Wellesbourne and World War Two – Part One: Ol Jim Crow
by The dances were held in the Womens Institute building opposite the post office…
By October of 1944 Wellesbourne House, and Walton Hall, were being used as recovery hospitals for wounded GIs, with the same racial arrangements as before. My father, in an effort to raise funds for the war effort, had arranged a dance for that night – it soon sold out.
All went well for most of the evening with the dance attended only by white GIs, and a few Canadian airmen. Half way through the dance a lone black American turned up, asked my father to play Duke Ellington’s “Saturday Night Function”, and with a local girl on his arm, let rip with a virtuoso display of jitterbugging. The locals loved it, but several of the white GIs hated it and without warning set about the lone black. Their violence didn’t last long of course: the Canadians saw to that, but for everyone else who admired the bravery of the Americans it was a shocking display of racial hatred. When the fight was over the white GIs headed for The Talbot pub. The black GI soon recovered and danced the rest of the night away.
Around two in the morning our black friend left the WI Hall and began to make his way back toward Wellesbourne House. My mother and father, who were locking up the building, then watched as the black soldier was stopped by the three white GIs – now very drunk – who’d tried to beat him up earlier. They challenged him, but this was no back lane in Georgia.
” What’re you gonna do this time, boy? No Canuck friends to help you out now?”
The black soldier made no reply, but instead pulled a large road sign out of the grass verge and, as if it were a base ball bat, set about the three white soldiers with some relish. According to my father he ended up knocking all three over the bridge into the river. As he turned to replace the road sign the black GI spotted my parents. He didn’t say anything, just saluted them, turned, and made his way back to Wellesbourne House.
Of course nothing ever appeared in the local press about the incident, and my parents never told anyone at the time.
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