ISR - Prof Lucy Bland 'Mixed-Race Children of War Born to Black GIs and British Women'

1:42 -- CNN movie: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/05/eu...

Edge Hill University, 21st October 2019
'Mixed-Race Children of War Born to Black GIs and British Women'
Prof Lucy Bland, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge
https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/events/eve...

As part of this year’s Festival of Ideas, ISR is delighted to be welcoming author Lucy Bland.

Lucy introduces her book which recounts a little-known history of the estimated 2,000 babies born to black GIs and white British women in the second world war.

The African-American press named these children ‘brown babies’; the British called them ‘half-castes’. Black GIs, in this segregated army, were forbidden to marry their white girl-friends. Nearly half of the children were given up to children’s homes but few were adopted, thought ‘too hard to place’.

There has been minimal study of these children and the difficulties they faced, such as racism in a (then) very white Britain, lack of family or a clear identity. Her book presents the stories of over fifty of these children, their stories contextualised in terms of government policy and attitudes of the time.

Lucy Bland is Professor of Social and Cultural History at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge.

This event takes place at Edge Hill University’s Ormskirk Campus.

More information about the Festival of Ideas is available here: https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/festival-o...

Edge Hill University
21st October 2019
https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/isr/
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