So many of the major contributions of the African American population has been unjustly ignored in our history. They have not be celebrated for their immense contribution to the war effort. This is of course because of the racist history of the United States that lingers to this very day.
But the election of President Barack Obama has changed all of that. He has with the stroke of a pen declassified the true story of the contributions of black men and especially black woman during the darkest days of World World 2.
The racist nature of most of the high command led them to place black troops in service occupations as truck drivers, stevedores and labor battalions. The female contingent were actually used as domestic servants and laundresses because of the racial attitudes of that time.
However there were some enlightened members of General Eisenhower's staff especially in the OSS the Office of Strategic Services which served as the espionage and intelligence for the American war effort. Under the direction of future celebrity chef Julia Child and OSS agent William Colby a group of brave African American women was gathered together to collect intelligence. Under the guise of being domestic servants and cooks in various venues throughout England before the invasion these brave woman made pancakes and washed skivvies while secretly copying papers and eavesdropping on conversations. But since they had to hide this from bigoted officers in our own army they had to pass on this information in code. Thus they were forced to use the queefing method of transmitting data now known as twatter.
This brave band of sisters came to be known as the Tuskegee Twatters.
(Vages for Victory, The Invention of Twatter By Doris Kearns Goodwin, Simon & Schuster 2009
2 comments:
Sounds like they should have worked in Frau kitty's place.
PS At Proof Positive, it's Bleak History Month.
I was wondering where this was going, and I was right!
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