To serve my country, to serve my race
Subtitle: the story of the only African American WACS stationed overseas during World War II
By: Brenda L. Moore.
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 1996
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 272
Subjects: United States. Army. Women's Army Corps; World War, 1939-1945 -- African Americans; World War, 1939-1945 -- Participation, Female; United States -- Armed Forces -- African Americans; United States -- Armed Forces -- Women
Description: 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.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-263) and index.
Table of contents: title: A changing military structure; title: Fight our battles and claim our victories; title: Just American soldiers going to do a job; title: Serving in the European theater of operations, January 1945-March 1946; title: Life after military service; title: Cohesion, conflict, and phenomenology.