Limit search to available items
Record 9 of 17
Previous Record Next Record
Book Cover
E-book
Author Cutrer, Thomas W., author

Title Doris Miller, Pearl Harbor, and the birth of the civil rights movement / Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish
Edition First edition
Published College Station : Texas A & M University Press, [2018]

Copies

Description 1 online resource
Series Williams-Ford Texas A & M University military history series ; number 158
Contents "Seagoing Bellhops, Chambermaids and Dishwashers": Black Sailors in a White Navy -- "Going Nowhere": Depression-Era McLennan County -- "God's Strength and Mother's Blessing": The Attack on Pearl Harbor, 7 December 1941 -- "A Simple Act of Justice": The Navy Cross -- "An Everlasting Inspiration": Jim Crow in Retreat -- "Tell All My Friends Not to Shed Any Tears for Me": To Tarawa and Beyond -- "They Appreciate What I Did": The Doris Miller Legacy
Summary On the morning of December 7, 1941, after serving breakfast and turning his attention to laundry services aboard the USS West Virginia, Ship?s Cook Third Class Doris "Dorie" Miller heard the alarm calling sailors to battle stations. The first of several torpedoes dropped from Japanese aircraft had struck the American battleship. Miller hastily made his way to a central point and was soon called to the bridge by Lt. Com. Doir C. Johnson to assist the mortally wounded ship?s captain, Mervyn Bennion. Miller then joined two others in loading and firing an unmanned anti-aircraft machine gun?a weapon that, as an African American in a segregated military, Miller had not been trained to operate. But he did, firing the weapon on attacking Japanese aircraft until the .50-caliber gun ran out of ammunition. For these actions, Miller was later awarded the Navy Cross, the third-highest naval award for combat gallantry. Historians Thomas W. Cutrer and T. Michael Parrish have not only painstakingly reconstructed Miller?s inspiring actions on December 7. They also offer for the first time a full biography of Miller placed in the larger context of African American service in the United States military and the beginnings of the civil rights movement. Like so many sailors and soldiers in World War II, Doris Miller?s life was cut short. Just two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Miller was aboard the USS Liscome Bay when it was sunk by a Japanese submarine. But the name?and symbolic image?of Dorie Miller lived on. As Cutrer and Parrish conclude, "Dorie Miller?s actions at Pearl Harbor, and the legend that they engendered, were directly responsible for helping to roll back the navy?s then-to-fore unrelenting policy of racial segregation and prejudice, and, in the chain of events, helped to launch the civil rights movement of the 1960s that brought an end to the worst of America?s racial intolerance."
Notes Print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed
Subject Miller, Doris, 1919-1943.
SUBJECT Miller, Doris, 1919-1943
Miller, Doris, 1919-1943 fast
Subject United States. Navy -- African Americans -- Biography
SUBJECT United States. Navy fast
Subject Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), Attack on, 1941 -- Biography
World War, 1939-1945 -- African Americans.
Civil rights movements -- United States.
History / United States / State & Local / Southwest (AZ, NM, OK, TX)
History / Military / Veterans.
History / Military / World War Ii.
African Americans
Armed Forces -- African Americans
Civil rights movements
Hawaii
United States
Genre/Form Electronic books
Biographies
Form Electronic book
Author Parrish, T. Michael, author
LC no. 2017028485
ISBN 1623496039
9781623496036