A vital story well rendered, recounting a legacy that should be recognized, remembered, and applauded.
Black Americans played crucial roles in nearly every theater of World War II, but they have been largely ignored in historical accounts. Delmont sets the record straight.
Delmont, a professor of history at Dartmouth who has written numerous books on civil rights and Black history, notes that he was surprised when his initial research revealed the number of Black men and women who served during the war: more than 1 million. Due to prejudice among White military leaders, most Black soldiers were assigned roles in construction, transport, supply, and maintenance. Even under appalling conditions, they served courageously, and the final victories in Europe and the Pacific would not have been possible without them. Once they were allowed to serve on the battlefield, they were indispensable. “The trailblazing Tuskegee Airmen, 92nd Infantry Division, Montford Point Marines, and the 761st ‘Black Panther’ Tank Battalion served bravely in combat,” writes Delmont, “and Black troops shed blood in the iconic battles at Normandy and Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge.” As the author shows in this illuminating history, military training camps were brutally segregated, and civilian Black Americans faced obstacles when applying for jobs in war factories. One reason was the belief that military service would help fight discrimination within the U.S., a concept encapsulated in the “Double V” campaign promoted by Black leaders: victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home. Even after the war, little changed for the Black community. Black veterans often found themselves ineligible for the benefits available to their White counterparts, and even Black men in uniform faced harassment. Delmont suggests that the wartime contributions of Black Americans planted the seeds for later progress, although it would be a long, difficult path—and one not yet finished. The narrative is disturbing and painful, but it provides important pages that have been missing from American history.
A vital story well rendered, recounting a legacy that should be recognized, remembered, and applauded.Pub Date: Oct. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-984880-39-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2022
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.
The Harvard historian and Texas native demonstrates what the holiday means to her and to the rest of the nation.
Initially celebrated primarily by Black Texans, Juneteenth refers to June 19, 1865, when a Union general arrived in Galveston to proclaim the end of slavery with the defeat of the Confederacy. If only history were that simple. In her latest, Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and numerous other honors, describes how Whites raged and committed violence against celebratory Blacks as racism in Texas and across the country continued to spread through segregation, Jim Crow laws, and separate-but-equal rationalizations. As Gordon-Reed amply shows in this smooth combination of memoir, essay, and history, such racism is by no means a thing of the past, even as Juneteenth has come to be celebrated by all of Texas and throughout the U.S. The Galveston announcement, notes the author, came well after the Emancipation Proclamation but before the ratification of the 13th Amendment. Though Gordon-Reed writes fondly of her native state, especially the strong familial ties and sense of community, she acknowledges her challenges as a woman of color in a state where “the image of Texas has a gender and a race: “Texas is a White man.” The author astutely explores “what that means for everyone who lives in Texas and is not a White man.” With all of its diversity and geographic expanse, Texas also has a singular history—as part of Mexico, as its own republic from 1836 to 1846, and as a place that “has connections to people of African descent that go back centuries.” All of this provides context for the uniqueness of this historical moment, which Gordon-Reed explores with her characteristic rigor and insight.
A concise personal and scholarly history that avoids academic jargon as it illuminates emotional truths.Pub Date: May 4, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-883-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 23, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist (1900–45) collected his work from WWII in two bestselling volumes, this second published in 1944, a year before Pyle was killed by a sniper’s bullet on Okinawa. In his fine introduction to this new edition, G. Kurt Piehler (History/Univ. of Tennessee at Knoxville) celebrates Pyle’s “dense, descriptive style” and his unusual feel for the quotidian GI experience—a personal and human side to war left out of reporting on generals and their strategies. Though Piehler’s reminder about wartime censorship seems beside the point, his biographical context—Pyle was escaping a troubled marriage—is valuable. Kirkus, at the time, noted the hoopla over Pyle (Pulitzer, hugely popular syndicated column, BOMC hype) and decided it was all worth it: “the book doesn’t let the reader down.” Pyle, of course, captures “the human qualities” of men in combat, but he also provides “an extraordinary sense of the scope of the European war fronts, the variety of services involved, the men and their officers.” Despite Piehler’s current argument that Pyle ignored much of the war (particularly the seamier stuff), Kirkus in 1944 marveled at how much he was able to cover. Back then, we thought, “here’s a book that needs no selling.” Nowadays, a firm push might be needed to renew interest in this classic of modern journalism.
Pub Date: April 26, 2001
ISBN: 0-8032-8768-2
Page Count: 513
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
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