“Highway to Freedom”: African Americans in World War II China, the Gillem Board, the Ledo Road and U.S. Racial Integration

Abstract

African Americans comprised over 60 percent of the 15,000 Army men and women who would serve on the Ledo Road in the China–Burma–India Theatre of Operations during World War II. Many of these Black soldiers and nurses attended racially segregated Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Their contributions would directly affect integration efforts confronted by the United States in the decades following the war (e.g., President Truman's 1948 order to end racial segregation in the U.S. military). The Ledo Road experience not only helped change U.S. attitudes toward African Americans, but it transformed Black people. The extraordinary success of Blacks as front line workers in the unprecedented engineering and construction feat represented by the completion of the Ledo/Stilwell Road rejected the myth of Black inferiority.

Citation

Seay, G.H. (2012), "“Highway to Freedom”: African Americans in World War II China, the Gillem Board, the Ledo Road and U.S. Racial Integration", Allen, W.R., Teranishi, R.T. and Bonous-Hammarth, M. (Ed.) As the World Turns: Implications of Global Shifts in Higher Education for Theory, Research and Practice (Advances in Education in Diverse Communities, Vol. 7), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 225-234. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-358X(2012)0000007013