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The progress that Barack Obama is making towards the White House is an indication of the progress made by Africa Americans in US politics and society. That progress is all the more impressive when viewed in the context of African American troops in World War.

I have been reading the fascinating new book by Dr Alexander Bielakowski “African American Troops in World War II” (published last year by Osprey in England and available from all good Australian bookstores, with wholesale enquiries to be made at Capricorn Link, Windsor, NSW).

During World War II, about half a million African Americans served in segregated units in the US military. The racial policies of the US armed forces in the 1940s relegated most of them to tasks that were often both physically demanding and more demeaning than those assigned to European Americans.

This is a well illustrated book. The first photograph is of a Private Lloyd Taylor (seen studying from a Chinese language book). This African American had already mastered Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, German and Japanese. But because of his black skin he was kept as a private soldier. As the caption notes: this was a “stark reminder of the potential wasted by the Army’s racial prejudices in the 1940s”.

The author also notes that the service of the African Americans contained an irony. They were being asked to fight fascism and racism abroad, while they themselves endured racism at home.

While President Franklin Roosevelt himself favoured desegregation of the military, he was prevented from acting upon his wish because the Democratic Party - his political base - was considered a Southern party. (Abraham Lincoln – the president who freed the slaves in the 1860s - was a Republican and so few white Southerners would vote Republican). If he annoyed the Southern Democrats he could not have got his legislation through Congress.

Instead, the president by-passed Congress with Executive Order 8802 of June 25, 1941 which prevented discrimination on the basis of race, creed, colour or national origin by any corporation possessing a defence contract with the US Government. The Southern Democrats were not worried about this – there were very few defence contracts in the South to start with.

Discrimination on racial grounds was not really outlawed until July 26, 1948. This was done by President Harry Truman, who had become the new president following Roosevelt’s death in office in 1945.

Most African Americans went into the largest arm of service: the Army. Benjamin O Davis Senior, born in 1880, worked his way up as an officer in the Separate Battalion (Colored) of the National Guard. In 1941 he became the first African American general officer in US history. His son Benjamin Junior started at the elite US Military Academy at West Point in 1932 – where (as the sole African American) no other cadet spoke to him during his four years of training.

The US Marines began World War II without any African American at all. Indeed they had never recruited one in their entire history. This was such an embarrassment that President Roosevelt forced them in June 1942 to start recruiting.

When African Americans served overseas they were surprised at how well they were treated by the Allies. The British were particularly welcoming. Racist Americans were worried about what would happen when the African Americans got home: “How can you keep them in their place now that they’ve dated a British woman?”  

Barack Obama therefore represents a new era for US politics.