Jim Crow with a British Accent: Attitudes of London Government Officials Toward American Negro Soldiers in England During World War II

Prior to the Second World War, the British Government's contacts with blacks of the world had been largely limited to the colonial sphere. London's legacy of inequitable treatment of non-white peoples in many parts of the Empire derived more from the elitist views of British officials than from any indigenous racial prejudice on the part of ordinary Englishmen whose virtually homogeneous society afforded them little experience with the phenomenon. This fact is abundantly evident from the way in which native Britons and their government, respectively, reacted to the arrival of black American soldiers on English soil in 1942. Confidential memoranda by highly-placed members of the British Government reveal London's secret but official response to this unprecedented circumstance. This article analyzes some of these documents.