"The Yanks are coming with a vengeance..." When black American GIs started arriving in Britain
in 1942, the US Department of Defense produced a film to educate the young men who were due to be
stationed here about what sort of welcome they might receive. "Well goodbye ma'am." "Goodbye.
It's been very nice meeting you." "Very nice to meet you, i'm sure." "Funny you should come
from Birmingham too, isn't it? As you've come to my Birmingham, you must come to my home and
have a cup of tea with me." - It's estimated that at least two million American servicemen
passed through the UK during World War Two, and tens of thousands of them
were black. "Now let's be frank about it. There are coloured soldiers as well as white here,
and there are less social restrictions in this country. Just what you heard, an English woman
asking a coloured boy to tea, she was polite about it and he was polite about it. Now,
look that might not happen at home, but the point is we're not at home and the point is too if we
bring a lot of prejudices here what are we going to do about them?" - The African-American GIs
stationed in Britain were forced to abide by the racial segregation laws that applied in the deep
south of the US. Lucy Bland is a historian and the author of 'Britain's Brown Babies'. - It's a
segregated army, it's very segregated in 1948. The vast majority of the GIs came from the deep south,
and white GIs attack black GIs with impunity, that's what's so shocking. The thing is,
the American soldiers were all under the jurisdiction of the American military,
so they had very particular jobs. The black GIs, they came and built the air bases but they were
not allowed to fly. They built the air bases, they maintained the planes, they weren't allowed in
Britain to bear arms. - The black soldiers often formed positive relationships with local people
and not just their skin colour but their manners and attitudes made them stand out from their white
American counterparts. - They were pretty much all over the country, particularly sort of home
counties, East Anglia. - And these areas were very white areas? - Very white areas. Many people had
never seen a black person before, except probably in a film. - And how were the black GIs treated by
the locals? - Well the black GIs were often really liked, and they were seen as much more attractive
than the white GIs, because they were seen as much politer, so I think for many they were very
attractive. - But no matter how attractive, black GIs in the segregated US army were forbidden from
marrying their white girlfriends. - Although the US military denied that there was an actual law,
every GI had to get permission from the commanding officer, and invariably the commanding officers,
who were white, would refuse it, and if pushed, their rationale was that back
in the states - there were then 48 states - 30 had anti-miscegenation laws, laws that forbade
marriage between whites and blacks. - Local people in Ipswich were very surprised at how badly the
black GIs were treated compared to the white. - Babs Gibson-Ward is one of about 2,000 babies
born to white British women and black American GIs during World War Two. - The people in East
Anglia were very supportive of the black GIs, and so they would invite them to their homes,
invite them for family meals. The family that I was born into, they got to know my natural father
very well. - Babs's mother was already married to an English naval officer when she met a black US
air force engineer at a dance. - I guess one thing led to another when they started socialising with
the local GIs. And they had, you know, parties and dances and things like that going on. - Lucy
Bland says even when the black GIs were off base, they were still subject to the US army's racial
segregation rules. - And then they have these dances, again segregated by colours. So certain
nights will be a so-called black dance, and then a white dance, and pubs also, quite a lot of pubs,
this will be a black pub, that will be a white pub. - The relationship started to form, and both
my mother and her sister paired up with GIs. - Her mother fell pregnant in 1944, but she never told
her black GI boyfriend about the baby. He returned to the US without knowing. When her mother's navy
officer husband returned after the war, he didn't question whether he was Babs's father until later.
- My skin was very fair, and so she thought, I think, that she was going to get away with it
and pass me off as as his. But by the time the following late spring happened, my skin started
to darken significantly and it was obvious that I wasn't his child. My stepfather, when he realised,
I was put out in the garden, at the bottom of the garden, and not allowed to come into the house,
which meant that she knew that I would have to be put into care. - Nearly half of the mixed-race
babies were given up to children's homes, but few were adopted. They were thought too hard
to place. The African-American press named these children 'brown babies'. The British called them
half-castes. When she was just five months old, Babs were sent away from her family in Ipswich.
She lived in a children's home for the next four years. Then a foster family came forward, and it
seemed like a new start. But Babs faced racial abuse at school. - People in the neighbourhood
wouldn't allow their children to play with me. And then when I went to school, most of the hostility
was actually encouraged by my classroom teacher. He would actually get the children to ridicule me.
He would take me out into the playground with the children and tell them that I could climb
a pole, like a monkey climbs a tree. And so if they asked me, then I should demonstrate this
at play time. And this used to really, really upset me. And then the other thing he did was he
sat me at the back of the classroom, away from all of the other children, and he would give me jigsaw
puzzles and colouring books, and he would tell the other children that I didn't have the same brain
as white children. I wasn't being taught like the other children, I was just left to play at the
back of the class. - And when you were racially abused by your teacher and made to feel stupid,
did you understand why that was happening? - No, I didn't. I really didn't. They more or less said
that because I was different that I didn't have the same intelligence as
all of the other children, the white children in the class, but I refused to believe it. -
When her foster mother died, Babs was removed from her foster family and placed in another children's
home. She was 10 years old. Three years later, her birth mother came to collect her, nearly 14 years
after she had given her up. It was not the reunion that Babs had expected. - The matron introduced me
to this woman who she said was my mother, and she was a total stranger. So I looked at her,
and I was puzzled because not only was she a total stranger, but she was white. And I couldn't make
sense of any of this because I always thought my natural mother would be like me. - At this stage,
Babs, did you know anything about your mother? - No, absolutely nothing. - Until that day when you
were 14? - Yeah. Yeah, yeah. - And how were you feeling? - I didn't have a say, I had to go home
with her. And, um, I didn't want to. - So she never told you why she'd come to collect you,
or why she'd waited all this time? - No. No, no. - Babs Gibson-Ward had a difficult relationship
with her birth mother, who had split up with her husband and was abusive to her mixed-race child.
Babs was musically gifted, but her mother ignored teachers who encouraged her talents. Eventually,
Babs left home and trained as a nurse. It was at this point that she started to try to find out
more about her birth father, but even getting basic information from the children's charity
Barnardo's, which held her records, wasn't easy. - And it wasn't until there was the Freedom Of
Information Act that was passed that I decided to have another go. And I went down to Barnardo's to
ask to see my records. - Lucy Bland says that once records started being made available in the 1990s,
it was remarkable how much information there was. - So lots of people who have been in
Barnardo's have had a huge struggle to get the records. And when they do get the records,
what's extraordinary is the very minute detail that is kept about them. You know, every kind
of day, there's something written, often pretty unpleasant, sort of so-and-so did this or that,
and they'll know all about the parents but have lied to the children and told them nothing. - And
once I got those records, then I started to trace my roots, really, in America. My father was alive
up to his 89th birthday, but then died of cancer. And so I never met him. - How difficult was it
for you to get this information about your birth father? - They didn't want to give any
information to me. They just said they had a duty to protect other people's relationships and lives,
and so what that meant was I had to do most of the research myself. I actually wrote to
one of the officials that would do the the family trace in America, and I was able to get his
his social security number, I was able to get a copy of his death certificate, I was able to get
named people on that death certificate. - And what did it mean to you to find this American family
and to find out more about your birth father? - I think for me it means that at least I have some
understanding of where I come from. And it would be lovely just to know that
they're as interested in me, as I am interested in them. - Having been lied to by her birth mother
and given no information by the children's home, what Babs discovered about her father
was a revelation to her. I managed to trace my grandmother, and as soon as she saw me,
she instantly said that I was my father's double. And that's the first I ever heard
anybody make any reference to him. - This lack of knowledge about their family histories
has had a hugely detrimental effect and meant that many of these children have gone on to have very
difficult lives. Lucy Bland: They really had a kind of history that was sort of wiped out for
them as well, so they were growing up in kind of ignorance about their roots, about their heritage.
So that lack of belonging, not only were the British not embracing them as British - and
they were legally British, with British mothers - but they knew nothing about their past. And,
you know, they experienced so much, kind of, ostracism and racism and stigma, that I think they
were really constructed as kind of outsiders, and I think that was incredibly hard for them.
So it's been an unknown history that should be known. - Many of the so-called 'brown babies',
now in their early 70s, have spent a lifetime searching for their parents, and Babs knows
that being able to trace her father, she is one of the luckier ones. - Well it made me realise that
I'm not alone, there's many people in the same situation as me. But I have found out a lot more
than most people know about their roots. - And what would it have meant to you, Babs, if you had
been able to find out more about your birth father earlier? - I think to know whether we are alike,
whether, you know, we share the same interests. So I was sad that I did not have an opportunity
to write to him. Yeah. But I can't turn the clock back. Not to know anything about yourself
is really tough. To go through life in a family and have a whole neighbourhood not want to play
with you, not want to let their children play with you, it's tough. And not to understand why,
other than that you're the wrong shade. I never wanted to be anything different to what I was,
I just wanted to be accepted for who I was. But I think what it does for me is,
it will always be there, I will always have some kind of deficit in my life of never knowing,
you know, true family relationships. - That was Babs Gibson-Ward. I was also talking to Lucy Bland
the author of 'Britain's Brown Babies', for this edition of Witness History.