Mutiny at Bamber Bridge: How the World War II Press Reported Racial Unrest among U.S. Troops and Why It Remains in British Memory

Abstract

What began as good-natured ribbing for more libations escalated into a verbal altercation between African American troops and white U.S. military police on the night of June 24, 1943. The evening ended with a gun battle in the English village of Bamber Bridge, an event that left one soldier dead and several U.S. troops injured. Was the violence spurred by military policies limiting the roles of African Americans? Was it fueled by an uncensored radio bulletin about race rioting in Detroit accidentally transmitted to London? Or fueled by white U.S. soldiers’ growing anger over the preferential treatment the Brits extended to African Americans? Seven decades later, the event remains forged into the collective memory of residents and is reinforced by modern-day press recollections.

Notes

1 Ken Werrell, “The Mutiny at Bamber Bridge,” After the Battle 22 (1978): 1–11.

2 I have chosen to use the term “African American” to describe U.S. troops of African descent who were deployed to England during World War II in an attempt to restore dignity to a group of American veterans whose military service, in the words of historian James Campbell, “does not conform nicely with the celebrated stories of white heroism and sacrifice.” See James Campbell, The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and Another Changed America (New York, NY: Random House Inc., 2012), xiii. Terms more commonly used during this period, such as “Black,” “Negro,” and “colored,” appear in this research only in direct quotes from official government reports or published news articles of the day.

3 See Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops (Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific, 2004), 51.

4 See Paul Patterson, “London Gets Detroit Riot News by Slipup,” Baltimore Sun, June 25, 1943. The American city of Detroit exploded into violent rioting on June 20, 1943. Fighting, which began on Belle Isle, a 985-acre recreational public park along the Detroit River, spread, leaving thirty-four people dead, 676 injured, and $2 million in damaged property. See Robert Shogan and Tom Craig, The Detroit Race Riot: A Study in Violence (Philadelphia, PA: Chilton Books Publishers, 1964), 89. For a detailed narrative of the incident, also see Dominic J. Capeci Jr. and Martha Wilkerson, Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943 (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), 3–86; and Alfred McClung Lee and Norman D. Humphrey, Race Riot: Detroit, 1943 (New York, NY: Octagon Books Inc., 1968), 20–48. For examples of newspaper coverage, see “Call 50 Police to Bridge Riot,” Detroit Free Press, June 21, 1943, 1; “Martial Law at 10 P.M., U.S. Troops Move In,” Detroit Free Press, June 22, 1943, 1; and “Troops Curb Detroit Riots, 23 Are Dead,” Washington Post, June 22, 1943, 1.

5 See Juliet Gardiner, “Overpaid, Oversexed & Over Here”: The American GI in World War II Britain (New York, NY: Canopy Books, 1992), 152–58; David Reynolds, Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942–1945 (New York, NY: Random House, 1995), 302–6; and Graham Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull: Black American Soldiers in World War II Britain (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1987), 118.

6 See “Police and Negro Soldiers,” Belfast Telegraph, June 26, 1943, 3; “Fight in Street,” News of the World, June 27, 1943, 2; “Six Yanks Hurt as Troops, Army Police Clash in England,” Washington Post, June 26, 1943, 2; and “MPs Battle Race Soldiers in Britain,” Chicago Defender, July 3, 1943, 3.

7 Local and regional newspapers were selected because not only do they represent the newspapers of record for their respective coverage areas, but such publications also have the potential to offer closer examinations of how local life might have been disrupted or influenced by racial events. Among the British newspapers examined were: Belfast News-Letter, Belfast Telegraph, Bristol Evening Post, Bristol Evening World, Chorley Guardian, Lancashire Daily Post, and the Western Daily Press & Bristol Mirror. American newspapers representing local and regional newspapers included: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Boston Daily Globe, Baltimore Sun, Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Examiner, and the Los Angeles Times. National papers were also examined because, beyond functioning as papers of record, these publications also serve as opinion leaders or influencers for a country. National British newspapers studied included: the Daily Express (London), Daily Mail (London), Irish News, News of the World, and Times (London). National U.S. newspapers included: the Chicago Daily Tribune, Washington Post, and New York Times. Because mainstream U.S. newspapers largely excluded African American life from their publications, three black newspapers were also examined: Pittsburgh Courier, Chicago Defender, and the Baltimore Afro-American. These newspapers, in addition to being respectively the three largest-circulation black press publications in the U.S. during World War II, also had the largest number of war correspondents assigned to Europe from among the country’s black presses. The Pittsburgh Courier’s wartime correspondents in the European Theater of Operations included: William R. Dixon and Theodore Stanford; the Chicago Defender’s ETO correspondents included: David H. Orro and Edward B. Toles; and the Baltimore Afro-American’s European-based war correspondents included: Ollie Stewart, Bettye Phillips, and Vincent Tubbs. The Associated Negro Press also had Rudy Dunbar and George Padmore based in the ETO. See John D. Stevens, “From the Back of the Foxhole: Black Correspondents in World War II,” Journalism Monographs 27 (1973).

8 Smith alleges that less than ninety-six hours after friction in Detroit began, “black Americans commandeers weapons and trucks from their quarters in Bamber Bridge in Lancashire, smashed through the gates and drove into town determined to open fire on all military vehicles and military police.” See Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull, 412.

9 Several British historians have at least mentioned the incident at Bamber Bridge in their research, but largely in passing. For example, in a chapter looking at how African American soldiers were fighting a war on two fronts, Gardiner noted that much of the violence by 1943 was a direct result of “tensions between American blacks and whites over women and segregated places of entertainment erupted into mutinies and shoot-outs” including at Bamber Bridge. In his description of the incident, Reynolds noted that British bystanders sticking up for the African American GIs, contributed to the violence, but Reynolds made no mention of the role white British women might have played in fueling the violence. Similarly, Smith, who has written the most about the incident in Bamber Bridge only noted that “news of the Detroit riot had quickly reached Britain.” See Gardiner, “Overpaid, Oversexed & Over Here,” 156; Reynolds, Rich Relations, 319–20; and Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull, 142–44.

10 “North-West Camp Incidents,” Lancashire Daily Post, June 25, 1943, 4.

11 Ibid.

12 Walter Lippmann famously noted that media create images in the minds of the public that, in turn inform them of the world around them. His argument was that not only do media emphasize one story over another, but also the space and priority they lend any given subject signifies to the masses what is important and what is not. See Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1922), 7. Also, British historians, such as Reynolds and Gardiner, noted that Americans were widely viewed as being “overpaid, oversexed, and over here.” Disparities between British soldiers and their American counterparts, particularly in terms of pay, often led to frictions. Similarly, the equality experienced by African Americans in Great Britain often prompted fights with white U.S. troops. See Reynolds, Rich Relations, 184; and Gardiner, “Overpaid, Oversexed & Over Here,” 155–56.

13 Werrell goes into great details about the incident in “The Mutiny at Bamber Bridge,” 1–11.

14 The idea of members of the British public coming to the defense of African American troops was not uncommon during the war years. Gardiner noted, “Many British people were genuinely disturbed by the treatment they saw meted out to the blacks by their white compatriots. They responded at a human level to their humiliation, and some also felt that such prejudice sat ill in a war being fought to destroy Nazism and its racial attitudes.” In her interviews with WWII-era residents, she found many a Brit concerned about everything from the terrible name-calling they overheard from the white Americans toward African Americans to the white troops insisting on instituting a “colour bar” during their time in the U.K. Often, she noted, publicans would respond with signs declaring their pubs off limits to white Americans. See Gardiner, “Overpaid, Oversexed & Over Here,” 152–54. Similarly, Smith noted that often a Briton would find him or herself “drawn into disputes between black and white Americans by being in a pub or restaurant at the wrong time.” See Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull, 180.

15 Rosie Swarbrick, “Everyone Supported the Black Troops and the Whole Thing Escalated,” Leyland Evening Post, June 24, 2014, 15.

16 Werrell, “The Mutiny at Bamber Bridge,” 2.

17 Ibid., 4.

18 Ibid., 4–8.

19 “North-West Camp Incidents,” Lancashire Daily Post, 4.

20 Editorial, Chorley Guardian, June 25, 1943, 4.

21 Ibid.

22 Lancashire’s Chief Constable A. F. Hordern noted, in a letter to the Home Ministry’s Inspector of Constabulary that it would be unwise to send female police officers to American military camps in the region to deal with loitering British women for fear it would only create “disturbances.” A.F. Hordern to Major General Sir L. W. Atcherley, August 8, 1942, Home Office (henceforth HO), Record Group (henceforth RG) 45/25604, Public Records Office (henceforth PRO), Kew Gardens, United Kingdom.

23 “Fight in North-West Town,” Lancashire Daily Post, June 26, 1943, 4.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

26 “Negro Soldiers in Street Fight,” Daily Express, June 26, 1943, 3.

27 Ibid.

28 “Police and Negro Soldiers,” Belfast Telegraph, June 26, 1943, 3.

29 Ibid.

30 “Negro Soldiers and Military Police Clash,” Irish News, June 26, 1943, 1.

31 Ibid.

32 See “American Soldier Killed in Antrim Street Francas,” Irish News, October 2, 1942, 1.

33 “Fight in the Streets,” News of the World, June 27, 1943, 3.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid.

36 “Negro in Riot Dies,” Daily Mail, June 30, 1943, 3.

37 As early as August 1942, British governmental documents from the period demonstrated a concerted effort by officialdom to urge newspapers across the United Kingdom to diminish unrest among American troops. For an example, see “American File,” August 21, 1942, Cabinet Secretariat, Record Group 9/CD/225/19, Public Records Office of Northern Ireland.

38 “Yanks Brawl; 6 are Injured,” Detroit Free Press, July 26, 1943, 1.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 “U.S. Troops in England Riot,” San Francisco Examiner, June 26, 1943, 5.

42 Unlike the other U.S. newspapers, the Examiner’s headlines reported only five injured, despite the story stating that five enlisted men and one officer were injured. This discrepancy could be a result of editors on deadline not reading the story completely before writing the subhead. See “U.S. Troops in England Riot,” San Francisco Examiner, 5.

43 “Six Yanks Hurt as Troops, Army Police Clash in England,” Washington Post, June 26, 1943, 2.

44 Ibid.

45 Ibid.

46 For examples of mainstream news coverage of race riots among U.S. troops, see “U.S. Soldier Killed in Brawl in Ireland,” New York Times, October 2, 1942, 3; and “Harlem Disorders Bring Quick Action by City and Army,” New York Times, August 2, 1943, 1.

47 For example, on January 20, 1942, a mob of more than six hundred whites in Sikeston, Missouri, stormed the local jail and captured Cleo Wright, who had been charged with breaking and entering the home of a white woman, who was injured during an altercation. Wright was shot three times, then his body was strung up to the bumper of a car and dragged through the African American section of town at speeds exceeding seventy miles per hour, according to news reports. See “Angry Missouri Governor Orders Arrest of Lynch Friends,” Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942, 1.

48 “No Probe in Detroit Riots,” Washington Post, June 26, 1943, 2.

49 Ibid.

50 Enoch P. Waters, in his memoir, noted that the Defender—like many newspapers during the height of the wire services—had a particularly close working relationship with the Associated Negro Press. Waters wrote: “The service was so vital that the papers, except for the larger ones, could not have operated without ANP.” During the war years, even the larger papers relied on the wire service to help widen its coverage area with reports from war correspondents stationed abroad. See Enoch P. Waters, American Diary: A Personal History of the Black Press (Chicago, IL: Path Press, 1987), 422.

51 “MP’s Battle Race Soldiers in Britain,” Chicago Defender, July 3, 1943, 3.

52 Ibid.

53 Ibid.

54 This news report reinforces Smith’s findings, decades later, that often because African American soldiers were working for the Army’s Services of Supply, and subsequently driving all over England to deliver war materiel, they had greater access to information about what was happening across their host country, back home, and on the frontlines even if they were stationed in the remote English countryside. It was news and gossip they eagerly shared back on post and with those they met along the way. See, Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull, 138–51.

55 Patterson, “London Gets Detroit Riot News by Slipup.”

56 Smith, When Jim Crow Met John Bull, 138–51.

57 Randy Dixon, “U.S. Soldiers Overseas Condemn Conditions Causing Recent Riots,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 3, 1943, 1.

58 Ibid. This language mirrors wording used by the Courier throughout the war years in its “Double Victory” campaign. Inspired by a letter to the editor from a Kansas-based factory worker in the weeks following Pearl Harbor, the Pittsburgh-based newspaper launched its Double Victory campaign a week later. (See Pittsburgh Courier, February 7, 1942, 1). Black press historian Patrick Washburn has noted that the Double V campaign became high profile for the Courier, and ranked it in historical importance “with Ida B. Wells’s vigorous antilynching campaign and Robert Abbott’s extraordinary call for blacks to leave the South. Other black newspapers quickly joined in, continually pushing for a ‘double victory’ for the remainder of the war,” (see Patrick S. Washburn, The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2006), 144; additional Double V research includes, Patrick S. Washburn, A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press during World War II (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1986), 100; and Neil A. Wynn, The African American Experience during World War II (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2010), 40.

59 Dixon, “U.S. Soldiers Overseas,” 1.

60 According to Reynolds and Gardiner, there were approximately eight thousand citizens who claimed African ancestry before WWII in all of England and a majority of them lived in portside towns, such as Liverpool and Bristol, where they worked the docks. See Reynolds, Rich Relations, 216; and Gardiner, “Overpaid, Oversexed & Over Here,” 152.

61 William Waring (Leyland resident and local historian), interview with author, June 24, 2014.

62 Ibid.

63 Ibid.

64 Bill Briggs (former Bamber Bridge resident), interview with author, June 22, 2014.

65 Jack Ward (Bamber Bridge resident), interview with author, June 22, 2014.

66 Briggs interview, June 2014. It should be noted that Briggs and other locals commonly used the term “the troubles” to refer to the events among the American troops at Bamber Bridge in 1943, rather than the more commonly known term referring to conflicts between Protestants and Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland.

67 Swarbrick, “Everyone Supported the Black Troops and the Whole Thing Escalated.”

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid.

70 During a June 2014 visit to Ye Olde Hob Inn, the author saw the framed newspaper clipping on prominent display inside the pub, next to the bar.

71 Peter Houghton (Chorley resident and local historian), telephone interview with author, February 7, 2015.

72 Ibid.

73 In an essay, Bruce E. Gronbeck notes: “Social memory is a collectivized discourse … built by everyone who recounts a socially advisory or constraining story about the past” (p. 56). He argues that by doing this communities use the past to help guide them in the present and notes that Maurice Halbwach, who wrote the first book on collective memory, contends that for participants in the collective memory, “the reality of the past is no longer in the past.” See Bruce E. Gronbeck, “The Rhetorics of the Past,” in Doing Rhetorical History: Concepts and Cases, edited by Kathleen J. Turner (Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1998), 56–57. The Popular Memory Group, based at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, call this phenomenon “dominant memory,” meaning that this particular recollection became a powerful and pervasive part of Bamber Bridge’s historical representation. See The Popular Memory Group, “Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method,” in The Oral History Reader, edited by Albert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London, UK: Routledge, 1998), 44. Dominant memory is an important element of collective memory, a term first conceptualized by Maurice Halbwach who argued that memory gained its significance through social context. In an essay defining collective memory, researchers attempted to further conceptualize Halbwach’s idea by arguing that the only real memory is collective memory. See Noa Gedi and Yigal Elam, “Collective Memory – What is it?,” History & Memory 8, no. 1 (1996): 37. Sociologist Mihai Stelian Rusu expanded on Halbwach’s findings and noted that the last fifty years have seen a “memory boom” within the social sciences and sociology. Rusu argued that “collective memory consists of the common stock of personal memories of public events plus the package of second hand memories that are historically inherited and shared by a pool of individuals forming a social community.” See Mihai Stelian Rusu, “History and Collective Memory: The Succeeding Incarnations of an Evolving Relationship,” Philobiblon 18, no. 2 (2013): 261–62.

74 Stuart Clewlow (Chorley resident and local historian), e-mail message to author, February 26, 2015.

75 The Popular Memory Group, “Popular Memory: Theory, Politics, Method,” 45.

76 Michael C.C. Adams, “Postwar Mythmaking about World War II,” in Major Problems in the History of World War II, edited by Mark A. Stoler and Melanie S. Gustafson (Boston, MA: Wadsworth, 2003), 428–29.

77 See, for example, Gardiner, preface to “Overpaid, Oversexed & Over Here,” 6.

78 A. F. Hordern to Major General Sir L. W. Atcherley, August 8, 1942, HO, RG 45/25604, PRO.

79 During the war years, British officials divided Great Britain into eleven regions that were represented by commissioners. Among their tasks was keeping government officials in Whitehall apprised of what was happening with the arrival of Americans and about Anglo-American relations. Initially the reports started out as monthly then went to quarterly. For examples of monthly and quarterly reports, see Mr. B. Collins, Ministry of Home Security, to Mr. Evans, February 20, 1943, Foreign Office (henceforth FO), RG 317/34123, PRO. Also see, Ministry of Information to Mr. Evans, January 12, 1943, FO, RG 371/34123, PRO.

80 Ibid.

81 Ibid.

82 Ministry of Information, January 5, 1943, FO, RG 371/34123, PRO.

83 Ibid. Often, these rumors proved false or inflated. Gardiner estimated that between 1942 and 1945, some three million American soldiers passed through the U.K., out of which 130,000 were African American. During this same period, an estimated 22,000 children were born out of wedlock, with between 1,500 and 1,700 infants fathered from African American soldiers. See Gardiner, “Overpaid, Oversexed & Over Here,” 139–47.

84 Mr. B. Collins to Mr. Evans, February 20, 1943.

85 Ibid.

86 Historians researching African American genealogical ties to Africa have found that in societies with rich oral history traditions, the telling and retelling of oral histories can indeed present modern-day historians with accurate accounts of events that occurred centuries ago. See Alex Haley, “Black History, Oral History and Genealogy,” in The Oral History Reader, edited by Albert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London, UK: Routledge, 1998), 14–24.

87 An unnamed Region 4 commissioner wrote in his monthly report: “Black troops in one district where they are stationed seem popular with the inhabitants – regarded as children and liked for their singing, their smiles and their kindness to children. The few girls who go out with them, are, however, eyed uneasily.” See American Forces in the U.K., March 9, 1943, FO, RG 371/34123/142, PRO. Also see, Harold Pollins, “The Battle of Bamber Bridge,” BBC, February 17, 2005, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/85/a3677385.shtml.

88 Pittsburgh Courier war correspondent Roi Ottley recalled in his wartime diary: “Generally speaking, Americans are not liked by the English—because they are crude, loud, pompous, and display very bad manners. They walk the streets and enter restaurants with the feeling, ‘We’ve come to save your country’. … Negro troops are very popular here. I think mainly because they generally have good manners … they do not come here to ‘take over’—instead, they adjust themselves to the customs and do well for themselves.” See Roi Ottley, Roi Ottley’s World War II: The Lost Diary of an African American Journalist, edited by Mark A. Huddle (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2011), 77.

89 Ottley was referring to Lancashire when he stated that there were African American troops billeted in Lancaster. See ibid., 100.

90 Roi Ottley, “One of the Biggest Stories of 20th Century,” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 28, 1954, B3.

91 Leanne McCormick, “‘One Yank and They’re Off’: Interactions between U.S. Troops and Northern Irish Women, 1942–1945,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 15, no. 2 (2006): 238.

92 During an interview with a lifelong area resident, Bill Briggs, many locals—himself included—said he saw the American uniform rather than the ethnicity of the individual wearing the uniform. For British citizens, he said, “American” was the ethnicity. Briggs, interview with author, June 22, 2014.

93 In a 1989 monograph, Richard C. Vincent, Bryan K. Crow, and Dennis K. Davis identified three narrative theories that demonstrated how media wields power in terms of guiding audiences through “the social construction of reality,” particularly during periods of crises. In the “restoration of normalcy” theme, the researchers argued media coverage that depicted or reported officials as taking control of the situation helped reestablish a sense of normalcy even in extraordinary circumstances. The more ordinary, the better. The use of this “normalcy” theme is evident in the 1943 coverage, in that all the press reports cited local officials declaring the fighting at Bamber Bridge something that was never out of control. This statement makes the fight seem unimportant and banal. It also serves to reassure audiences that all is well in that Northwestern English village—regardless of what wagging tongues might say to the contrary. See Vincent et al., “When Technology Fails: The Drama of Airline Crashes in Network Television News,” in Social Meanings of News, edited by Dan Berkowitz (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc., 1997), 357–58.

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Pamela E. Walck

Pamela E. Walck is an assistant professor in the McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts at Duquesne University.