Harlem at War: The Black Experience in WWII
by Nathan H. Brandt
Category: Biography & Autobiography

Wherever black troops were trained or stationed, Brandt explains, "rage surfaced frequently, was suppressed, but was not extinguished." Using eyewitness accounts, he describes the rage Harlemites felt, the discrimination and humiliation they shared with blacks across the country. The collective anger erupted one day in Harlem when a young black soldier was shot by a white police officer. The riot, in which six blacks were killed, seven hundred injured, and six arrested, became a turning point in America's race relations and a precursor to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.