5 - On the Other Side of the Atlantic

Summary

The trans-Atlantic dimension of the story of the brown babies is examined in Chapter 5. African American GIs were part of a segregated army and faced extraordinary hurdles if they wanted to marry their European girlfriends. But African American communities in the United States, concerned about the destiny of the European brown babies, devised various ways of helping them. The chapter examines the debate on these issues that took place in the African American press, as well as the work of international agencies that attempted to identify the fathers of the brown babies and to find families willing to adopt the children. The chapter also looks at some initiatives undertaken by Americans of Italian descent in the United States, and at Italian mothers who were eager to migrate there to join their boyfriends or to find work and escape the stigma from their communities.