In the patriotic aftermath of Pearl Harbor, African Americans demanded the right to play their part in the war against Japan. As they soon learned, however, the freedom for which the United States and its allies was fighting did not extend to African Americans. Focusing on African Americans' experiences across the Asia-Pacific theater during World War Two, this book examines the interplay between national identity, the racially segregated US military culture, and the possibilities of transnational racial advancement, as African Americans contemplated not just their own oppression but that of the colonized peoples of the Pacific region. In illuminating neglected aspects of African American history and of World War Two, this book deepens our understanding of the connections between the United States' role as an international power and the racial ideologies and practices that characterized American life during the mid-twentieth century.

This encyclopedia details the participation of individual ethnic and racial minority groups throughout U.S. military history. Ethnic and Racial Minorities in the U.S. Military: An Encyclopedia is unique in its coverage of nearly all major ethnic and racial minority groups, as opposed to reference works that have focused only on individual ethnic or racial minority groups. It acknowledges the military contributions of African Americans, Asian Americans, French Americans, German Americans, Hispanic Americans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans. This timely work highlights the individuals and events that have shaped the experience of minorities in U.S. conflicts. The work provides a comprehensive encyclopedia covering the role of all major ethnic and racial minorities in the United States during wartime. Additionally, it considers how the integration of servicemen in the U.S. military set the precedent for the eventual desegregation of America's civilian population.

From an acclaimed World War II writer comes an incisive retelling of the key month, July 1944, that won the war in the Pacific and ignited a whole new struggle on the homefront.

During World War II, tens of thousands of African Americans served in segregated combat units in U.S. armed forces. The majority of these units were found in the U.S. Army, and African Americans served in every one of the combat arms. They found opportunities for leadership unparalleled in the rest of American society at the time. Several reached the field grade officer ranks, and one officer reached the rank of brigadier general. Beyond the Army, the Marine Corps refused to enlist African Americans until ordered to do so by the president in June 1942, and two African American combat units were formed and did see service during the war. While the U.S. Navy initially resisted extending the role of African American sailors beyond kitchens, eventually the crew of two ships was composed exclusively of African Americans. The Coast Guard became the first service to integrate—initially with two shipboard experiments and then with the integration of most of their fleet. Finally, the famous Tuskegee airmen are covered in the chapter on air warfare. Proud Warriors makes the case that the wartime experiences of combat units such as the Tank Battalions and the Tuskegee Airmen ultimately convinced President Truman to desegregate the military, without which the progress of the Civil Rights Movement might also have been delayed.

Widely praised upon publication and now considered a classic study, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights chronicles the southern industrial union movement from the Great Depression to the Cold War, a history that created the context for the sanitation workers' strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis in April 1968. Michael K. Honey documents the dramatic labor battles and sometimes heroic activities of workers and organizers that helped to set the stage for segregation's demise. Winner of the Charles S. Sydnor Award, given by the Southern Historical Association, 1994. Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize given by the Organization of American Historians, 1994. Winner of the Herbert G. Gutman Award for an outstanding book in American social history.