"A journey back through a time America cannot, and should not, forget. It gives both reasons and answers for the racial unrest that rocked our country even as it fought the dreaded scourge of Nazism. That unrest is still burning inside us. Brandt's mounds of research dissolve into some fine writing. If you want a book that keeps you turning pages, Harlem at War is it."—Gordon Parks
"A smoothly written narrative of the outrages suffered by blacks while this country was gearing up for and fighting global combat. . . . Brandt's book makes the point that the United States wasted time, effort, money and lives trying to preserve the color line while at the same time fighting for the 'four freedoms' abroad. We fought for freedom overseas, but not in Alabama, Mississippi or New York."—The Washington Post
Description
By the spring of 1943 more than a half million blacks were in the U.S. Army, but only 79,000 of them were overseas. Most were repeating the experience of their fathers in World War I—serving chiefly in labor battalions.
Wherever black troops were trained or stationed, Brandt explains, “rage surfaced frequently, was suppressed, but not extinguished.” Using eyewitness accounts, he describes the rage Harlem residents felt, the discrimination and humiliation they shared with blacks across the country. The collective anger erupted one day in Harlem when a young black soldier was shot by a white police officer.
The riot, in which six blacks were killed, seven hundred injured, and six hundred arrested, became a turning point in America’s race relations and a precursor to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
About the Author
Nat Brandt is the award-winning author of many books about popular history including The Man Who Tried to Burn New York, The Congressman Who Got Away with Murder, Massacre in Shansi, and Mr. Tubbs' Civil War, also published by Syracuse University Press.
6 x 9, 294 pages, 14 black and white illustrations, 1 maps
December 1996