This article deals with the response of the Northern Ireland government to the presence of African American troops in the country during the Second World War, using extensive archival research at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, The National Archives at Kew and the National Records and Archives Administration in Maryland. It examines the pressures placed upon Stormont by both Westminster and, more particularly, the American military authorities in relation to U.S. racial mores. It demonstrates that despite edicts from London and attempts by the Americans to impose racial segregation, the Northern Ireland government fashioned a response which did not endorse 'Jim Crow' racism but, instead, dealt with the problem pragmatically and thoughtfully.

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This article will examine the ways in which the people of Northern Ireland and African American troops stationed there during the Second World War reacted to each other. It will also consider the effect of institutional racism in the American military on this relationship, concluding that, for the most part, the population welcomed black soldiers and refused to endorse American racial attitudes or enforce Jim Crow segregation. This piece argues that, bearing in mind the latent racism of the time, the response of the Northern Irish to African Americans was essentially colour-blind, and this was true in both the Protestant and Catholic communities.

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Thomas Dewey, the progressive Republican governor of New York from 1942 to 1954 famously “snatched defeat from the jaws of victory” in the presidential election of 1948. It was an election that everyone, with the possible exception of Harry S. Truman, had expected Dewey to win. Truman, like much of the historiography, credited his victory to the farm vote, and this was undoubtedly an important factor, but it is clear that without the votes of African Americans Truman could not have won. This piece will examine why Dewey lost, surveying his record on civil rights as governor (arguably the best in the nation) and his abject failure to convert, indeed, to even attempt to convert, this record into African American votes in 1948. This failure is made more curious by the fact that he was constantly being warned by African American Republicans and his closest confidante about the pivotal nature of the African American vote. Yet Dewey, a notoriously lethargic campaigner, would ignore their admonishments.