Wednesday 22 January 2025

LAHS Research Grant Funding: The Leicester US Military Race Disturbances of 1944 in Leicester

This small grant went towards US archival research costs.

American Supply Troops England 1942 ( Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)

Last year, we made a small grant to Vince Holyoak to help with the costs of documentary research at the National Archives, St. Louis, Missouri and the National Archives, Washington DC. The aim was to locate Military Personnel Files and individual Deceased Personnel Files relating to two members of the American 82nd Airborne Division who had died in 1944 in Leicester, and also to identify surviving unit records for the Military Police units that had investigated the Leicester disturbances.

We are now able to report an update on this. The work at the St Louis archives was successful in that - despite a fire in 1973 which destroyed 80% of records - the personnel files that Vince was searching for had survived, albeit (literally) charred. The research in Washington DC - to identify surviving unit records for the Military Police units - was less successful. Although records were identified, the units in question did not begin filing monthly event reports until after D-Day. It is possible that units designations were subsequently changed and that as yet unidentified records survive elsewhere, or within records relating to the US Army's Judge Advocate General's Department.

The above forms part of Vince's research into the violent clashes that took place on the streets of Leicester in 1944 between American soldiers as a result of attempts by the US Military to enforce racial segregation laws on Black troops whilst they were stationed in Britain during the Second World War.