African American Servicemen in Hull and Cottingham
Finding stories about African American soldiers in the Hull and Cottingham areas is incredibly difficult. As in other parts of Britain, the racist American Army authorities would have done their best to keep their Black troops from interacting with the local population, in an effort to prevent them knowing what something like equality and freedom felt like, which may (and did) cause challenges to the status quo when those who survived returned to the United States.
However, a few stories did surface when the African Stories in Hull and East Yorkshire project was underway in 2017. A particularly interesting story emerged about a Hull family and a GI called Wylie Young, which can be found on this link. https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/wylie-young.html
Another soldier who has been identified as serving in the area is Denris Mouton, a military policeman, and the little known about him can also be found on the project’s website. https://www.africansinyorkshireproject.com/denris-mouton.html
Denris Mouton in his uniform as a military policeman.[Image from African Americans in Lafyette and South West Louisiana by Sherry T. Broussard, Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, South Carolina, USA, 2012.]
After the war, Denris returned to his home in Lafayette, Louisiana, where he worked in the construction industry. He also helped form the Lafayette Bulls baseball team along with his two older brothers. This was in an era of strict segregation in Louisiana, and the Bulls were forbidden to play against any White teams. Nevertheless, they did manage to find ways to get around the rules from time to time and play against mixed-race teams from other parts of the US. There is a fascinating account of their exploits in a local newspaper, the name of which, I regret to say, I omitted to note. (It may have been the Lafayette Daily Advertiser.)
During the war, a temporary camp of Nissan huts (Harland Way Camp) was constructed in the grounds of Cottingham Grange. Initially it housed refugees, but later on it became the base for Black American troops. Their officers lived in Cottingham Grange itself. According to reminiscences by Shirley Hare, the troops ‘made quite an impact on the young ladies of Cottingham,’ while Jo Wainwright noted that ‘the village girls loved to dance with the Americans’. See: Cottingham in the Good Old Days https://www.facebook.com/groups/1831051467191464/posts/1923582861271657/?_rdr – [accessed 17/07/2024]
Further evidence of interaction between the Black GIs and a local family named Simmons is contained in a newspaper report in the Hull Daily Mail of 26 February, 1943. Under the heading, ‘American Soldiers “Adopt” Three Hull Orphans’, the paper explained,
Soon after war broke out, and Hull became the target of many heavy air raids, the three children were evacuated to West Cowick, near Snaith. There they have been cared for and are receiving their education.
Coloured United States troops discovered the three, bright, dark-skinned, curly-haired youngsters at an evacuees’ party. Tremendously intrigued, they at once “adopted” the trio and made them the mascots of the unit. Generously they agreed, on learning that the boys were orphans, to provide for their upkeep and education, and it was not long before upwards of £160 was subscribed by the soldiers.
The boys’ grandmother was deeply grateful for this generosity. She said that the boys ran through clothes and shoes very quickly and that she was going to see them the following week to buy them new clothes for Easter. The Daily Mirror also reported this story and included a photograph of the boys in their article.
However, the friendships and any romantic relationships formed in the area, were doomed to be broken abruptly and finally. Just before the men were to be moved south in preparation for the D-Day landings, they were confined to camp without any warning, and with no means of outside communication. This was of course partly due to the need for absolute secrecy about their movements during wartime, but it also had the effect (which their officers probably welcomed most of all) of preventing the GIs from saying goodbye and exchanging home addresses with their local friends and sweethearts.
Any serious romances with local women were doomed from the start. African American soldiers were forbidden to marry their White British girlfriends under any circumstances. At the time, 30 US states had laws forbidding inter-racial marriage. When over 40,000 White British GI brides eventually went to America after the war, the husbands they joined were all White. Approximately 2,000 children were born to African American GIs and White British women and a book has recently been written about them. Britain’s ‘Brown Babies’ by Lucy Bland (Manchester University Press, 2019) tells the stories of more than 40 of them. It is not known if any of these 2,000 children were fathered by men stationed in Hull and Cottingham.
It is surprising that so few stories are remembered or recorded of the presence of the Black GIs given their large numbers. This could partly be explained by the fact that those who were involved have mostly passed away, and also because making a record of such stories was not considered important in the past.
This gives a great opportunity for modern-day researchers to work on redressing the oversight and to write up their finds for posterity.
Audrey Dewjee
17 July 2024
From the Hull Daily Mail, 26 February 1943
From the Daily Mirror, 26 February 1943
