African American Pioneers (Experiencing War: African Americans at War: Fighting Two Battles, Stories fromthe Veterans History Project, Library of Congress)

Experiencing War: African Americans at War: Fighting Two Battles (Stories from the Veterans History Project, Library of Congress)

They joined the military as part of the World War II effort to defeat totalitarian regimes based on myths of racial and national superiority. These African American men and women were well aware of the large irony built into the fact that they were serving in racially segregated units. They set out to prove that black soldiers could fight and serve as well as any others, and that they deserved equal status both inside the barracks and in the civilian world from which they came.

"I can almost remember the first time I saw a black major, especially during World War II-that just didn't happen." (Video Interview, Part 1, 29:17)

Pearle Mack grew up in an integrated neighborhood in Topeka, Kansas, and his first encounter with racism occurred when he tried to enlist in the Army the day after Pearl Harbor was attacked. He served in the segregated Army of World War II, with few officers of his own color to look up to. Then he made a life in the armed forces, watching the strict bonds of segregation loosen and attitudes change over the next thirty years, through two more wars.

Go and experience
Pearle W. Mack, Jr.'s story

Experience more Stories of African American Pioneers

"We had two wars to fight: prejudice...and those Japs." -- Bobby Wallace

	"I was one of those, I would say, fortunate blacks." Rutherford Vincent Brice's story		"I didn't come in the Army to service any of them, I came in to nurse them." Prudence Burrell's story
	"That's when our captain said we were as much a part of that crew as anyone else." Frank Hosendove's story		Coleridge Augustus Jemmott's story
	"...they did everything they could to keep you from succeeding." Harry W. Leavell's story		"Whenever one of us got a command in World War II, it was because they ran out of white guys..." Isaiah A. McCoy, Jr.'s story
	"The white boys went in at 18; we couldn't come in unless you had a college degree." Quentin Smith's story		"We were called 'nigger' many a time... But you just kept on going." Oneida Miller Stuart's story
	"I've been taught that name-calling is one thing, but what you are is another." Bobby J. Wallace's story		"... you had to get used to the idea that you were not their favorite." Essie Dell Woods' story

African American Pioneers

The Library of Congress
February 7, 2006

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