Mare's War & African American Women of WW2

Most folks have heard of Rosie the Riveter, but have you heard of the Black Rosies?  What about the Double-V Campaign?

African-American serving in World War II faced racism in their service, and black women faced the double battle of racism and sexism.  Before recruitment and training even began, African American women faced the major hurdle of discrimination.  Applications were located at local United States Post Offices, and many women that applied were immediately denied, simply because of their race.  Once entering service, they also faced segregation within the military.  These women were kept in a  company separate from white trainees, including separate lodging, dining tables, and even recreational areas.

On the homefront, more than half a million 'Black Rosies' worked in shipyards, factories, railroads, and administrative duties for the war effort.  Many of them, however, worked tirelessly without any recognition.  It was during this time that the Double-V campaign began in Pittsburgh.  Double-V was a slogan used to highlight the struggle on two fronts that African-Americans found themselves fighting—for victory over freedom overseas and for victory over racism at home. 

Of the more than 140,000 women who served in the Women's Army Corps during World War II, about 6,500 of them were Black.  This included the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, a unit of more than 800 black WACs, and the only black WAC unit to serve overseas.  The women arrived in England with the task of working through a huge backlog of mail meant for the troops.  Working in three shifts around the clock, they were able to sort all of the mail in half the amount of time expected, just three months.  Each eight-hour shift averaged more than 65,000 pieces of mail sorted!

The military service of black men and women before and after the desegregation order, and the strength of the Double V Campaign, helped to inspire the modern civil rights movement that began in earnest just after the war ended.  

Learn more about the Civil Rights movement in The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Freedom Summer.

Notable Figures

Tuskegee Army Air Field Nurses

The Tuskegee Airmen were not the only ones on the base who had to fight gender as well as racial discrimination.  When the USs entered World War II, there was a shortage of nurses.  Out of a total of 50,000 Army Nurse Corps (ANC) nurses serving in World War II, only 500 (or 1%) were allowed to be African-American.  There was a cap, a limit, on the number allowed to serve.  Approximately 28 of those black nurses served at Tuskegee.

Mary McLeod Bethune 

Also known as “The First Lady of the Struggle,” Mary McLeod Bethune dedicated her life to improving the lives of African Americans.  She was born to former slaves and saw education and literacy as the way to escape poverty.  She was a teacher in the 1920s and 1930s, and during World War II, served as the assistant director of the Women’s Army Corps and helped to open the military to  African American women.

James Thompson

In a 1942 letter to the Pittsburgh Courier, Thompson called for African Americans to fight for a “double victory” over racism at home and fascism abroad.  This Double Victory campaign was displayed prominently in the paper's pages for months, as well as photos and stories encouraging its subscribers to form Double V clubs.

Read

• Mare's War
• Meet Mare, a World War II veteran and a grandmother like no other. She was once a willful teenager who escaped her less than perfect life in the deep South and lied about her age to join the African American Battalion of the Women's Army Corps. Now she is driving her granddaughters—two willful teenagers in their own rite—on a cross-country road trip. The girls are initially skeptical of Mare's flippy wigs and stilletos, but they soon find themselves entranced by the story she has to tell, and readers will be too. Told in alternating chapters, half of which follow Mare through her experiences as a WAC and half of which follow Mare and her granddaughters on the road in the present day, this novel introduces readers to a larger-than-life character and a fascinating chapter in African American history.
• Courageous Six Triple Eight
• Sisters in Arms

Watch

• Lavenia Breaux oral history

Make / Do

• Using a world map, track Mare's journey from Bay Slough in the 1940s back to Bay Slough in modern day.
• Write a letter to the editor of a black-owned newspaper from the perspective of a young African American living during WWII. 
• Write a mini-biography of Lavenia Breaux, based on her oral history.
• Develop a new ad campaign (poster, radio commercial, ad, etc) for recruiting African-American women into service.
• If you could select five photographs to tell the story of life for African American women in the military during World War II, which ones would you choose? Give a reason for your choices.

Vocabulary

• WAAC
• WAC
• WAVES
• WASP
• Allied Nations
• annex
• Black Rosies
• VE Day
• VJ Day
• VV Campaign
• 6888th
• Tuskegee Airmen

Think

• Do you think Mare was right to leave home the way she did?  Why or why not?
• Why do you think African-American opinions about the VV campaign differed?

Get the entire World War 2 Bundle!

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  The Book Thief
• We Were There at the Battle of Britain
• Number the Stars
• The Winged Watchmen
• We Were There at Pearl Harbor
• We Were There at the Battle of Bataan
• Island War
• Red Stars
• The Night Witches
• Mare’s War
• We Were There at the Normandy Invasion
• Code Talkers
• We Were There at the Battle of the Bulge
• The Light Between Us
• We Were There at the Open of the Atomic Era
• A Merry 1940s Christmas

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• Have Yourself a Vintage Little Christmas