Return-Path: <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id i572B7912824; Sun, 6 Jun 2004 22:11:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 22:11:07 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <000301c44c34$2e6cd030$9450f7a5@air.org> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "Mary Ann Corley" <macorley1@earthlink.net> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-povracelit@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-POVRACELIT:1384] Remembering role of black GIs on June 6, 1944 X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1409 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: RO Content-Length: 4754 Lines: 99 startribune.com Remembering role of black GIs on June 6, 1944 Lance Gay Scripps Howard News Service Published May 30, 2004 American blacks who fought on D-Day 60 years ago were battling on two fronts. Like other Allied forces that landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, they faced the German enemy on the beach in front of them. But black GIs also fought a war against a racist system at home that put them into segregated units. Their role on D-Day isn't well-known. One black face appears briefly in the movie "The Longest Day"; none is seen in "Saving Private Ryan." Most histories of the climactic assault on Normandy also fail to notice that black soldiers were there. Invisible in France too San Francisco photographer Samuel LeBon Wooten said it's not just America that has amnesia -- the French also ignore the role black GIs played in liberating their occupied nation. "I was surprised, absolutely," he said. "But what surprised me even more than anything else is that African-Americans are not part of the collective memory of Normandy." In hopes of saving the story of blacks and D-Day, Wooten is taking black veterans back to the Normandy beaches to participate in the 60th-anniversary celebrations France is planning. He said he wants to produce a film recording the contributions of blacks to the war, and trace the activity of their units through Normandy, including the courts-martial in 1944 that resulted in some black GIs being hanged. Wooten said six veterans, who range in age from 79 to 95, are participating, including one who uses a walker and another a wheelchair. "The 95-year-old seems to be the fittest," he said. Wooten, 44, was born in France to an black American father and a white French mother and grew up in the tiny town of St. Mere Eglise, the heart of American D-Day airborne operations. As a youth, he remembers dressing up in uniform each June for annual French celebrations of the day, and recalls he was once taunted by another child who told him people with brown skin like his weren't part of the original D-Day. In fact, blacks were among the assault troops that June 6, and one unit was responsible for maintaining barrage balloons over the beachhead that protected troops landing. Well-documented role The Stars and Stripes newspaper in 1944 reported that the unit suffered casualties setting up the balloons, which were floated across the English Channel on invasion day. Army photographers recorded black troops in operations liberating French villages around the beaches, and stories of the time cited black troops who were awarded medals for bravery and meritorious duty. Wooten said the exact number of blacks involved in the D-Day landings is unknown, as is the number of casualties. He estimates that from 1,500 to 2,000 of the 57,000 troops involved were black. The Army didn't record racial or ethnic differences when counting the dead; Wooten said he knows of at least three blacks buried in the American cemetery on the bluffs overlooking Omaha Beach at Coleville-sur-Mer. Part of the problem of reconstructing the story of blacks on D-Day is that their units were disbanded after the invasion, and the men were assigned to duties with other units. William King, a professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, said tracking the involvement of blacks in World War II is very difficult, because of the legacy of segregation. "No one has taken the time, with a couple of exceptions," he said. There was one documentary film, "The Invisible Soldiers: Unheard Voices," but the history of blacks in World War II remains to be told; about 1.2 million blacks participated in the conflict. Wooten said he also wants to explore how blacks were received in France, and the troubled story of what the black soldiers did behind the lines. He said he knows of 12 courts-martial involving black soldiers involved in rapes, murders or other crimes in Normandy that led to hangings in 1944, although he suspects there were 11 more cases that he can't yet document. The way things were Wooten said that while French people he has talked to clearly remember the hangings -- some of which were in the town square of Cherbourg -- many don't have any particular memories today of the black GIs, or the thousands who brought up the rear, ferrying fuel and supplies to the front lines through the Red Ball Express from Normandy's ports. "The negative memories outweigh the good ones in the memory of the French," he said. Wooten said the other thing that surprised him is the lack of anger among black veterans. "I expected them to be a lot more angry about what happened, and how they were treated. But they said they were used to segregation at the time, and it was just the way things were."
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