Hi, this is my first comment here but I've enjoyed a lot of posts here before and know there are really amazing standard here. I only made this comment because I've digested so much media on this interesting clash of differing racial attitudes and have the interest to make a researched reply and nobody has answered as of yet.

I have a lot of anecdotal knowledge about the period and a good feel for the attitudes of the time and how the US attitudes compared with the UK attitudes. I know that is not enough so I am using the following book for hard facts:

The Churchill Government and the Black American Troops in Britain during World War II

by David Reynolds

Here goes.

Britain's black community was very small in this time, speaking of black citizens that are well integrated. I can't think of any major waves of black immigration to the UK increasing the population drastically other than the black loyalists that served in the American Revolution and gained their freedom. So the population is like 10,000 absolute max (concentrated in London). And most britons had never met a black person, but the country did have the influence of the preceding period of "Scientific racism" there wasn't the hate that was in America.

Things like Mary Turner a pregnant black woman being lynched by a mob of white men and her unborn baby being cut out of her then trampled to death did not occur.

America and England were way way apart it race relations. I mean Sam Hose was tortured and burned and then his charred knuckles on display in a storefront. Things like what is documented at www.withoutsanctuary.com will show you bad it was in America just a decade or two ago. England never had that hatred. There was no reason to have a murderous hatred for blacks- no angry disenfranchised former confederates mad that the inferior blacks that were previously their household pets were now office holding and enfranchised while they weren't which drove them crazy being ruled by people they saw as subhuman.

And you also need to realise that people like Harry Truman and Eisenhower were born in the nineteenth century and their grandparents would have grown up when blacks were still slaves and may have owned them. You have to realise the way Eisenhower put his neck on the line to promote equality in the armed forces was very amazing for the time.

With regard to the treatment by the british, there was no complicated background like this. People had a very common sense of being mostly just grateful that they had so many people coming over to help them fight the war.

In the UK, there was little sense of a colour bar and official segregation was very much looked at with disgust. It wouldn't go down well with the populace and upset people and units in the many black colonies (who also served in WW2 in other theaters Kings African rifles for example). This does not mean people were very pro miscegenation and other things that were even illegal in American society. They just didn't get violent over it.

Black men were often invited into homes and were even popular with young women in the mid-teens. This was not looked at so positively by the british as a whole but the relationships did occur and for someone that could get lynched back home, having frowns and mild disapproval was very much tolerable.

When any sort of confrontation occurred in a pub or bar, the british were very quick to take the side of the black americans as overt discrimination was very heavily disliked, more so than black men and white women socialising.

The US army command tried to avoid such incidents that would anger the populace so they gave advice to troops not to use racial slurs when in Britain. There was no official segregation but since the units were racially homogenous the US military assigned white units to be allowed to attend a pub or cinema one day and black units the other, although they didn't flat out say "blacks tuesday, whites wednesday" it was just that was de facto. As it was not overt discrimination it pleased the British command as the command was racist in some ways just not violently and virulently so and Churchill was a man of his time and wouldn't have been over the moon at hearing of black men possibly wooing 17 year olds to have sex with them. The thing is they may just have been pleased as there were issues of fricition and multiple issues of fights and arguments so the de factor segregation calmed that and caused the trouble to be prevented more.

The home office issued this to all chief Constables on 4th September 1942:

It is not the policy of His Majesty's Government that any discrimination as regards the treatment of coloured troops should be made by British authorities. The Secretary of State, therefore, would be glad if you would be good enough to ensure that the police do not make any approach to the proprietors of public houses, restaurants, cinemas or other places of entertainment with a view of discriminating against coloured troops.

There was also some moves to try to get British officers to advise women of the Auxillary Territorial Services to avoid contact with black GIs by explaining the "American attitude" though.

Attempts were made to influence civilians also and at one point the GOC of Western Command complained to the city authorities of Chester that "Black GIs were seen walking around with white women". There were then various actions made to warn british women from associating with black GIs.

The wife of the vicar of Worle in Somerset was reported by the Sunday Pictorial to have proposed to local women that if a black man comes towards them they cross the street, leave a shop as quickly as possible if one enters and move to another seat on transportation if one sits near.

All this does disgust me because I see it as the toxic infection of a society that is more advanced and civilised society in one respect by a society with very horrific and sick status in the respect. A society that inflicted an insane level of death and oppression upon members of it's own population is trying to make sure the degradation follow them everywhere even when they served their country and will not tolerate anyone giving "undue kindness" on pain of bullying and intimidation. It's really disgraceful that they did everything to make kind locals treat the black servicemen badly.

There was also the issue that West Indian black troops serving in Britains army might suffer because of the concessions being made to the demands of the US army. There was internal politics surrounding this and it was understood that the populace would not tolerate knowing that British black servicemen were being treated very unfairly and this could trouble the "special relationship" if the populace understood this was being done at the demand of the US.

The politics of the time are very complicated and at time bizarre because of the pressure the US put on Britain to change the way they treat people and view discrimination.

There was even fear of an anti-british backlash in the southern states of the US due to "undue kindness to the negro"... Yes it was really that over the top, it's very embarrassing to look at, peoples blind and insane levels of hatred and prejudiced threatened the cohesion of the allies and the war effort itself.

There was a notable indication that states that things got better for blacks when many of the British based US commanders realised how the incompetent and senselessly hateful and racist white officers were the real cause of the problem and started replacing them. They replaced them with more fair and disciplined merit minded officers that had sympathy for all their men. They also made better recreational facilities for blacks and things to reward them. This was by late 1943 that these improvements occurred.

To end abruptly, this is a very very complicated subject and there were complicated internal politics, all very interesting and I could go on forever.

There are a lot of stories of British people jokingly saying things like "It's great to have the US soldiers helping us, these americans are great- I don't quite think the white ones are too kind though",

And also British people fighting Americans that degraded blacks or stopped them using pubs and amenities.

In closing:

The British command was firmly against enacting and laws to enforce segregation in the UK, but did allow the US Army to freely maintain de facto segregation as although there was no whites only orders, the units were racially homogenous and allocated different separate days.

There were some forms of "advice" given to the civilian populace about the way they interact with black GIs but it didn't seem to be that effective.

It seems there was a positive influence as the senseless and brainless extreme racism was shown to be the true cause of issues and US commanders addressed that as black soldiers performed well and were not causing issues themselves and the British civilians supported them.

This is such an amazingly interesting topic. I love reading about it and until now I didn't have much in the way of many technical facts committed to memory but I skimmed the book mentioned and copied or paraphrased relevant bits to give this comment more weight.

There are many interviews with War survivors and civilians from the war that talk about the relationship and amazing stories that are enjoyable to learn about but I know that isn't valued as evidence here so I refrained from really going into that and focused on the hard evidence of actions and attitudes.

I understand if my comment is not up to the standards and is removed, I still had a lot of fun researching to get proper evidence and learnt stuff I didn't know before.

Edit:fixed spelling mistake + former confederates, not confederates.*