For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Veterans Breakfast Club hosts a special livestream conversation with historian David Nasaw, focusing on one of the most searing chapters in his new book, The Wounded Generation: Coming Home After World War II: the experiences of Black veterans returning to the United States in 1945–46.
More than one million Black men and women served in World War II, fighting for democracy overseas while living under segregation at home. Many embraced the war as a chance to claim full citizenship, inspired by the “Double V” campaign—victory against fascism abroad and racism at home. What awaited them, as Nasaw shows, was not gratitude or equality, but a wave of intimidation, violence, and repression aimed squarely at returning Black veterans.
Through Black newspapers like The Pittsburgh Courier, government reports, and contemporary scholarship, Nasaw traces how the simple act of coming home—stepping off a ship, boarding a bus, wearing a uniform—could trigger confrontation and punishment. Returning veterans were assaulted on public transportation, targeted by police, and warned, often brutally, that Jim Crow still ruled. The story of Sergeant Isaac Woodard, blinded by a South Carolina police chief while still in uniform, stands as one of the most infamous and devastating examples of this campaign of terror.
The discussion will also examine why Black veterans were seen as such a threat. White officials and politicians feared that men who had worn the uniform, carried weapons, and fought overseas would challenge segregation at home—by voting, organizing, and demanding respect. In response, Southern leaders mobilized law enforcement, courts, and vigilante violence to “put them back in their place,” often with deadly consequences.
Nasaw will help us understand how the treatment of Black veterans after World War II shaped the early civil rights struggle, hardened resistance to Jim Crow, and revealed the deep contradictions at the heart of American victory. It is a story of courage, trauma, and resistance—and a reminder that for many veterans, the war did not end when they came home.
We’re grateful to UPMC for Life for sponsoring this event!
