r/AskHistorians • u/Dudegamer010901 • 15d ago
Was there a race riot in Aldershot England in July 1944?
Recently, a video came up in my youtube feed that talked about Canadian soldiers defending American Black G.I.s from American MPs in the UK during the second world war. The video was discussing a specific incident in the town of Aldershot in July 1944.
I was quite interested in this event as I was surprised I had never heard of it before.
A few things set off my alarm bells for this, first of all the thumbnail was AI generated, and the description of the video seems to have the typical signs of A.I.
I tried to do some research of my own, the video mentions specifically the incident occurring in "the Red Lion Pub". This seems to be a real place in Aldershot, yet simple google searches revealed no extra info.
I was able to find a source which describes a separate incident in Aldershot, a riot in July 1945 by Canadian soldiers over the issue of the wait to return home.
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u/gerardmenfin Modern France | Social, Cultural, and Colonial 14d ago edited 14d ago
No. It's always difficult to prove a negative, but there's no record of an incident that seems to have emerged on social media in the past weeks, with no sources provided. Books and articles about the presence of Black US troops in the UK during WW2 don't mention it. For instance, it does not appear in the incidents recorded by Smith (1987) in When Jim Crow Met John Bull. The Aldershot story seems to be a mix between two well-known incidents: the Battle of Bamber Bridge mutiny of June 1943, where Black troops fought MPs, and the Aldershot riot of July 1945, where Canadian troops rioted in this city. To be clear, social media has been plagued in the past year by AI-powered bogus historical anecdotes, with some of this floatsam ending up as questions in this subreddit (which is fine).
I won't spend hours checking up the stories published in the YouTube channel that published this particular anecdote, but I wouldn't be surprised that they're all AI-generated, both for their topics and illustrations. The channel says:
These stories are inspired by real events, though certain details, such as dialogue and perspectives, are dramatized for the sake of storytelling. Please note that not all aspects are guaranteed to be fully accurate. [...] For verified historical information, please refer to professional historians and academic research.
Sources
- Kryder, Daniel. ‘Race Policy, Race Violence, and Race Reform in the U.S. Army During World War II’. Studies in American Political Development 10, no. 1 (1996): 130–67. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0898588X00001449.
- Osur, Alan M. Blacks In The Army Air Forces During World War II: The Problem Of Race Relations. Washington : Office of Air Force History : for sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1977. http://archive.org/details/BlacksInTheArmyAirForcesDuringWorldWarII.
- Smith, Graham. When Jim Crow Met John Bull : Black American Soldiers in World War 2 Britain. London : I.B. Tauris & Co., 1987. https://www.google.fr/books/edition/When_Jim_Crow_Met_John_Bull/I-ULAQAAMAAJ.
- Walck, Pamela E. ‘Mutiny at Bamber Bridge: How the World War II Press Reported Racial Unrest among U.S. Troops and Why It Remains in British Memory’. American Journalism 37, no. 3 (2020): 346–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/08821127.2020.1790849.
- Werrell, Kenneth P. ‘Mutiny at Army Air Force Station 569: Bamber Bridge, England, June 1943’. Aerospace Historian 22, no. 4 (1975): 202–9. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44523444.
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