Good evening and welcome to another episode of Inside the Cover.

Tonight's book is Half American by Dr. Matthew F. Delmont.

This book was copyrighted in 2022, and I finished it on April 16, 2023.

I found this book to be an important, thought provoking and candidly troubling read.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

Matthew Delmont is the Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor of History at Dartmouth.

He is a Guggenheim fellow and an expert on African-American history and the history of the civil rights movement.

And he is the author of four other books.

He earned his B.A.

from Harvard and his Ph.D. from Brown.

Half American is comprehensive in scope.

And Dr. Delmont pulls no punches as he writes about the experiences of African American men and women before, during and after World War Two.

Subtitled The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War Two at Home and Abroad, Delmont seeks to tell the definitive history of black Americans and World War Two from Mess Attendant Second Class Doris Miller, a black sailor from Waco, Texas, who distinguished himself as a hero during the attack at Pearl Harbor.

To Benjamin O. Davis Jr and the Tuskegee Airmen.

To Salaria Kea, an African American nurse from Akron, Ohio, who served in the Spanish Civil War fighting fascism in Spain to the men of the USS Mason, the first naval vehicle manned by black sailors to see action in the war.

This book shines a needed and illuminating light on those who made a difference for America, even though their own freedom in America was less than whole.

The book is replete with references to Kansans such as Gordon Parks and Oliver Brown.

Professor Delmont actually begins his book with a reference to James Gratz Thompson from Wichita, Kansas.

Thompson wrote to the Pittsburgh Courier in January of 1942 asking, Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?

And his letter led to the establishment of the Double V campaign.

Have you visited Wichita's memorial to this campaign?

Do you know where it is located?

Langston Hughes, who grew up in Lawrence, served as a war correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American.

His writing built on a chorus of black voices who recognized that the German Third Reich saw the American system of race law as a model and that Nazi ideology was not solely a foreign problem.

He wrote, Yes, we Negroes in America do not have to be told what fascism is in action.

We know.

Its theories of Nordic supremacy and economic suppression have long been realities to us.

One of the most troubling, but important in my opinion points made by Dr. Delmont is, as follows.

As a historian, I am troubled by the collective amnesia in US politics and media around racism.

It permeates daily interaction in communities across the country.

This ignorance has consequences.

When Americans celebrate the country's victory in world War Two, but forget that the US armed forces were segregated, that the Red Cross segregated blood donations, that Black World War Two veterans return to the country only to be denied jobs and housing, or that black vets were attacked or murdered for violating the color line, it becomes all the more difficult to talk honestly about racism today.

It is high time that we reckon honestly with the history of World War Two and the historical relationship between Nazism and white supremacy in this country.

Tonight's book is Half American by Dr. Matthew F Delmont.

My friend Randy loaned his copy to me and I am so glad that he did.

I am certain that this book will find his way to my top ten reads of the year for 2023 and that it will be a book I will continue to ponder and think about for some time.

I recommend it to you and I hope you read it.

Good night.

Thanks for watching and I look forward to visiting with you again.