Exporting segregation: Black G.I.s in Britain during World War II

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The best-known stories about American G.I.s in Britain during World War II involve white soldiers, who the British liked to say were over overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and over here. Not long ago, I met someone who quoted that to explain why he didn’t know what part of the US his American grandfather came from. 

But there’s another story about U.S. soldiers in Britain: over the course of 3 years, some 240,000 Black U.S. soldiers passed through Britain and their situation was complicated, not because Britons didn’t welcome them but because they did. 

Screamingly irrelevant photo: The river Something or Other, flowing through Canterbury’s city center

 

The segregated army

Let’s back up. Hang around here long enough and you’ll get used to that. The US Army was segregated until 1948, three years after the end of World War II, so during the period we’re talking about Black and white soldiers served in separate units. They had separate barracks or camps along with separate hospitals or wards, blood banks (yes, seriously), medical staff, and recreational facilities. 

The US military didn’t consider Black soldiers fit for combat, so they were limited to support roles. They drove, cooked, cleaned, built roads and buildings and air bases, unloaded supplies, dug ditches, and worked as mechanics, generally under white officers. The few Black soldiers who did become officers could only command Black troops, and Black soldiers faced all the harassment you’d expect–and depending on how low you set your expectations, probably more.

In case anyone needs it, here’s the ten-second summary of US segregation: America’s southern states were segregated by law. Blacks and whites had separate drinking fountains, separate schools, and separate pretty much everything else. And whatever was for white people got more money–a lot more money–than what was for Black people. Those laws were enforced not just by the police and the courts but by terror. To cross the line that separated Black and white was to risk your life–at least if you were Black. This is what the federal government was carrying over into the armed forces. 

But segregation wasn’t just about separating the two groups, it was about enforcing inequality. By way of example, unlike white soldiers, Black soldiers weren’t allowed to marry women they formed relationships with overseas, which added to the number of children abandoned by their G.I. fathers.

Now we get to the contradictory–which is to say the interesting–part: for all that Britain brought segregation to its colonies, it had no color line at home. That doesn’t mean it was free of racism. When the US first proposed bringing over Black troops, Anthony Eden, the secretary of state, objected on the grounds that Black people weren’t suited to the climate. 

Britain had some 8,000 identifiably Black citizens at the time, and they seemed to survive the climate well enough, but never mind that. Sometimes you grab the first argument that flits past, and after that there’s nothing to do but keep a straight face and repeat it. 

 

A quick interruption

What does identifiably Black mean? Over the course of several centuries, a lot of Britons with Black ancestors were absorbed into an overwhelmingly white population and no longer counted as Black. Many of them wouldn’t have known of any reason not to count themselves as white. So we’re talking about whoever was visible. 

By way of contrast, in the US at the time, the one-drop rule held that if you had any Black ancestry at all (“one drop of blood”)–and of course if anyone knew about it–you were considered Black. 

 

The two systems collide

With that out of the way, let’s go back to the British government: it was a reluctant host. James Grigg, the secretary of state for war, wrote in a memorandum labeled “to be kept under lock and key, ”that “the average white American soldier does not understand the normal British attitude to the colour problem, and his respect for this country may suffer if he sees British troops, British Women’s Services and the population generally drawing no distinction between white and coloured. . . . 

“This difference of attitude might clearly give rise to friction. Moreover, the coloured troops themselves probably expect to be treated in this country as in the United States, and a markedly different treatment might well cause political difficulties in America at the end of the war.”

Why was that kept under lock and key? Probably because Britain was in no position to object to an American plan. It depended on the US to fund the war effort. So while Grigg chewed on his fingernails, the US brought its soldiers over, and it brought US-style segregation with them.

Where Britain did manage to draw the line was at enforcing segregation: that would be up to the US. On occasion, that left Britain trying to keep segregation from being imposed on Black soldiers from British colonies.

Isn’t it interesting how something starts out looking like it’ll be clear but turns out to be murky as hell?

Black American soldiers were generally welcomed by the local population, most of whom had never met a Black person before. As George Orwell put it, “The general consensus of opinion appears to be that the only American soldiers with decent manners are the Negroes.”

Orwell may have been making a political point there, but people with no name recognition at all are quoted (anonymously) saying roughly the same thing. A West Country farmer said, “I love the Americans, but I don’t like those white ones that they have brought with them.” And when white G.I.s gave the landlady of a pub grief for serving Black soldiers, she’s reported to have told them,”Their money is as good as yours and we prefer their company.”

Some businesses, however, did refuse Black customers for fear of losing white soldiers’ business. So the picture wasn’t unmixed. 

Before I go on, let’s be clear: Britain wasn’t free of racism. A cricketer from the West Indies who lived in Britain in the 1920s said that “personal slights” were “an unpleasant part of life in Britain for anyone of my colour.” At the end of World War I, a race riot kicked off over fears that demobilized troops from the empire would take white Britons’ jobs. And at the end of World War II, when Black people from the West Indies moved to Britain in large numbers and looked for places to live, they found signs saying, “No blacks, no Irish, no dogs.”

But during the war, the British generally welcomed Black soldiers, and the raw racial hostility that white troops brought with them seems only to have made that welcome more pronounced. 

An element of nationalism probably fed into that as well. Britons didn’t want to be pushed around by the US–the rising imperial power.

 

So what happened?

Not every white G.I. in Britain was a racist, but those who were were outraged by what they found, which turned everything they’d taken for granted on its head. Not only were Blacks occupying spaces they expected to be exclusively white, they were dancing with white women and going out with white women. For a segregationist, this was the ultimate horror–the thing segregation was supposed to defend against: a Black man with a white woman.  

No, seriously. Within living memory–mine, since you ask–the question that was supposed to demolish any white support for the civil rights of Black Americans was, “Yeah, but would you want your sister to go out with one?”

Gasp, wheeze, end of argument. How could anyone accept that?

If the situation in Britain was a pressure cooker, it blew that little valve on the top more than once, with violence sometimes being set off by white soldiers, sometimes by military police, and at least once by Black soldiers marching into the nearby town that was off limits to them but not to white soldiers. 

In Bamber Bridge, Lancashire, white troops tried to establish a color line in the village and locals responded by putting “Black Troops Only” signs outside the village’s three pubs. 

Maybe you have to be as old as I am, as well as from the US, to be tickled by the quiet genius of local people saying, Fine, you want a color line? We’ll draw it here and you’re on the wrong side. 

In June 1943, still in Bamber Bridge, an argument started between MPs and a Black serviceman outside a pub. Local people and British servicewomen took the side of the soldier. Somebody brandished a bottle. An MP (that stands for military police, by the way, not member of parliament) brandished his gun. The MPs drove away, gathered reinforcements, and later that night ambushed the Black soldiers. A melee broke out, fought mostly with billy clubs, bottles, and cobblestones, but one Black soldier was shot, after which 200 Black soldiers gathered and confronted their white officers. The unit’s only Black officer had calmed the situation until a dozen MPs showed up with jeeps and a machine gun, at which point the Black soldiers seized most of the available arms and fought the MPs for several hours. 

The incident ended with one man dead, several injured, and a hefty number of Black soldiers (32, I believe) convicted of everything from ignoring orders to mutiny. Still, Historic UK counts it as a “turning point in handling racial tension within the military.” Specifically, “A subsequent overhaul led to the removal of racist officers from the trucking units and the introduction of black officers into the MP units.” 

There were also violent confrontations in Launceston, Cornwall; Tiger Bay, Wales; and Leicester. You can ask Lord Google for details if you want them. In the meantime, we’ll jump to what happened at Combe Down, Somerset, where Leroy Henry, a Black soldier, was accused of rape, found guilty by a court martial, and sentenced to death 

That might’ve been the end of it, but a local baker was shocked by the lack of evidence against the man and started a petition, which 33,000 people from the area signed. A national newspaper picked up the story. This was just before D-Day and southern England was packed with troops. It wasn’t a good time for a scandal, and General Eisenhower overturned the conviction. Leroy Henry returned to his unit–and survived the war.

 

So was James Grigg right?

You’ve forgotten James Grigg already, haven’t you? The secretary of state for war who said (among other things) that seeing a country without a color bar might cause political trouble when Black soldiers returned home. Well, around a third of the leaders of the US Civil Right Movement of the 1950s and ‘60s were World War II veterans. That doesn’t say they all spent time in Britain and it doesn’t say they needed to stand on British soil to imagine a life free of segregation. But the experience of Black soldiers in Britain surely added a few drops of water to the rivers that–help! my metaphor’s in danger of going wrong here–rose so powerfully in the postwar US, washing away segregation’s legal structure. 

That flood didn’t solve all our problems, as you will have noticed if you live there or follow US politics at all, but it did move history forward by an inch or three.

*

I’ve relied heavily here on a BBC TV documentary, Churchill: Britain’s Secret Apartheid. If you can find it, it’s well worth your time.

31 thoughts on “Exporting segregation: Black G.I.s in Britain during World War II”

  2. Excellent article Ellen😀👏☕️

    I’ve read and seen alot about this before as well as the experience of non-white British soldiers who settled in the UK after WWI(but that’s another story)😀

    Quite a few mixed-race babies were born as a result of thus, and I’ve seen a documentary where a Scouser found his long lost relatives on a trip to the US. He was already an old man himself but it was a very touching experience for him and his family.😀

    Very enjoyable article 😀👏

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  3. My mother was a teenager during the War, living near Savernake Forest in Wiltshire. She, her sister and her mother went to village hall dances each weekend. One Saturday a group of white GIs complained about the presence of black troops. The Vicar threw the protesters out. Had them permanently banned.

    My aunt ended up marrying the white officer of those black troops. She went to Ohio with him at the end of the war- although the US did not welcome foreign wives at all and made entry very difficult.

    When her first child was born in Ohio, the baby had a Mongolian Spot- a bruising on the spine. The Midwife screamed, called my aunt a N-lover and left the room. My uncle knew his father in law was Maltese and these spots were common there. And not a sign of an affair with a black man.

    The US government finally allowed my Aunt to visit her British family in the 1970s. My mother had been repeatedly refused visas to go to the US to see her sister.

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  4. Well, I never! I live virtually next door to Bamber Bridge and I’m ashamed to say I’ve never heard this story. Thank you, Ellen. You’re amazing. We make our own rules in this part of the world. 🙂

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  5. Thanks for a fascinating account, Ellen. I had an inkling of some of this history but by no means all of it. I am old enough to recall the kind of tension that existed in the UK during the sixties (and later). I grew up in Smethwick, which is notorious as having elected a Conservative, racist MP against the trend in the country which elected a Labour government in 1964. If you check into it, the consensus is now, as it was then, that it was a racist reaction to immigration and a blot on the people of Smethwick but my feeling then, as it is still, was that the sitting labour MP was not concerned with the constituency at all and was a poor representative of the voters and enough of them decided they had had enough of him. I’m sure that some of his majority was down to racism but I’m still not convinced that it accounts completely for the swing against him.

    My father, who was a Labour man through and through, seriously thought about voting Conservative at that election. No one could plausibly accuse him of racism, it simply didn’t occur to him that any so-called racial differences were more, or less, significant than the normal differences between individuals of any colour or gender. He was an intelligent working class man, forced to leave school at fourteen through various circumstances and he was bound and determined that his daughters, as well as his son, should have every opportunity, which which wasn’t by any means a universal attitude then. We thank him for it.

    It is noticeable to me, that no one ever seeks to “exonerate” the Smethwick constituency where, two years later, the new MP was thoroughly routed by a Labour candidate who has never been accused of racism. In fact, I don’t understand how a whole constituency can turn from solid Labour to Conservatism and back again to Labour in the course of two years unless the situation is much more complex than the simplistic “it was all racism” view that prevails.

    As a teenager I was just as idealistic as my contemporaries in the sixties, concerned about the bomb, racism, sexism, famine and just becoming aware of environmental issues. For years I was too embarrassed to admit the Smethwick connection, saying that I came from Birmingham. This was technically true, as I was born just inside the city. Now I’m more sanguine about it, partly because not many people remember! Slightly different from your original topic, I know, but I thought it might be of interest. Not sure if mine is a general opinion as one isolated election result from sixty years ago is hardly a hot topic in the 21st century but the history is still out there as fact, apparently without any nuance to temper it.

    I’m really enjoying your blog, whatever the subject. Thanks,

    Jean

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    • It’s slightly off topic but I’m always–okay, usually–happy to go off topic, especially when the tale’s interesting, and yours is definitely interesting. It’s not a piece of history I’d heard before. Something in us seems to like a simple answer to a complicated question. We lose a lot that way. I’m glad you’ve added back a few of the contradictions. Thanks.

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  6. Thank you for this excellent blog post and your pithy account of an important moment in history. I learned a lot. And now, more than ever, we need to learn from history and how progress was achieved, even if only inch by inch, in the face of systemic and legislatively enshrined prejudice. Despite the election result, I refuse to go back.

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  7. A wonderful history lesson. Coming to me at this time, it is cutting so close to reliving history here in the Former Colonies. Your article seems to indicate there was some learning done.

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    • History never does seem to go in a straight line. After the war, Britain greeted Black immigrants by indulging in some straight-out racism. I don’t want to put more weight on the World War II experience than it can bear. It was a moment, and an important one, but not, I think, more than that.

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      • To add to your comment on the racism that was a reaction to post war immigration, I did encounter an anomaly when I visited my parents (I haven’t been back to Smethwick since they died). One of my uncles and a couple of neighbours exhibited an attitude that I suspect is more widespread than is mentioned. All were fairly uncomfortably (to me) outspoken in a blanket dislike of immigrants, both Afro-Caribbean and Asian, but where individuals were concerned, their expressed feelings were different. They spoke of work colleagues and neighbours with what sounded like genuine warmth and respect, wherever their origins, seemingly unaware of the contradiction. This can’t be regarded as “true enlightenment”, we all know of the horrific ways that neighbours can go from friendly tolerance to raging enmity in certain circumstances. It’s just another example of the oddness that is the human race.

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        • I suspect there’s a lot of that out there: the people I know are okay but the people I read about in the papers or hear about on the news are terrible. And recent history really does back you up on how quickly neighbors can pivot. It’s terrifying.

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  8. This is very interesting. I’ve read several things about Black soldiers in France during WWI, but this is the first I’ve seen of Black soldiers in Britain during WWII. It makes perfect sense that if you’re treated equally oversees that you would want the same thing at home.

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  11. Here’s one more WW2 US troops racial confrontation in Britain to add to your list, which was in the centre of the city of Bristol, in SW England.

    The Park Street riot, in July 1944.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Street_riot

    Park Street is a prominent wide old thoroughfare which climbs from the historic city centre up towards the university and the wealthy suburb of Colston. It has numerous bars and pubs.

    Bristol has a significant Black population now and is renowned for the significant Black community boycott of the city’s bus service in 1963, because the city’s buses barred the employment of black people.
    This led to the first UK law against racial discrimination, the Race Relations Act 1965.
    There had been earlier backbench law reform attempts by Labour MPs but it wasn’t until the October 1964 general election that there was a Labour government in place. Harold Wilson’s first Labour government only had a majority of 4.

    The UK census did not ask any questions about ethnicity until 1991, so we only have estimates of the Black British population during the war. It was likely between 10-20,000 and concentrated within the larger port cities, including Bristol, but heavily concentrated in London and Liverpool.

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