The Negro in World War II, Vol. I, A Record of Achievement [cover title].

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Scarce Second World War periodical (all published?) dedicated to the military, air, and naval service of African Americans and “...the manner in which they acquitted themselves to date in this war…” 

The cover illustration notably depicts hero Doris “Dorie” Miller being awarded the Naval Cross—the first African American to be so decorated, though only after some clamor among the black press—for his actions at Pearl Harbor. In a section on Naval heroes beginning on page 65, there is a brief biography of Miller noting that at that time he was missing in action.

The text includes numerous photographs and stories of distinguished African American service men and women. Sections are dedicated to a chronology of the war (highlighting black achievements), other medal winners, the Women’s Army Corps, the Army Air Force, and workers on the home front including Red Cross workers.

There is an article on The Negro Soldier by Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis, the first African American of general rank, and an article on “The 99th Pursuit Squadron”—the famous “Red Tails” of the Tuskegee Airmen, by his son and the commander of the Tuskegee Airmen, Lt. Col. Benjamin O. Davis, Jr.

A theme of racial equality, even within a then segregated military, pervades the periodical. The work was published by The Sentry, a government worker’s newspaper which promoted “equal pay for equal work” and “[a] wider use of the merit system as the yardstick for measuring qualifications…” in government work. (p[2]) Notable here is the publication of a four-page statement by an “Emergency Conference on the Status of the Negro in the War for Freedom” issued at the 1943 Detroit meeting of the NAACP, calling for the end of discriminatory practices in the military and the wider emancipation African Americans in American society.

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