Before a standing room only crowd of more than 100 people on Wednesday, Nov. 4, Linda Hervieux discussed stories of racism and heroism surrounding the men of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, the only African American combat soldiers to land on D-Day.
The OPC, with co-sponsorship from the New York Association of Black Journalists and the Foreign Press Association, hosted the sold-out Book Night with Hervieux, during which she discussed the newly released Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day’s Black Heroes, at Home and at War.
Her book follows the unit of African American soldiers who deployed balloons on tethers meant to tangle low-flying aircraft and prevent strafing attacks during the invasion of Normandy.
Hervieux recounted stories from the book as the men travel to an Army training camp in the Jim Crow town of Paris, Tennessee, where they drew their curtains on segregated train cars for fear that white locals might fire on them, to bases in England and Wales where they were greeted as celebrities.
Mark Whitaker, former managing editor of CNN Worldwide and a reporter and editor at Newsweek, moderated the discussion.
Watch an archive of our live stream for the whole event >>
In the following clip, Whitaker asks Hervieux to talk about the experience of young African American soldiers during boot camp, and their contrasting experience after landing in the United Kingdom.
In this clip, Hervieux talks about how this particular class of African American soldiers ended up getting picked for Barrage Balloon duty on D-Day.