Brown Babies

Touring information

 This exhibition is not currently on tour.

View an online version of the exhibition. Contact ancienthouse@norfolk.gov.uk if you would like to borrow the exhibition.

About the exhibition

Professor Lucy Bland curated this exhibition based on extensive research and oral interviews. Here, she tells the story of the mixed-race children born during the Second World War. It covers their history and experiences, from the arrival of their black American GI fathers in Britain during the war to their lives as adults.

These stories follow the arrival of the United States 8th Air Force in Norfolk in 1942, 'The Mighty Eighth'. In total, around three million American troops passed through Britain in the period 1942-1945. We estimate that around 300,000 of these men were black. This reflected a Pentagon decree that 10% of American troops in every theatre of war should be African-American, to reflect the U.S.A. as a whole. The United States stationed many G.I.s in East Anglia.

Both the US and British discouraged inter-racial relationships at this time. But despite the obstacles, relationships between black American G.I.s and white British women did occur. Some local women became pregnant and wanted to marry - but the 8th U.S. Air Force banned all inter-racial marriages. Some of these women were already married, and there was a stigma attached to having a mixed-race child. As a result, the parents of around half of the babies born from these relationships gave them up to children's homes. Adoption societies adopted out very few of these children, often seeing them as "too hard to place".

This exhibition reveals the hidden history of these babies through the stories of 45 of them. By placing their voices at the centre of her work, Professor Bland is able to provide a new, fresh perspective on this period of racial mixing, prejudice and upheaval.