Our guest is Associate Professor Robert F. Jefferson of Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio.  Our subject is his critically important book, Fighting For Hope, African-American Troops of the 93rd Division WWII, (The Johns Hopkins University Press, September, 2008), about the struggle for the Double V victory in WWII against fascism and at home against racism.

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Robert F. Jefferson, is an Associate Professor and teaches courses in African American studies and United States history along with being the campus coordinator for the Student Achievement in Research and Scholarship Program (STARS) at Xavier University.  He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree from Old Dominion University, and a bachelors’ degree from Elon University. Professor Jefferson has taught at the University of Iowa and Wayne State University, respectively.
 


Jefferson is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. He is currently working on a new book titled Searching for Shadrach’s Sons and Daughters:  African American Ex-GIs, Race, and Disability in Modern American Wars. His articles on African American GIs and World War II, Oral History, and Disability Studies have appeared in Oral History and Public Memories, the Journal of Family History, Quaderni Storici (Bologna), Oral History Review, Contours:  A Journal of the African Diaspora, and the Historian., and the Historian. 

His book Fighting For Hope, is a fascinating history showing how African-American military men and women seized their dignity through barracks culture and community politics during and after World War II. Led by white officers and presumably unable to fight—and with the army taking great pains to regulate contact between black soldiers and local women—the division was largely relegated to support roles during the advance on the Philippines, seeing action only later in the war when U.S. officials found it unavoidable.
Jefferson discusses racial policy within the War Department, examines the lives and morale of black GIs and their families, documents the debate over the deployment of black troops, and focuses on how the soldiers’ wartime experiences reshaped their perspectives on race and citizenship in America. He finds in these men and their families incredible resilience in the face of racism at war and at home and shows how their hopes for the future provided a blueprint for America’s postwar civil rights struggles.

Email: Jefferson@xavier.edu