The Invisible Soldier: The Experience of the Black Soldier, World War II

by Mary Penick Motley

Book Overview

By turns shocking, nightmarish, despairing, bitterly ironic, and, in rare instances, full of laughter, the fifty-five oral histories in The Invisible Soldier add a significant chapter to black... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 081431550X
• ISBN13: 9780814315507
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Length: 364 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A MOST EXCELLENT BOOK!

This book is very much worthy of reading again and again. It should be required reading at military schools and within any curriculum of American history or African American history, at either the high school or the college level. I cannot say enough in praise of this book.

Excellent book on little-publicized aspect of World War II

This is an amazing book containing oral histories of African American US soldiers during World War II. While each story is different, common themes are that preserving white supremacy was a preeminent motivation of American life, and that such discrimination was usually enforced or condoned by the federal government through the military. If African American soldiers were allowed to succeed, that would bring the Jim Crow system into question.

Excellent book on little-publicized aspect of World War II

This is an amazing book containing oral histories of African American US soldiers during World War II. While each story is different, common themes are that preserving white supremacy was a preeminent motivation of American life, and that such discrimination was usually enforced or condoned by the federal government through the military. If African American soldiers were allowed to succeed, that would bring the Jim Crow system into question.The author skillfully orders these narratives, also noting the role played by each soldier and unit noted in a brief introduction before each narrative. These soldiers give the facts, their opinions, and some general observations. "At times it actually seemed that the white man would rather lose the war than give the black man the recognition he so clearly deserved."The African American had two enemies -- the Germans, and the white soldiers and civilians. Southern law officers might force African American soldiers to march in the ditch, since the very highways were reserved for whites.There were times that African American soldiers would fight white soldiers who provoked them. In the South, this might lead to a lynch mob. A number of accounts note that German POWs were granted privileges denied to active duty African American soldiers. One soldier notes that he had to walk down an alley to the back of an eatery in Texas to order food, while German POWs were allowed to eat inside; this was a common practice in the South. In the South, African American access to the base PX would be restricted. Trained African American soldiers were assigned to stevedore duty. Trained African American pilots were assigned to guard airbases which were in no danger of enemy attack. White officers were promoted or transferred, to prevent them from having to follow the orders of an African American officer of higher rank in their unit. Officers' clubs were "separate but unequal." Only when mixed with African Americans in actual combat against the Germans, did whites treat African Americans equally. There were rare exceptions of white officers and units who stood up to this segregation.This book is full of hundreds of such memories and incidents. Some incidents recount how African American soldiers interacted with other minorities in the army, and with the citizens of different countries. This book is slow reading, because each incident generates thought, but it is well worth reading.

Shows full scope of Black military experience this century

This is one of the best two books I've read on the Black military experience in the twentieth century, the other book being Lee's "Employment of Negro Troops." The Invisible Soldier contains a series of interviews with black officers and enlisted men from World War One to Vietnam and from many different services. These men discuss things which are not written about in any other book, and that you wont find in the national archives, such as an on going battle between white and black officers for authority during segregation, or overt racial violence between soldiers once the Japanese had surrendered. I read this book after Lee's book and Nalty's "Strength for the Fight" and it added clarity and depth to their more traditional format. The author, a woman, is aware that she is stepping into an arena that is traditionally all-male but provides a balanced view to the male voices she transcribes in the book. Should be required reading in some military history classes.