High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America - Jessica B. Harris [90]
The Depression slowly lifted its veil of misery as the nation pulled out of its slump and prepared to again go to war. The “War to End All Wars” had not done its job. Europe was again sinking into disunity and dissension, and soon the United States was drawn into another global conflict. This time, African Americans, further from enslavement than they had been on the eve of World War I, were determined to play their part in the country’s war effort and determined to do so with full equality. The armed forces thought otherwise; they were still segregated. African Americans who enlisted in great numbers were once again relegated to menial tasks in the services. They provided backup to the fighting troops and generally worked in cleanup and in food service. Low-level jobs were typical, but there were incidents of great valor even from those who were not allowed to take full part in the war effort.
One individual who displayed such valor was Dorrie Miller, who worked in the mess hall on the USS Arizona when the bomb was dropped at Pearl Harbor. Despite never having been given any instruction in the use of antiaircraft guns, he manned one and brought down two enemy planes before being wounded. His reward from the U.S. government was a medal. He was then returned to his job in the ship’s mess without a promotion. There were few other places for him to work in the white man’s army. The Tuskegee Airmen were notable exceptions, but even they usually accompanied bombing missions; they did not fly them! The return from the war was, for many former fighting men, the last straw. They who had witnessed the relatively biasless life in Europe were determined that their efforts for equality be acknowledged. As the voice of the period, Langston Hughes, put it,
the Negro soldier had been to many lands, seen many peoples, and been treated with a dignity and sensibility, even by his foes, that was alien to him in his own country. The die cast, he could never return in spirit to racial complacency in America, and certainly not to the old days of Uncle Tom … In fact, Uncle Tom was probably slain in Normandy, at Anzio or Iwo Jima, never to be resurrected again by the army of brave young black men returning to America with a new sense of freedom and purpose.
If Uncle Tom died at Anzio, Aunt Jemima was killed off in the home front war plants. As one woman put it, “it took Hitler to get me out of Miss Anne’s kitchen.” Black women also participated in the war effort as nurses and ambulance drivers. On the home front, they raised “victory gardens,” went without nylon stockings for the war effort, saved tinfoil, and became gold-star mothers when their offspring were killed in the conflict. Most important, they who had a long history of working outside the home went to work in the factories in unprecedented numbers. At war’s end, they too did not want to return to the subservient domestic roles that they had previously played in the life of the nation; they joined the returning veterans in a push for greater Civil Rights and access to the American dream in full.
As World War I had paved the way for the northern migrations and the growth of black wealth in the North, World War II paved the way for the final push for Civil Rights legislation. The period in between had been a proving ground in which migrating African Americans amply demonstrated both resourcefulness and resilience and an ability to survive. For patrician and pauper, the period showed how, with entrepreneurial strength and hard work, African Americans’ culinary abilities continued to provide a springboard to financial success and community growth. It was a paradigm that worked for the educated as well as the unschooled migrant. This culinary entrepreneurship came at a time of increasing internationalism on the tables of the