Anti-racism Derry - Our Space 87
We forget that the US armed services were racially segregated until 1948. And WW2 Derry played a part in simply showing that life does not have to be racially divided. Many of the c12,000 African-American servicemen in Northern Ireland 1942-44, for the first time experienced life without a ‘colour bar’.
One African-American soldier wrote home: ‘The Irish people treat us just as if we were Irish. Before we came here there wasn’t any coloured people …’
Carrickfergus ‘we like, because when we visit there we are treated like human[s]’.
African-American sailors and white American troops clashed in Derry when white American troops ‘objected to the American Negroes dancing with the Irish girls’. Segregation shocked Derry people who were ‘disposed to treat all American soldiers, whether white or black, without discrimination’.
One sailor, returning to Belfast 50 years later reflected: ‘The Irish people didn’t look on us as our skin color, they looked on us as Americans - American fighting men’.
There were protests in America that African-Americans were drafted to fight for democracy abroad, while lacking democracy at home. In 1942 the “Pittsburg Courier" newspaper started the “Double V” campaign promoting victory abroad in WW2 - and also victory at home against racism.
"When we get out of the Army, we’re going to straighten this thing out!" said one US soldier witnessing black and white soldiers serving as equals in the Free French Forces. The Double V Campaign was short-lived but helped lay the foundations for later civil rights campaigns.