Our new project ‘Mapping Black GI bases in East Anglia’

During World War II, the presence of Black American GIs stationed in the UK had a profound impact on local communities. One of the requests The Mixed Museum most frequently receives is whether we can help people find their Black GI fathers or grandfathers, including identifying which British base they may have been stationed at.

Sadly, most people who get in touch have very little information about their fathers. Governmental policy and practice – both American and British – greatly impeded these families’ lives. The estimated 2000 ‘brown babies’ in Britain – the name given to them by the African American press - were born illegitimate as the US commanding officers refused the Black GIs permission to marry their girlfriends, citing the illegality of interracial marriage in most US states. If kept by their mother, they were often the only mixed race child in a white rural area, with their mother heavily stigmatised. For those placed in children’s homes, policies not to place mixed race children for adoption meant many languished in the care system.

We explore these issues further in our award-winning digital exhibition ‘Brown Babies’ of WW2, curated in partnership with Professor Lucy Bland whose work has been so instrumental in contributing to wider public knowledge about the history of Black GIs in Britain and the families they left behind.