? Black Americans in Britain During the Second World War - American Archive

When Jim Crow Reigned Amid the Rubble of Nazi Germany - New York Times

Why Mixed-Race Children in Post-WWII Germany Were Deemed a ‘Social Problem’ - History

ON THE HOMEFRONT

A Deadly World War II Explosion Sparked Black Soldiers to Fight for Equal Treatment - Smithsonian Magazine

Black Labor and Race Relations in East Bay Shipyards During World War II - Jim Crow Museum

‘Black Rosies’: The Forgotten African American Heroines of the WWII Homefront - History

Double V Campaign - Jim Crow Museum

Port Chicago: The Fight for Equality that Changed America - Port Chicago Alliance

The Double V Victory - National WWII Museum

POST-WAR

After Victory in World War II, Black Veterans Continued the Fight for Freedom at Home - Smithsonian Magazine

How War Veterans Impacted the Civil Rights Movement - Terrance Bell via Army.mil

Returning from War, Returning to Racism - New York Times Magazine

The Tragic, Forgotten History of Black Military Veterans - The New Yorker

"Being an American of dark complexion and some 26 years, these questions flash through my mind: Should I sacrifice my life to live half American? Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow? Would it be demanding too much to demand full citizenship rights in exchange for the sacrificing of my life? Is the kind of America I know worth defending? Will America be a true and pure democracy after this war? Will Colored Americans suffer still the indignities that have been heaped upon them in the past?" James G. Thompson, “Should I Sacrifice to Live ‘Half-American?’” Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942