![]() soldiers stationed nearby during World War II. The current landlady at Ye Olde Hob Inn, Sarah Locke, shows NPR an old photo of the pub during the 1940s, when it was a favorite watering hole of Black U.S. It was a popular watering hole where American troops used to drink with locals, around the corner from the Adams Hall Army camp, where Black U.S. In Bamber Bridge, all these tensions erupted into violence at a 17th century thatched-roof pub called Ye Olde Hob Inn. of Black people like Emmett Till, if they were perceived to have made any sexual advances toward white women.) (This was a time of frequent lynchings in the U.S. " keep getting stopped by the military police, and there's also the deep fear of miscegenation in the American military police and the white officer class - who just see it as an incredible danger, the fraternization that's going on between Black soldiers and white women from the local community." It's bad at home and it's bad here," says Alan Rice, a Black studies expert at the University of Central Lancashire. "There was an idea that we should be fighting for democracy at home and abroad, but our situation isn't improving. In the days that followed, news of those riots reached Black soldiers deployed abroad - and it contributed to their frustration. Dozens of people, mostly Black, were killed. experienced some of its worst race riots to date, in Detroit, from June 20-22, 1943. soldiers in Bamber Bridgeĭays before violence broke out in Bamber Bridge, the U.S. Tension had been building between Black and white U.S. "The Army did not want a Black sergeant commanding a white private," Cooke notes.Ĭhris Lomax, mayor of South Ribble, which includes the village of Bamber Bridge, with the plaque he helped install on the village green last year. soldiers who fought in World War II.ĭuring the war, Black troops who volunteered for combat roles often had to give up their rank and take a pay cut. "In many places, the Army instituted a policy whereby white troops could go into town Monday, Wednesday and Friday and Black troops could go Tuesday, Thursday and Saturdays - to keep them apart," says Gregory Cooke, a Black historian and educator from Philadelphia who helped make a 2013 documentary called Choc'late Soldiers from the USA, about Black U.S. Military police were tasked with enforcing segregation rules - even while deployed abroad in the United Kingdom. Before that, the military largely kept white and nonwhite soldiers apart. government banned segregation in the armed forces. It wasn't until 1948 - after the war - that the U.S. Smith, shocked by what colleagues told him about the origin of the bullet holes he'd spotted that day, vowed to change that - and has spent the past 40 years doing so. But because of wartime censorship, the battle was virtually unknown outside the tiny English village where it happened. ![]() It horrified the mostly white local villagers, who were unaccustomed to segregation and had befriended their Black guests. The Battle of Bamber Bridge - which took place 80 years ago this weekend, on June 24-25, 1943 - was a precursor to battles that would unfold on American streets for decades to come, during the Civil Rights era. And when Black soldiers stationed in Bamber Bridge stood up to the racism and discrimination, one of them was shot dead, and more than 30 others were court-martialed for mutiny.Įighty years later, they have yet to be exonerated. When American troops deployed to Europe to fight Hitler, they brought Jim Crow with them. ![]() What surprised Smith most was that this battle wasn't against the Nazis. They were bullet holes from a deadly World War II battle in Bamber Bridge, a tiny village in the northern English county of Lancashire. "And they looked at me with complete dismay and said, 'No, they're not termite holes, lad - they're bullet holes.'" "I flippantly said to my colleagues, 'You've got big termites!'" Clinton Smith, now 70, recalls. Crawford of Detroit, Michigan, as the Regimental plans and training officer, is giving his men instructions in combat maneuvers.īAMBER BRIDGE, England - In the early 1980s, a Black maintenance worker in northern England noticed what he thought was termite damage in the wooden facade of a bank. ![]()
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