The Reception of Black American Servicemen in Australia During World War Ii

Abstract

The deployment of Black American service personnel in Australia from December 1941 challenged the basic precepts on which Commonwealth legislative and administrative policies were constructed. Commitment to racial homogeneity had, since 1901, demonstrated that bipartisan agreement and cooperation, at the political level, was possible over such a cardinal policy and practice. Certainly, no other issue in Australian politics and society could surmount class, gender, regional, and sectional interests so unanimously as adherence to strict principles of racial exclusiveness. The crisis of imminent invasion and the concomitant dependence and subordination to the United States in the early months of 1942 forged new imperatives and redirected standard approaches and priorities. The Commonwealth government's capitulation to the wider claims and powers of American policy directives starkly illustrates both the flexibility and the endurance of Australian internal procedures. Having been forced to accept the presence of Black GIs, both the Commonwealth and Queensland governments negotiated and established complex, interlinking patterns of segregation to contain this unwanted inclusion in the Allied forces. Aware of Australia's defenselessness and vulnerability, with the Second Australian Imperial Force stationed in the Middle East from 1939 to late 1941, many Australians had initially regarded their Pacific Allies as omnipotent saviors; but the inclusion of Black