Presented By: Department of Afroamerican and African Studies
Fighting Jim Crow in Britain: A Transatlantic Interpretation of the Battle of Bamber Bridge (1943) with
Professor Alan Rice (Director of Institute for Black Atlantic Research, UCLancaster, Preston) Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan.
Full Synopsis
On the night of 24 June 1943, a mutiny against racist Jim Crow practices took place in the small British village of Bamber Bridge, Lancashire. The villagers and the African American troops stationed there saw each other as allies in a fight with a shared enemy, Nazi Germany, and refused American military demands to impose segregation. This led to fighting between the white military police and soldiers from the 1511 Black Quartermaster Truck Division, with over 400 live rounds being fired. One of the African American soldiers, Private William Crossland, died on the village streets. Afterward 35 soldiers were tried for mutiny and 31 convicted. This battle galvanised the fight for civil rights that unfolded over the ensuing decades but remains little known in the US. I situate the mutiny as part of the wider Double-V campaign and in the context of the Detroit riots which happened a few days before; furthermore, I outline the importance of this incident for an understanding of the Transnational fight against Jim Crow and for human rights by African Americans in a segregated army far from home. My article in The Conversation has attracted 500,000 views since its publication in 2018 and numerous documentaries, film-makers and dramatists are collaborating with me in making sure this incident is brought to wider attention for until it was featured on NPR during the 80th anniversary in 2024 (around 50m listeners) it was mainly unheard about in the USA.
Alan Rice biography:
Alan Rice is Professor in English and American Studies at UCLan, Preston and co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research (IBAR). His books include, Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (2003), Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic (2010) & (co-written) Inside the Invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid (2019). He was a member of the Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project in Lancaster from 2000-2007, co-curated Trade and Empire: Remembering Slavery at the Whitworth Gallery in 2007 and has been involved in a variety of documentaries and dramas with the BBC and other arts and media companies including being consultant to Studio Canal for their 2022 release The Railway Children Return. In 2021 he curated the exhibition Lubaina Himid: Memorial to Zong and in 2023 co-curated Facing the Past: Black Lancastrians. Working with local Black History groups he has rolled out his Lancaster Slave Trade Tour and organised commemorations, supported by the Embassy of the United States, for the Battle of Bamber Bridge where African American soldiers in WW2 fought Jim Crow racism on British shores. In 2025 he is Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan.
On the night of 24 June 1943, a mutiny against racist Jim Crow practices took place in the small British village of Bamber Bridge, Lancashire. The villagers and the African American troops stationed there saw each other as allies in a fight with a shared enemy, Nazi Germany, and refused American military demands to impose segregation. This led to fighting between the white military police and soldiers from the 1511 Black Quartermaster Truck Division, with over 400 live rounds being fired. One of the African American soldiers, Private William Crossland, died on the village streets. Afterward 35 soldiers were tried for mutiny and 31 convicted. This battle galvanised the fight for civil rights that unfolded over the ensuing decades but remains little known in the US. I situate the mutiny as part of the wider Double-V campaign and in the context of the Detroit riots which happened a few days before; furthermore, I outline the importance of this incident for an understanding of the Transnational fight against Jim Crow and for human rights by African Americans in a segregated army far from home. My article in The Conversation has attracted 500,000 views since its publication in 2018 and numerous documentaries, film-makers and dramatists are collaborating with me in making sure this incident is brought to wider attention for until it was featured on NPR during the 80th anniversary in 2024 (around 50m listeners) it was mainly unheard about in the USA.
Alan Rice biography:
Alan Rice is Professor in English and American Studies at UCLan, Preston and co-director of the Institute for Black Atlantic Research (IBAR). His books include, Radical Narratives of the Black Atlantic (2003), Creating Memorials, Building Identities: The Politics of Memory in the Black Atlantic (2010) & (co-written) Inside the Invisible: Memorialising Slavery and Freedom in the Life and Works of Lubaina Himid (2019). He was a member of the Slave Trade Arts Memorial Project in Lancaster from 2000-2007, co-curated Trade and Empire: Remembering Slavery at the Whitworth Gallery in 2007 and has been involved in a variety of documentaries and dramas with the BBC and other arts and media companies including being consultant to Studio Canal for their 2022 release The Railway Children Return. In 2021 he curated the exhibition Lubaina Himid: Memorial to Zong and in 2023 co-curated Facing the Past: Black Lancastrians. Working with local Black History groups he has rolled out his Lancaster Slave Trade Tour and organised commemorations, supported by the Embassy of the United States, for the Battle of Bamber Bridge where African American soldiers in WW2 fought Jim Crow racism on British shores. In 2025 he is Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan.
