Jim Crow and John Bull in London: Transatlantic Encounters with Race and Nation in the Second World War

Ayers, Oliver (2021) Jim Crow and John Bull in London: Transatlantic Encounters with Race and Nation in the Second World War. Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, 20 (3). pp. 244-266.

Abstract

The arrival of a segregated American army on British shores during the Second World War forced the UK government and the public to confront questions of race and nation in new ways. This article places London, the imperial metropolis, in a central role in this wartime drama by deploying evidence compiled as part of the Mapping Black London in World War II digital history project. The article reveals a hitherto under-acknowledged range and scale of African American activity in the capital, with a cast of characters including newspaper correspondents, musicians, social workers, nurses, political activists and, of course, many thousands of service personnel – both men and women. For an African American public back home, these metropolitan activities were viewed both as part of the international war effort and also from the perspective of a domestic American scene affected by rural to urban migration and an upsurge in racial protest and tension. The result was a short, sharp but transformative transatlantic encounter that highlights the connections between historical trajectories often considered in separate terms: the US civil rights movement, British domestic race relations, and the international forces – not least the decline of European empire fomented by war – that bound them together.

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