Museum Pays Tribute to WWII Black History

In the most unlikely place, a white retired factory worker has opened a museum to honor WW11 Black History. Bruce Bird sold his house and used the money to convert a 19th century two room school house into the museum.

Down a dirt road in Vermont, one of the whitest states in America, it gets at best a handful of visitors a week. Bird doesn’t know where the money will come from to pay the fuel bill, but he is determined it will come. Bird said,” With any museum you need a rich sponsor, and we haven’t found one yet. Ideally it would be a rich famous black American.” Bird has formed a non-profit organization, and raises money a little at time. The budget is about 10,000 dollars this year. Bird said,” I decided when I retired I would no longer worry. That’s what I’m working on; when the bills are due the money will come in.

The building is assessable to the disabled except it has no disabled bathroom, and Bird can’t afford one. A bathroom would cost about 5,000 dollars. He is hopeful someone will donate the money.

“I think this museum is a great thing.”Said Gregory Black, a retired U.S. Navy officer who runs the web site Black Military World, and has a link to the Vermont Museum on his website.” I think it’s something we need. One of the things overall, that African Americans are disenchanted with these days is, we don’t feel appreciated. We don’t feel recognized for our contributions .A lot of people have basically given up.” Bird is trying to change that. He is in negotiations to bring a Tuskegee Airman in to speak.” They have great ideas on how this can be a resource center for making people aware.” said Raymond Elliott, A retired chemist from Amherst Mass. He spoke this summer about his experience as a combat engineer in the South Pacific.” We should be looking at history, not as black history, or white history, but as American history.”

Bird is resolved to show recognition to all 1.1 million black men and women who fought for their country in WW11 or filled support jobs in every theater of war, while suffering the indignities of institutional racism.” I decided this is something that has been neglected, and should no longer be neglected.” Bird said.

“I’m having a hell of a good time, I never made an appreciable amount of money, I never married. What am I going to do with the rest of my life?”

Earlier this year Bird received a call from someone he didn’t know, inviting him to a Congressional Gold Metal presentation ceremony in Washington, honoring the Tuskegee Airman. Things are opening up little by little, and Bird wouldn’t have it any other way.

Some of the displays at the Museum of Black WW11 History are:

• The 6888th Central Postal Directory Unit, made up entirely of black women who served in Europe.
• The 761st tank battalion Unit, made up entirely of black women who served in combat in Europe.
• The Pearl Harbor Heroics of U.S.Navy Mess Attendant 2nd class Dorie Miller, of the battleship West Virginia, during the Dec 7, 1941 attack, he pulled many wounded shipmates to safety, and then wielding a weapon he hadn’t been trained to use, shot down at least two Japanese planes.
• The Battle of the Buldge, in December 1944, about half the artillery battalions surrounded by the Germans near the Belgium City of Bastogne were made up of black soldiers.
• The Tuskegee Airman, the aviators who came to symbolize the challenges of black service members who sought to fly in combat, and once there, won the respect of fellow service men and the enemy.

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