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Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military

Paperback by Guglielmo, Thomas A. (Professor of American Studies and History, Professor of American Studies and History, George Washington University)

Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military

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ISBN:
9780197786628
Publication Date:
3 Feb 2025
Language:
English
Publisher:
Oxford University Press Inc
Pages:
528 pages
Format:
Paperback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 21 - 23 Mar 2025
Divisions: A New History of Racism and Resistance in America's World War II Military

Description

The first comprehensive narrative of racism in America's World War II military and the resistance to it. America's World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that's the story many Americans have long told themselves. Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs; and of African Americans, white Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Guglielmo argues that the military built not one color line, but a complex tangle of them. Taken together, they represented a sprawling structure of white supremacy. Freedom struggles arose in response, democratizing portions of the wartime military and setting the stage for postwar desegregation and the subsequent civil rights movements. But the costs of the military's color lines were devastating. They impeded America's war effort; undermined the nation's rhetoric of the Four Freedoms; further naturalized the concept of race; deepened many whites' investments in white supremacy; and further fractured the American people. Offering a dramatic narrative of America's World War II military and of the postwar world it helped to fashion, Guglielmo fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the war and of mid-twentieth-century America.

Contents

Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction Part I: Enlistment Chapter 1: The Jim Crow Boomerang Chapter 2: Enlisting and Excluding an "Enemy Race" Part II: Assignment Chapter 3: The Backbone of Segregation Chapter 4: Separate Segregations Part III: Classification Chapter 5: The Boundaries of Blackness Part IV: Training Chapter 6: Jim Crow in Uniform Chapter 7: Bonds and Barriers Part V: Fighting Chapter 8: Deploying Jim Crow Chapter 9: Brothers in Arms? Conclusion Notes Index

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