WANTED

Dr. Jennifer Brooks becomes an author
A member of Tusculum College’s history faculty
has published a scholarly book, “Defining the
Peace,” that explores the impact of World War II service
upon the political and social views of Georgia
veterans from a variety of backgrounds.
The subtitle of the book by Dr. Jennifer Brooks,
associate professor of history at Tusculum College,
is “World War II
Veterans, Race, and
the Remaking of
Southern Political
Tradition.” It is
published by The
University of North
Carolina Press in
Chapel Hill and became
available in
December 2004.
The 256-page illustrated
book is
available in a hardback
and paperback.
“When Georgia’s
servicemen left for
the combat theaters
Dr. Jennifer Brooks signs a copy of her of World War II,
new book at a reception held to celebrate few anticipated
its publication in fall 2004.
how profound an
impact this experience
would have on their lives. By the war’s end,
however, many of Georgia’s veterans felt sure they
knew exactly what their military service had meant,”
Dr. Brooks wrote in the book’s introduction.
For many Georgia veterans, Dr. Brooks’ research
found, the war experience created an awareness of
both what they were obliged to give their society
and what their society was obliged to give them. An
illustration of the latter effect cited in the book is the
case of black veteran Doyle Combs, who was
maimed during the war.
“The extreme personal sacrifice made by Doyle
Combs, a black veteran, fueled a deep determination
to seize the political rights that he had just
fought in a Jim Crow army to defend,” Brooks wrote.
She quoted Combs: ”’I went in combat, and I lost a
portion of my body for this country when I didn’t
have no right to fight whatsoever cause I didn’t have
no rights in the United States of America, as a black
man.’ Thus, ‘I was going to vote regardless [of] what
it take.’ (sic) Putting his life on the line—literally—
to defend the American way of life earned Combs
the right to at least some measure of political freedom
when he returned,” wrote Brooks.
For white veteran John Sammons Bell, survival of
terrible war experiences created in him a strong
sense of “civic and political obligation,” Brooks
wrote. “After making it through the horrific invasion
of Guadalcanal in 1942, Bell and his buddies
made a pledge as the next deadly phase of islandhopping
operations against the Japanese loomed:
‘everyone of those four soldiers said when we get
back home,’ Bell explained, ‘we are going to do our
best to make America a better America,’” wrote
Brooks.
When none of Bell’s comrades made it home
alive, Bell’s sense of civic obligation heightened.
He explained at a Georgia political rally in 1946
that he felt it “a bounden duty to carry on their
fight for good government …” and to “continue
in peace to fight for the things we fought for in
war.”
Wartime military service “heightened veterans’
sense of themselves — of who they were and where
they fit into postwar political life,” Brooks wrote.
“… (T)he war tended to strengthen the historic connection
between male identity and political rights.
Thus, both black and white veterans believed that
they had earned the right to participate in determining
the state’s future.
“That veterans of both races registered the war’s
impact in such similar fashion made for a particularly
volatile postwar climate. The Jim Crow South
wove political, racial, and gender identities tightly
together, making the question of expanded civic
participation a highly racialized one,” she wrote.
Brooks contends, “the war produced a politics of
change fraught with contradiction. If black veterans
wanted racial equality, progressive white veterans
prioritized majority rule over desegregation. If white
union veterans wanted an organized voice on the
shop floor with the political influence to match it,
white pro-modernization veterans believed that the
importance of recruiting new industry to the state
precluded unionization. “
Dr. Brooks’ 2004-2005 colleagues in the Tusculum
College History Department, Dr. John Ellisor
and Dr. Donal Sexton, are also working on scholarly
books for the university press market.
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