This week in class, we watched all of the presentations of people’s World War II projects. It was really interesting to hear everyone’s individual research and I definitely learned a lot. I also think I was able to get to know my classmates a little better because the topics everyone picked gave me an idea about what they were interested in.
I did my project on black soldiers in World War II and the letters they wrote to the black press to expose their conditions and gather support from black Americans. I am very glad I chose this topic. Learning about racial discrimination in the army was absolutely horrific, but it was also beautiful to learn about how soldiers wrote letters about their experiences, newspapers published them, and people were so outraged that they banded together and created a whole campaign that pressured congress to abolish racial discrimination in the military while also fully supporting the Allies’ victory in the war. It shows so much depth in black Americans’ racial identities during that time and it was just very touching to learn about.
It’s cool how letters can have such an effect on people. It makes me think about how today, letter writing is a medium that is used less, but it still lives specifically in politics and I think that is really interesting. This means that letters work in persuading people in power to effect change.