Programs

Fighting for Freedom: Black Women's Army Corps During World War II

For the first time during World War II, African-American women were allowed to enter the military. The first contingent trained in Fort Des Moines, Iowa, where they were housed in segregated barracks, ate at separate dining tables, and used segregated recreational facilities. Despite the hardships and discrimination, the women persevered and thirty-six of the original group graduated and were assigned to Officers Candidate School, Cooks and Bakers School, the Transportation Pool, or the Clerical School. A lecture by Janet Sims-Wood discusses the courageous example set by the first African-American WAC unit in Europe. Requires slide projector, screen, and table to display books. Adult and high school audiences.

Janet Sims-Wood is former Assistant Chief Librarian in the Reference/Reader Services Department at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. She has also taught at the University of Maryland in the Afro American Studies Department. Dr. Sims-Wood received her B.A. in Sociology from North Carolina Central University, her M.L.S. from the University of Maryland, and her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies/History/Oral History from Union Institute Graduate School.