Our research project explores the connection between the establishment of U.S. military bases abroad and the advancement of civil rights in the U.S. We investigate the role that African American GIs played in carrying the civil rights movement to Germany, which was host to the largest contingent of U.S. troops deployed outside the U.S.
Between 1945 and the end of the Cold War, some 15-20 million American soldiers, families and civilian employees lived in Germany, and between 2-3 million of those Americans were African American. By giving voice to their experience and to that of the people who interacted with them over civil rights’ issues, we will expand the story of the African American civil rights movement beyond the boundaries of the U.S.
If you want to share your personal experience by contributing to our oral history collection or in any other way, please do not hesitate to contact us at: africanamericansoldiers@gmail.com
About the Project Participants:
Maria Höhn, who teaches German history at Vassar College, is an established scholar of the American military presence in Germany, and her book, GIs and Fräuleins, published in 2002 by the University of North Carolina Press was the first book ever to address the experiences of black soldiers in Germany. A German translation of her book will be published under the title Amis, Cadillacs, und "Negerliebchen": GIs und deutsche Frauen in den fünfziger Jahren with Verlag Berlin Brandenburg in summer 2008. Together with Seungsook Moon, she is currently editing Sexuality, Race and Gender in the Global U.S. Military Empire: Germany, Japan, Korea, (forthcoming Duke University Press, 2008) a collection of essays that compares the impact of U.S. military deployments on gender and race relations in three very different military deployments.
As a result of her ongoing research project, African American GIs, Civil Rights, and German and American Debates on Race, 1945-1975, she has published numerous essays in both Germany and the U.S. Those essays explore how African American GIs stationed in Germany enunciated their demands for civil rights, and how both German and American society responded to those demands. Höhn has also published essays that explore German and American debates on interracial marriages, and on the collaboration between German students and African American GIs during the late 1960s and the early 1970s. She is the past recipient of an NEH Faculty Humanities Grant, and other prestigious fellowships.
Martin Klimke is a research fellow at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. His 2005 dissertation The "Other" Alliance: Global Protest and Student Unrest in West Germany and the U.S., 1962-1972, was awarded the prestigious Ruprecht-Karls Prize for best doctoral thesis at Heidelberg University in 2006, and will be published by Princeton University Press in 2008. Klimke has been working extensively in the area of transnational history and social movements and has published numerous articles on processes of cultural transfer and global protest networks. He is the co-editor of the publication series Protest, Culture and Society (Berghahn Books, New York/Oxford) and, among others, 1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 1956-77 (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming April 2008).
Since 2006 he has been the director and coordinator of the international Marie-Curie project European Protest Movements Since 1945 which is supported by the European Commission. Klimke has already published essays on Black Power in Germany in the 1960/70s and is currently a Visiting Fellow for North American History at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C., where he is working on his second book entitled The African-American Civil Rights Struggle and Germany after 1945.
Student Research Team
