黑人军队在英国受到欢迎，但吉姆-克劳却不受欢迎：1943年6月的一个晚上发生的种族骚乱
出版。北京时间2018年6月22日上午9点56分
中央兰开夏大学的艾伦-赖斯
战争期间，驻扎在英国的美国黑人大兵，这些人在布里斯托尔，受到东道主的热烈欢迎，但他们的白人美军战友却给予了严厉的对待。 brizzlebornandbred, CC BY-NC-SA
20世纪80年代末，在英格兰北部兰开夏郡班伯桥（Bamber Bridge）的国民银行（NatWest Bank）周围的木头上发现的弹孔，使人们重新发现了二战期间英格兰为数不多的愤怒射击事件，而这一事件在很大程度上已经被遗忘。这些枪声不是由入侵的军队发出的，而是由美国大兵对他们自己的军事警察发出的。
英国黑人维修工人克林顿-史密斯对他的发现感到好奇，他发现了木制品上的这些洞，并询问当地人这些洞是怎么来的。他被告知，这些洞是班伯桥战役的遗留物，当时驻扎在该镇的美国黑人军队在1943年6月24日至25日夜里与美国白人陆军军警对峙。
与其说这是一场战斗，不如说是一场哗变，它导致二等兵威廉-克罗斯兰在附近的蒙西路死亡，另有四名美国黑人士兵在五个小时的对抗中受伤，这场对抗从镇子一端的茅草屋Olde Hob旅馆蔓延到亚当斯厅军营，从1943年初开始，美国第八军需车连（除了几名白人军官外，都是黑人连队）就驻扎在那里。为了不影响后方的士气，这一事件被官方淡化了，但那晚的事件导致27名美国黑人士兵被定罪。
这场 "战斗
整个事件是美国黑人和白人部队在英国的基地内外发生冲突的典型例子--仅在1943年11月至1944年2月期间就有44起--在一支隔离的军队中，内在的种族主义导致了对抗。这种情况在国外尤其明显，在那里，黑人士兵看到他们周围的现实与他们在国内面临的现实截然不同--在一个非隔离的社会里，他们作为反法西斯的同伴受到欢迎，而不是像美国军队一般对待他们那样被容忍为战争的搬运工人。
Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943
Published: June 22, 2018 9.56am BST
Alan Rice, University of Central Lancashire
Black American GIs stationed in Britain during the war, these in Bristol, were given a warm welcome by their hosts but treated harshly by their white US Army comrades. brizzlebornandbred, CC BY-NC-SA
Bullet holes found in the wood surrounds of the NatWest Bank in Bamber Bridge, in Lancashire in the north of England, in the late 1980s led to the rediscovery of an event that saw some of the few shots fired in anger in England during World War II, which had been largely forgotten. These were not shots fired by invading troops, but by American GIs against their own military police.
Intrigued by his discovery, Clinton Smith, the black British maintenance worker who discovered the holes in the woodwork, asked locals how they could have got there. He was told that they were the remnants of the Battle of Bamber Bridge, when black American troops stationed in the town faced off against white US Army military police on the night of June 24-25, 1943.
More a mutiny than a battle, it led to the death of Private William Crossland in nearby Mounsey Road, and four other injuries to black American soldiers in a five-hour confrontation which spread from the thatched Olde Hob Inn at one end of the town to the Adams Hall army camp, where from early 1943 the US Eighth Army Quartermaster Truck Company, a black company apart from a few white officers, had been based. The event was officially downplayed, in order not to undermine morale on the home front, but the events of that night led to the conviction of 27 black American soldiers.
The ‘battle’
The whole incident is typical of the clashes on and around bases in Britain between black and white American troops – 44 between November 1943 and February 1944 alone – where the intrinsic racism in a segregated army led to confrontations. This was especially the case in a foreign setting where the black soldiers saw around them a very different reality from that they faced at home – a non-segregated society where they were welcomed as fellow fighters against fascism, rather than tolerated hod-carriers for the war effort as they were generally treated by the US Army.
That evening in 1943, black troops and white locals were stretching out “drinking-up time” in a pub at the end of the evening. Words were exchanged, and military police arrived and tried to arrest Private Eugene Nunn for not wearing the proper uniform. But they faced new solidarities: a white British soldier challenged the military police: “Why do you want to arrest them? They’re not doing anything or bothering anybody.”
The incident escalated into a fist fight and the military police were beaten back. When they returned with reinforcements to meet the group, now returning to camp, a battle developed in the street. Shots were fired, and Crossland died with a bullet in his back.
Black GIs would drink in mixed company in British pubs, to the horror of the white US Army authorities. brizzlebornandbred
When rumours spread at the camp that black GIs had been shot, scores of men formed a crowd, some carrying rifles. The arrival at around midnight of more military police with a machine gun-equipped vehicle convinced many of the black soldiers that the police intended to kill them – and they drew rifles from the stores. Some barricaded themselves into the base, others tore off back into town, leading to running shooting battles in the streets.
Many of the black American troop standing up to the military police that febrile night were no doubt influenced by news filtering through of race riots in Detroit on June 20, where defenceless black men were attacked by racist police, responsible for the deaths of 17 of the 25 African-Americans killed.
Race relations at home and abroad
In his essays George Orwell alluded to the oft-quoted assertion that American GIs were “oversexed, overpaid and over here”. But he qualified this with the observation that: “the general consensus of opinion is that the only American soldiers with decent manners are Negroes.”
The black American servicemen were welcomed into the leisure time of their British hosts in ways that spread solidarity. A former black GI, Cleother Hathcock, remembers:
At that time the Jitterbug was in and the blacks would get a buggin’ and the English just loved that. We would go into a dance hall and just take over the place because everybody wanted to learn how to do that American dance, the Jitterbug. They went wild over that.
1943年的那个晚上，黑人部队和白人当地人在一家酒馆里延长了晚上的 "饮酒时间"。双方交头接耳，军警赶到，试图逮捕二等兵尤金-纳恩，因为他没有穿合适的制服。但他们面临着新的团结：一名英国白人士兵向军警提出质疑："你为什么要逮捕他们？他们没有做任何事情，也没有打扰任何人"。
事件升级为拳脚相加，军警被打了回去。当他们带着增援部队回来接应这群正在返回营地的人时，在街上发生了战斗。有人开了枪，克罗斯兰背部中弹身亡。
黑人大兵会在英国的酒馆里混着喝，这让美国军队的白人当局感到害怕。
当营地里流传着黑人大兵被枪杀的谣言时，几十个人组成了人群，有些人还带着步枪。午夜时分，更多的军警带着一辆装有机枪的车辆到来，这让许多黑人士兵相信警察打算杀死他们--他们从商店里抽出了步枪。一些人把自己堵在基地里，另一些人则跑回镇上，导致街道上发生了激烈的枪战。
在那个炎热的夜晚，许多美国黑人士兵奋起反抗军警，无疑是受到了6月20日底特律种族骚乱消息的影响，在那里，手无寸铁的黑人男子遭到种族主义警察的袭击，25名非裔美国人中有17人死亡。
国内和国外的种族关系
乔治-奥威尔在他的文章中提到了一个经常被引用的断言，即美国大兵 "性欲旺盛，报酬过高，在这里"。但他对这一说法进行了限定，指出"普遍的看法是，唯一有礼貌的美国士兵是黑人"。
美国黑人军人被欢迎进入他们的英国主人的休闲时间，以传播团结的方式。一位前黑人大兵克莱瑟-哈斯考克回忆说。
当时吉特巴舞正在流行，黑人会得到一个开溜的机会，英国人就喜欢这样。我们会进入舞厅并接管那里，因为每个人都想学习如何跳美国舞蹈，吉特巴舞。他们为之疯狂。
The town did not share the US Army’s segregationist attitudes. According to the author Anthony Burgess, who spent time in Bamber Bridge during the war, when US military authorities demanded that the town’s pubs impose a colour bar, the landlords responded with signs that read: “Black Troops Only”. The extent to which this rankled the white American troops is shown by the comments of a lieutenant:
One thing I noticed here and which I don’t like is the fact that the English don’t draw any color line. The English must be pretty ignorant. I can’t see how a white girl could associate with a negro.
This sort of attitude exemplifies the particular resentment over the way black troops openly fraternised with white British women – and many of the confrontations during this period were sparked by the ease of interracial relationships in a British rather than American context.
The military authorities tried to push back against this by imposing Jim Crow segregation in Britain, so that when the black American world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis visited on a propaganda tour in 1944 he encountered blatant discrimination from the troops he was visiting, as he had at home.
The events in Bamber Bridge encapsulated these Jim Crow practices – and the wider paradox of the open-armed welcome from the local residents coupled with resentment of that welcome by white American troops. The pub was a place of sanctuary for black troops where they mingled with, mainly friendly, locals, and where the segregation many had to endure in the American South was thankfully absent.
Local resident Gillian Vesey recalled how, as a young barmaid at the Olde Hob Inn, she stood up for African American soldiers against attempts by white Americans to impose discriminatory practices in the pub, insisting that the American white soldiers wait their turn rather than expecting to be served before their black colleagues.
Keeping a segregated army in the context of fighting for democracy became untenable, and in 1948 the then US president Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 which eventually led to an integrated army. While the convictions of the troops involved at Bamber Bridge were largely commuted or overturned, soldiers returned to Jim Crow segregation in the US, with the reality that some veterans were lynched in their uniforms.
But the new freedoms they experienced in Europe meant they were not prepared to put up with discrimination, racism and racial violence again. As veteran Wilford Strange said in the documentary film Choc’late Soldiers from the USA:
I think the impact these soldiers had by volunteering was the initiation of the Civil Rights movement, ’cos these soldiers were never going back to be discriminated against again. None of us were.
Alan Rice is the author of:
Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic
Liverpool University Press provides funding as a content partner of The Conversation UK
在酒馆中的做法，坚持让美国白人士兵等待轮到他们，而不是期望在他们的黑人同事之前得到服务。
在为民主而战的背景下保持一支种族隔离的军队是站不住脚的，1948年，当时的美国总统哈里-杜鲁门签署了第9981号行政命令，最终促成了军队的一体化。虽然对班伯桥事件所涉部队的定罪大多被减刑或推翻，但士兵们又回到了美国的吉姆-克罗隔离制度中，现实是一些老兵穿着军装被处以私刑。
但他们在欧洲经历的新自由意味着他们不准备再次忍受歧视、种族主义和种族暴力。正如老兵威尔福德-斯特兰奇（Wilford Strange）在纪录片《来自美国的Choc'late Soldiers》中所说。
我认为这些士兵通过志愿服务产生的影响是民权运动的开始，因为这些士兵再也不会回去受歧视了。我们都不是。
艾伦-赖斯是以下著作的作者。
创造纪念品，建立身份。黑大西洋地区的记忆政治
利物浦大学出版社作为英国《对话》杂志的内容合作伙伴提供资金。
History
Racism
World War II
Civil rights
US military
UK military history
Black history
Liverpool University Press
Before you go …
90,000 experts have written for The Conversation. Because our only agenda is to rebuild trust and serve the public by making knowledge available to everyone rather than a select few. Now, you can receive the latest articles in your inbox every day. Give it a go?
Jo Adetunji
Editor, The Conversation UK
Events
More events
Jobs
Donor Relations Coordinator (Leadership Giving)
Casual Academics for Undergraduate and Postgraduate Teaching in Writing, Literature and Culture and Creative Arts, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University
Research Fellow, Grade 2
Director, Social Purpose Centre (SPC)
Allied Health Practitioner (Director of Research) or Senior Staff Specialist or Staff Specialist (Chair of Research) or Director of Nursing/Midwifery (Chair of Research)
More jobs
Editorial Policies
Community standards
Republishing guidelines
Analytics
Our feeds
Get newsletter
Who we are
Our charter
Our team
Partners and funders
Resource for media
Contact us
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions
Corrections
Copyright © 2010–2022, The Conversation
留言
張貼留言