‘Tan Yanks’, ‘Loose Women’ and ‘Brown Babies’: Official Accounts of Mixing and Mixedness During the Second World War

Abstract

During the period 1942–1945, around one million US servicemen were based in England as part of the preparations for the invasion of Europe, around 13% of whom were African American. This presence created a number of tensions relating to the racially segregated army and fears about miscegenation and the likelihood of ‘half caste’ children. The response of the government to their arrival was delayed, uncoordinated and equivocal. Friendships and unions with white British women resulted in the birth of around 1200–1700 ‘brown babies’, whose fortunes were shaped by racial prejudice, the prohibition of mixed marriages in many US states, and the half-hearted engagement with the issue by the British government. It was largely left to voluntary organisations and well-meaning individuals to make provision.