Standing Up Against Hate

Farrell, Mary Cronk. Standing Up Against Hate: How Black Women in the Army Helped Change the Course of WWII. New York: Abrams Book for Young Readers, 2019.

In her latest book, Mary Cronk Farrell has uncovered yet another little-known story of women who played a significant role in our country's history. As the United States geared up to enter WWII, thousands of African American women volunteered to join the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, or WAAC (later just WAC). Throughout the book, Farrell recounts the stories of particular women, highlighting their accomplishments as well as their difficulties, including the racial prejudice that pervaded the American military during WWII. These women became telephone operators, secretaries, auto mechanics, pilots, and nurses, among other occupations. One battalion, the 6888th, or six-triple-eight as it was known, was the only group of WAACs sent overseas. In Birmingham, England, they were assigned to direct or redirect several thousand pieces of mail that had accumulated over several years. Working 3 8-hour shifts every day, the women of the 6888th sifted through piles of bagged and boxed letters, matching names, some barely legible, to lists of regiments stationed in various places throughout the European Theater of Operations. They accomplished their mission in half the time time that had been expected. They also experienced something entirely new to them - a land without segregation laws. These women didn't have to ride in the back of any buses in Birmingham, England.
      By connecting young readers to the stories of these pioneering women, Farrell also connects them to the underlying  roots of many of the social problems we still face in this country. History matters!