User:Lx18940917/sandbox

Reference reliability of Black GIs information

I think it would be nice to explain a little bit about the Mixed Museum regarding the self-published source question on the information about Black GIs at Lakenheath airbase. The Mixed Museum is a digital museum run by academics and funded by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council. The information about Black GIs on the Museum's website was supported by Professor Lucy Bland's research on the topic. Her book Britain's 'brown babies': The stories of children born to black GIs and white women in the Second World War was published by Manchester University Press in 2019 and won the Social History Society's Book Prize award in 2021. Therefore the contents below about Black GIs and the Brown Babies are academically-based and reliable information. This type of content, extending the range of information, could further improve Wiki pages about military bases as a part of social history. The content is added below:

From the beginning of the Cold War, after the US desegregated in 1948 within the military, a little community of mixed-race kids whose mothers were British women and whose fathers were black GIs based in Lakenheath was formed in Norwich.

Vanessa Baird, whose father was a black GI based in Lakenheath airfield and mother was a Liverpolldlian was born in April 1958. Her father did not know about the birth. Her mother's family was very disapproving after they found out. So Vanessa and her mother went to Norwich. There, according to Vanessa Baird, some of the women married black GIs and went to the US with them. The first mixed-race couple who got approved to be married were friends of Vanessa's mother in 1956. However, the airforce would not pay for the wives to go over to the US. In the airbase of Lakenheath Vanessa felt very protected as there was a contingent of British women forming a small community. She described this community as an 'extended family' of hers. And school in the base is like a microcosm as there were a lot of different races.

Elaine Brown has a similar experience to Vanessa. Her mother met black GI Harold Grigsby when he was based at Lakenheath in the early 1950s. Her father was sent back to the US before Elaine was born in 1953. Elaine's mother told her about her father's name and that he was from Washington DC. In 1996 with her husband Elaine finally found her father and met with her American family.