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Book Cover
E-book
Author Moore, Brenda L., 1950-

Title To serve my country, to serve my race : the story of the only African American WACS stationed overseas during World War II / Brenda L. Moore
Published New York : New York University Press, ©1996

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Description 1 online resource (xv, 272 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates) : illustrations
Series UPCC book collections on Project MUSE
Contents A changing military structure -- Fight our battles and claim our victories -- Just American soldiers going to do a job -- Serving in the European theater of operations, January 1945-March 1946 -- Life after military service -- Cohesion, conflict, and phenomenology
Summary To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race is the story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit composed of African American women to serve overseas. While African American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African American women were excluded from overseas duty throughout most of World War II. Under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the black press, and even President Roosevelt, the U.S. War Department was forced to deploy African American women to the European theater in 1945
African American women, having succeeded, through their own activism and political ties, in their quest to shape their own lives, answered the call from all over the country, from every socioeconomic stratum. Stationed in France and England at the end of World War II, the 6888th brought together women like Mary Daniel Williams, a cook in the 6888th who signed up for the Army to escape the slums of Cleveland and to improve her ninth-grade education, and Margaret Barnes Jones, a public relations officer of the 6888th, who grew up in a comfortable household with a politically active mother who encouraged her to challenge the system
Despite the social, political, and economic restrictions imposed upon these African American women in their own country, they were eager to serve, not only out of patriotism but out of a desire to "uplift" their race and dispell bigoted preconceptions about their abilities. Elaine Bennett, a First Sergeant in the 6888th, joined "because I wanted to prove to myself and maybe to the world that we would give what we had back to the United States as a confirmation that we were full-fledged citizens." Filled with compelling personal testimony based on extensive interviews, To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race is the first book to document the lives of these courageous pioneers. It reveals how their Army experience affected them for the rest of their lives and how they, in turn, transformed the U.S. military forever
Analysis World War 2 Military forces
Western Europe
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-263) and index
Notes Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL
Print version record
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL
Subject United States. Army. Women's Army Corps.
SUBJECT United States. Army. Women's Army Corps fast
USA Women's Army Corps gnd
Subject World War, 1939-1945 -- African Americans.
World War, 1939-1945 -- Participation, Female.
HISTORY -- Military -- World War II.
African Americans
Armed Forces -- African Americans
Armed Forces -- Women
Military participation -- Female
Schwarze Frau
Geschichte
SUBJECT United States -- Armed Forces -- African Americans. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85139805
United States -- Armed Forces -- Women. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85139908
Subject United States
Form Electronic book
LC no. 95032467
ISBN 0585324263
9780585324265
9780814763247
0814763243