'Race War': Black American GIs and West Indians in Britain During The Second World War

During the Second World War some three million American service personnel came to the British Isles. Among them were more than 130,000 African-Americans who were segregated and subjected to the discrimination that crossed the Atlantic with their white countrymen. However, while many of the British hosts often welcomed the African-American GIs, the American-style Jim Crow was not welcomed. But while it has often seemed that the wartime British were free of race prejudice, treatment of troops and workers from the colonies, particularly the West Indies, suggest that this was not so. This article looks at the response to black GIs and West Indians in order to demonstrate that there was in fact greater continuity between British wartime and postwar race relations than has often appeared to be the case.