Saying Goodbye To The Kojo Nnamdi Show
On this last episode, we look back on 23 years of joyous, difficult and always informative conversation.
Wilson Monk (third from left) and other men from the 320th.
In 1948, not long after World War II ended, President Harry S. Truman issued Executive Order 9981, which abolished racial discrimination in the military. But four years earlier, when allied troops stormed Normandy on June 6, 1944- what we now know as D-Day- the U.S. military was still holding onto segregation, much like the rest of America. On Veterans Day, we remember the men of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, a unit of African American soldiers that landed on the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
Guests
- Linda Hervieux Author, "Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War" (Harper)
PHOTOS: The Men Of The 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion
A group photo of the African American World War II unit the 320th Balloon Barrage Battalion, with names scrawled underneath, taken in Octeville, France in July 1944.
Wilson Monk, a member of the 320th, and his wife, Mertina, used a 50-cent coupon to take this portrait in Atlantic City during the war. They were married for 68 years.
Wilson Monk gets a peck from Mertina at their home in Silver Spring, Md.
Four men from a black barrage balloon unit hoist aloft a balloon during a 1942 demonstration in Washington, D.C.
Barrage balloons fly over Camp Tyson, the Army's sole barrage balloon training camp.
Waverly Woodson, a member of the 320th, in his first Army portrait.
Wilson Monk (third from left) and other men from the 320th.
Men from the 320th in Hawaii with a standard issue M-1 rifle.
A painting by Peggy Beeton of the a concert of spirituals given by six men from the 320th at the Village Hall in Checkendon, England, on New Year’s Eve, 1943.
A barrage balloon similar to the ones raised by the 320th can be seen about Utah Beach on June 9, 1944, three days after D-Day.
"Forgotten: The Untold Story of D-Day's Black Heroes, at Home and at War" Excerpt
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