Speaker 1: Pushkin. I have a distant memory of being in a
Speaker 1: car bridon that was part my first car trip. Leon
Speaker 1: Loo Max was just three years old when dressed in
Speaker 1: a red English made suit and cap. He'd flown unaccompanied
Speaker 1: across the Atlantic and arrived on US soil. He was
Speaker 1: traveling light, caring nothing but a toy and his nightclothes,
Speaker 1: and when he arrived he was something of a celebrity.
Speaker 1: They said that I was more handsome than Joe Lewis,
Speaker 1: and everybody looked up to Joe Lewis because he beat
Speaker 1: Max Smelling, I think for the world championship in boxing.
Speaker 1: Leon's arrival was big news. Brown baby adopted. The Pittsburgh Courier,
Speaker 1: the foremost African American paper, jubilantly declared the white news
Speaker 1: press they weren't so excited about it, but the black
Speaker 1: news media was excited because it had to do Black soldiers.
Speaker 1: The Courier coined the term brown babies to describe children
Speaker 1: of mixed ethnic heritage who had been born to African
Speaker 1: American soldiers and white European women during and just after
Speaker 1: the Second World War. It's estimated that there were two
Speaker 1: thousands so called brown babies, and Leon was reportedly the
Speaker 1: first to be brought to live within American couple. He
Speaker 1: had spent some of his early years in a children's home,
Speaker 1: which was all too common for children born into his circumstances.
Speaker 1: But around nineteen forty eight, and after repeated attempts, Leon's
Speaker 1: father was finally given the green light to bring his
Speaker 1: son over to Ohio, Leon embarked on a new life.
Speaker 1: A happy ending was not assured, however, and trouble was
Speaker 1: already brewing. I'm Hallie Rubbin. Hold you're listening to bad
Speaker 1: women the Blackout Ripper. We're used to the romantic tales
Speaker 1: of dashing American soldiers who fell in love and married
Speaker 1: British girls, the gi brides, But in this bonus episode
Speaker 1: will focus on the less well explored experience of women
Speaker 1: who fell not for white but for black American soldiers,
Speaker 1: and how segregation, racism, and prejudice blighted the lives of
Speaker 1: their children. In early nineteen forty two, the first American
Speaker 1: troops arrived on the shores of Northern Ireland to join
Speaker 1: the fight against Nazi Germany. Several thousand gis and a
Speaker 1: small number of nurses too. According to Sir Archibald Sinclair,
Speaker 1: who greeted these soldiers on behalf of the British government.
Speaker 1: Their arrival marked a new stage in the World War
Speaker 1: and a gloomy portent for Hitler. Around three million American
Speaker 1: servicemen would eventually pass through the UK over the course
Speaker 1: of the war, and hundreds of thousands of them were
Speaker 1: African American. Many of those African American soldiers came from
Speaker 1: states in the South, where they were subject to statutes
Speaker 1: that legalized racial segregation, known as the Jim Crow Laws,
Speaker 1: and that segregation followed these soldiers into the army. Black
Speaker 1: troops were placed in separate barracks, They ate away from
Speaker 1: white troops, and they had their own blood banks, so
Speaker 1: that even on the operating table, the races would not mix.
Speaker 1: The US Army imported this injustice to the UK. Black
Speaker 1: eyes aren't allowed to bear arms in Britain. They do
Speaker 1: all the dirty work, really, they do the driving, the cooking,
Speaker 1: the cleaning. This is Lucy Bland, a professor of social
Speaker 1: and cultural history an Anglio Ruskin University and an expert
Speaker 1: on the history of interracial relationships in Great Britain. I
Speaker 1: think people often drawn to things that relate to their
Speaker 1: own lives. My father married a woman from Guyana he
Speaker 1: left my mother, so they were in a mixed relationship.
Speaker 1: Her daughter from her first husband is black. I have
Speaker 1: an adopted daughter from Guatemala. So mixedness, both interracial relations
Speaker 1: and mixedness as an identity, are there in my own family.
Speaker 1: So I was kind of interested in that already. Lucy
Speaker 1: found an interview the children of black Gies and white
Speaker 1: British women for her book Britain's Brown Baby. For many
Speaker 1: of them, people like Leon Lomax, it was the first
Speaker 1: time they'd shared their stories. What was so incredible is
Speaker 1: that many of them said, look, I haven't told anybody this.
Speaker 1: It's so great to have someone who's really interested in
Speaker 1: my story. Lucy's research also showed just how rigorously the
Speaker 1: US Army enforced Jim Crow style segregation, not only inside
Speaker 1: but outside its basis in the UK. So clearly they
Speaker 1: are doing different jobs and they live in different barracks,
Speaker 1: but also areas of leisure like pubs and dances. They
Speaker 1: segregate those and certain towns out of bands. And the
Speaker 1: rationale is the tension over the black gis having relations
Speaker 1: with the white women. Britains certainly had its own history
Speaker 1: of racism, but it didn't have such official and overt
Speaker 1: policies of segregation. The Brits are are she often quite
Speaker 1: appalled by this segregation. Not that the British aren't racist,
Speaker 1: but they are quite horrified by the avert racist attitudes
Speaker 1: in the way that they are kept apart like that. Still,
Speaker 1: no official stand was taken against segregation by the British,
Speaker 1: and sometimes the need to maintain good relations with a
Speaker 1: crucial ally meant that the policy was enforced de facto
Speaker 1: by the British people. Royotley, a black American war correspondent,
Speaker 1: noted that when the manager of a restaurant was questioned
Speaker 1: about refusing service to a black soldier, he had a
Speaker 1: ready answer. White Americans had warned him they would boycott
Speaker 1: his place if people of color were served there. At
Speaker 1: the same time, black troops were often received warmly by
Speaker 1: the locals in towns and villages where they were posted.
Speaker 1: And they ask, you know, about attitudes towards the Americans,
Speaker 1: and they do say, you know, actually, those black Americans
Speaker 1: are much nicer than the whites, who just sort of
Speaker 1: go on at us about having pathetic little houses and
Speaker 1: we don't have radios and we don't have proper cars,
Speaker 1: and we don't have this, that and the other. It
Speaker 1: would be wrong to oversimplify race relations. But on the whole,
Speaker 1: British people said they found the black soldiers to be
Speaker 1: kinder and more courteous than their white counterparts, who seemed
Speaker 1: comparatively conceited and boastful. White British women in particular embraced
Speaker 1: the black gis, and not just for their good manners.
Speaker 1: They knew the Lindi Hart which came from Harlem, because
Speaker 1: there were some who were coming from New York, and
Speaker 1: they also brought their bands, and I think the women
Speaker 1: really enjoy this, So I think it's hard for us
Speaker 1: to appreciate that. In the forties the main leisure pursuit
Speaker 1: four young women was dancing, which was cheap and something
Speaker 1: they did on a regular basis young unmarried women. So
Speaker 1: the black eyes on the whole would dance much better
Speaker 1: than the white gies. They knew the moves, so yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that was part of the attraction. Dances would
Speaker 1: be held for black gis on one evening and then
Speaker 1: for white gis on another, and they were fertile ground
Speaker 1: for budding robe mants. So there are quite a lot
Speaker 1: of interracial relationships we know. But some families were very
Speaker 1: hostile on local people hostile. Some were more accepting of this.
Speaker 1: It really depended, but I think generally there was this
Speaker 1: idea that you had to draw the line and that
Speaker 1: you know, actually it was all very well then being
Speaker 1: friendly towards them, but you don't necessarily want them to
Speaker 1: go a step further. And the women had relationships and
Speaker 1: had babies with them, this was thought to be beyond
Speaker 1: the pale. For its part, the British government tried to
Speaker 1: discourage these relationships too. It compiled suggestions for ways of
Speaker 1: keeping black g eyes and white women apart, but then
Speaker 1: marked the document top secret and stored it away under
Speaker 1: lock and key. The British couldn't afford to be too
Speaker 1: closely aligned with America's racial segregation, for such a move
Speaker 1: would surely enraged the millions of people of color who
Speaker 1: were fighting alongside them for victory. But in some cases
Speaker 1: Britain did use emergency wartime laws to prosecute luckless young
Speaker 1: women found with black gis on actual US basis. Nonetheless,
Speaker 1: relationships continued to form. They probably met at a dance
Speaker 1: or you know, some type of social event like most
Speaker 1: of the gis did, but you know the women over
Speaker 1: in England at the time. Leon Lomax was told little
Speaker 1: about his parents' courtship, and I don't know how long
Speaker 1: they were together, what the circumstances were, but he knew
Speaker 1: the family, and the family knew him because they used
Speaker 1: to call him Maxie. My last name is Lomax, so
Speaker 1: that's probably just was a nickname of him. But they
Speaker 1: knew about him, and he must have had some kind
Speaker 1: of interaction with the rest of the family. Leon's or
Speaker 1: Corporal Oscar Leon Lomax, or Leon Senior, already had a
Speaker 1: wife and child back home in Ohio when he met
Speaker 1: Leon's mother, Maude Leon was born in December nineteen forty five,
Speaker 1: after Leon Senior had returned to the United States. American
Speaker 1: servicemen had to get permission from an invariably white commanding
Speaker 1: officer to marry their girlfriends. While white giys were often
Speaker 1: granted such approval, black soldiers were generally denied it, and
Speaker 1: sometimes they weren't even given the opportunity to say goodbye
Speaker 1: to their partners before they were shipped out. Thirty US
Speaker 1: states also still had anti missignation laws that forbade interracial marriage,
Speaker 1: and so when they departed Britain at the end of
Speaker 1: the war, the US Army left a raft of bereft
Speaker 1: single mothers in its wake. Financial and social pressures often
Speaker 1: meant that these women weren't able to keep their baby.
Speaker 1: This was the case for Leon Lomax's mother, Maud, who
Speaker 1: ultimately had to surrender her son to a children's home.
Speaker 1: Young single women who might be living at home, they
Speaker 1: will get pressure not only from their parents and their relatives,
Speaker 1: but often from a local priest or the mother and
Speaker 1: baby hern They often sent to mother and baby homes
Speaker 1: who would try and get this child off them. Many
Speaker 1: mothers tried to keep their babies for as long as possible,
Speaker 1: but childcare facilities could refuse to take children of mixed
Speaker 1: ethnic background, and without childcare it was virtually impossible to
Speaker 1: work and earn the necessary living to support oneself in
Speaker 1: one's child. Very few of these children were then adopted.
Speaker 1: Adoption societies assumed that no one would want to take them,
Speaker 1: and even though there was a long standing Black community
Speaker 1: in Britain, little effort was made to find black couples
Speaker 1: or families who might be interested in adoption. Either many
Speaker 1: babies will bounced between foster families and like lyon they
Speaker 1: ended up in children's institutions, some of which categorize them
Speaker 1: as handicapped simply because of the color of their skin. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: such homes did little to nurture the happiness and well
Speaker 1: being of these children. You don't have a sense of
Speaker 1: being loved, you don't know what a family is, you
Speaker 1: don't experience that. And then they just get thrown out effectively,
Speaker 1: and they don't know how to live in the world.
Speaker 1: They get no preparation for that. Some of them become homeless,
Speaker 1: some go to prison. Those homes were pretty awful. I
Speaker 1: mean all the kids there will just hit all the
Speaker 1: time in the face and completely uncalled for behavior by
Speaker 1: quite sadistic people because I think actually some of these
Speaker 1: homes attracted people who probably had no skills, no training,
Speaker 1: wasn't very well paid, and they had power to do
Speaker 1: what they liked. Some of the stories are horrendous. Over
Speaker 1: in the US, Leon Senior had confessed to his wife
Speaker 1: Betty that he had a child in England. She told
Speaker 1: the Pittsburgh Courier about that conversation. He said, I've been
Speaker 1: gone a long time, about three years. That's a long
Speaker 1: time for a fellow to be away from his wife.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I met a girl. I was very lonesome.
Speaker 1: So what I'm trying to say is that there's to
Speaker 1: be a child. Betty. You don't have to answer right now,
Speaker 1: but would you agree to take this child? Betty grappled
Speaker 1: with this dilemma. Inside her, a private war was being waged.
Speaker 1: She said, My job and friends kept me busy all day,
Speaker 1: but at night, whenever I was alone, I did a
Speaker 1: lot of thinking. I knew that a divorce was out
Speaker 1: of the question. Besides, there was the other son to
Speaker 1: think about. If I ever felt any resentment, my husband
Speaker 1: never knew. Eventually, in early nineteen forty six, Betty told
Speaker 1: her husband she would welcome the child. His honesty, she said,
Speaker 1: had impressed her. He was surprised, but it made him happy.
Speaker 1: We wrote to the British Embassy, the American Red Cross,
Speaker 1: the American State Department, with no results. Then we thought
Speaker 1: up another idea bad women will be back after this
Speaker 1: short break. They started the search for me because I
Speaker 1: guess they lost contact with my mother in England and
Speaker 1: so they didn't really know where I was. What children's
Speaker 1: homar was in or anything. So they happened to see something.
Speaker 1: I don't know where. They saw this in a newspaper
Speaker 1: or magazine or something. There was a doctor wingate in Sussex.
Speaker 1: I believe that asked the question, why didn't the US soldiers,
Speaker 1: they are the black soldiers come and get their children.
Speaker 1: So they got a hold of him and he helped
Speaker 1: locate where I was. So that's where the process started
Speaker 1: of getting me to America. That process took three years
Speaker 1: and cost the equivalent of thousands of dollars, but at last,
Speaker 1: Leon Junior was on his way to the United States.
Speaker 1: When his new parents arrived at LaGuardia Airport, they found
Speaker 1: him playing with staff in the immigration office. I thought
Speaker 1: he was the most adorable little boy, said Betty. It
Speaker 1: was New Year's Day and hopes were high that a
Speaker 1: happy new chapter was beginning in Leon's life. The Lomaxes
Speaker 1: appear to be the perfect family, brimming with love and
Speaker 1: doating on the new addition to their formed but behind
Speaker 1: closed doors, the cracks quickly began to appear. My case
Speaker 1: was unusual because Mum decided that she would not give
Speaker 1: us a way. She decided to keep us this is
Speaker 1: Terry Harrison, And here was an issue because at that
Speaker 1: time my stepfather An now her real husband, was still
Speaker 1: away fighting. Of course, when he returned, how you can
Speaker 1: imagine the bombshell which she was only natural likely on.
Speaker 1: Terry and his twin sister, Susan were born to a
Speaker 1: white British mother and a black gi father, but unlikely
Speaker 1: on the pair stayed with their mother. She was already married,
Speaker 1: but her husband, Charlie, was somewhat surprised by the arrival
Speaker 1: of two new children while he was away at war. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Charlie moved out of the family home. He'd visit his
Speaker 1: own children every day, but Terry and Susan were a
Speaker 1: constant and unwelcome reminder of his wife's infidelity, so he
Speaker 1: kept them at arm's length because he found it very
Speaker 1: difficult to accept and as a result my sister in
Speaker 1: our relationship with it was not as it should be.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't hateful or bitter. It was just a
Speaker 1: lack of love and caring and warmth. He came in
Speaker 1: the house and what have you, but it was as
Speaker 1: though we weren't there. We were the ghosts, but he
Speaker 1: didn't see us there. Terry Susan and their mother Edna
Speaker 1: lived in the pleasant country village of Gadsby, but life
Speaker 1: for them was far from picture perfect. Charlie wasn't the
Speaker 1: only person to shun them. Many of my mum's peers
Speaker 1: would often rilicule her for having brown babies. Mum did
Speaker 1: suffer and that affected me in some respects because I
Speaker 1: always stuck up for Mum. When Terry and his mother
Speaker 1: walked down the street, the villagers shouted racist slurs and
Speaker 1: menacingly banged on trashcam lids. Some crossed the street to
Speaker 1: avoid the boy. Close relatives were cruel too. Terry's aunts
Speaker 1: and uncles treated the young twins with utter disdain and
Speaker 1: constantly reproached Edna for bringing the children into the family.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of redemment and anger towards Mum.
Speaker 1: She came through that, but she cared about Susan and
Speaker 1: I are the way we would react because as we
Speaker 1: got a little older, we began to realize that we
Speaker 1: were different only by skin color. Because basically being brought
Speaker 1: up in a white family, it became difficult, certainly for
Speaker 1: me to understand why people were calling me different names,
Speaker 1: which I didn't really understand. And they used to sort
Speaker 1: of do dances of going back to Africa. But we
Speaker 1: didn't understand. We didn't know, but we knew by the tone.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a very nice thing. Feeling white but constantly
Speaker 1: reminded of the color of his skin, Terry struggled with
Speaker 1: his identity and felt a profound sense of dislocation when
Speaker 1: we went to school. Even I remember some of the
Speaker 1: school teachers, and they were white school teasues. I remember
Speaker 1: sometimes they used to talk about Africa and painting faces
Speaker 1: and doing dances. I remember once they wanted to see
Speaker 1: an African dance and the teacher pointed to me for
Speaker 1: some reason and could you dance? And I didn't know
Speaker 1: what an African dance were like, but nevertheless I did
Speaker 1: it what I thought it was. But they're the thing
Speaker 1: that I remember. What why? Why? Me? But Edna's love
Speaker 1: remained strong and it was a source of comfort amid
Speaker 1: the hostility. My mother never saw color even when we
Speaker 1: issue used to or say Terry and to my Susan,
Speaker 1: and I love you so much, and that was all
Speaker 1: I wanted, as we all do, want to be of
Speaker 1: love and caring, and so I had a great respect
Speaker 1: for mum and she stood at a ground, the very
Speaker 1: strong lady. All the same, Terry felt that something was missing,
Speaker 1: that there was a part of himself he needed to
Speaker 1: examine and explore. I wanted to know who was my father,
Speaker 1: and she mentioned that he was a black American black
Speaker 1: and GII. But I had no role model. I didn't
Speaker 1: have a dad, And at that stage in my life,
Speaker 1: I began to look at black role models as famous
Speaker 1: people like Winniver at Well, the great singers and the
Speaker 1: great sportsman Jesse Oriens because they were black and there
Speaker 1: so I was some common denominator. I began to feel
Speaker 1: some kind of empathy with them. And all of most
Speaker 1: of them were from the United States, so insecretly I
Speaker 1: used to think they're good old United States because them days,
Speaker 1: you never had any black figures in books. There's all white.
Speaker 1: Terry excelled at sports and when he left school he
Speaker 1: joined the Royal Marines, married and had a family of
Speaker 1: his own. Still there was always that nagging question in
Speaker 1: the back of his mind, that sense of something missing.
Speaker 1: Who was his real father. When Edna passed away in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five, Terry got closer to an answer, cleaning
Speaker 1: out one of her old drawers, he came across a photograph,
Speaker 1: a picture of a gravestone bearing the name John Lars Hendrix.
Speaker 1: Why had she held on to this old snapshot? Could
Speaker 1: Hendrix possibly be his father? According to the Pittsburgh Courier,
Speaker 1: Leon Lomax's arrival in the United States represented the pinnacle
Speaker 1: of a woman's sincere love for her x GI husband.
Speaker 1: It's a story of patience and devotion, a story that
Speaker 1: is climaxed by a happy ending, even though it had
Speaker 1: a surprise beginning back in the middle of nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1: But the story was far from over, and for Leon,
Speaker 1: settling into life in Fremont, Ohio was tough. I don't
Speaker 1: know how soon I developed asthma after I got to
Speaker 1: the United States, but at one point I thought I
Speaker 1: was going to die because I couldn't breathe. I missed
Speaker 1: my whole first year of school because of asthma. I
Speaker 1: think that was just due to stress. Despite his efforts
Speaker 1: to bring about the adoption, Leon's father was often cold
Speaker 1: and distant with the boy. His stepmother, who struggled with
Speaker 1: Leon's presence in the family home, could also be cruel.
Speaker 1: I think she was fine whether at first, but my
Speaker 1: father was always a philander and he always had other
Speaker 1: women the day she died, basically, and he wasn't around
Speaker 1: a lot, but she was the one that was around
Speaker 1: me most of the time. So I noticed a change
Speaker 1: when I was probably in about the third grade or
Speaker 1: second grade. I noticed a change in her that she
Speaker 1: seemed like she was a little bit more strict with me.
Speaker 1: One aunt told me that she was kind of taken
Speaker 1: out on me what she felt about my father, And
Speaker 1: I think she felt resentful that, you know, she had
Speaker 1: sacrificed so much to be my stepmother and then he
Speaker 1: still was doing what he was doing. That's why I
Speaker 1: think she got sometimes physically hard. I was really angry
Speaker 1: as a child. I remember cutting my finger one time
Speaker 1: when she told me to go wash the dishes and
Speaker 1: I grabbed a knife and I stuck it into the
Speaker 1: front of the sink and the knife just slipped up
Speaker 1: my hand. I was seven years old at the time,
Speaker 1: so I had a lot of anger inside of me
Speaker 1: about just a lot of things. I think bad women
Speaker 1: will be back in just a moment. Leon's stepmother passed
Speaker 1: away when he was just eight years old, and he
Speaker 1: was shunted between relatives, living with his aunts and his grandmother.
Speaker 1: I had so much movement in my life, you know.
Speaker 1: I started out being abandoned if I'm a mother, And
Speaker 1: then when I got to the United States, my stepmother
Speaker 1: died when I was eight years old, So I only
Speaker 1: lived with my father and my stepmother for five years
Speaker 1: after I got here. And then my father left right
Speaker 1: after she died, so he abandoned me and left me
Speaker 1: with my relatives to be raised. So I was going
Speaker 1: through a process of a lot of change when I
Speaker 1: was younger. I think I was kind of a reticent
Speaker 1: of a lot of things and a lot of people.
Speaker 1: They said that I was reserved or shy or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't gravitate to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: Some of my cousins that always tease me in, you know,
Speaker 1: would just make fun of me. And I had a
Speaker 1: cousin of mine said that I was a mixed up mess.
Speaker 1: In spite of his cousin's jibes, his stepmother's coldness, his
Speaker 1: father's absence, and instability of constant upheaval, Leon is glad
Speaker 1: that his father brought him to the United States. Bringing
Speaker 1: me over to America, he gave me a sense of
Speaker 1: a family, whereas I might not have had that sense
Speaker 1: over in England. I might have been in a children's
Speaker 1: home for a long time, or foster care or foster
Speaker 1: parents or whatever, you know, throughout my life, so it
Speaker 1: would have been a lot different. So that's one thing
Speaker 1: I'm grateful to my father and my family here in
Speaker 1: America for. But as with Terry, there was always something
Speaker 1: missing for Leon. He never knew his mother, never understood
Speaker 1: why she gave him up to a children's home to strangers,
Speaker 1: and I always wondered why she didn't try to find me.
Speaker 1: Then as I got old her, i'd start raising my
Speaker 1: own family, and I just kind of put her, that
Speaker 1: thought of her to the side. Until I finished raising
Speaker 1: my family and I got almost fifty plus years old,
Speaker 1: I decided to find out who she was. And then
Speaker 1: after his father's death, Leon found a letter among his belongings.
Speaker 1: My mother was writing this letter to my dad stating
Speaker 1: that he had promised to financially support her with my
Speaker 1: birth and he didn't keep his promise, so she was
Speaker 1: struggling to keep me because she couldn't afford me. She
Speaker 1: was loving with her her mother. She says, I can't
Speaker 1: keep myself and Leon me on that amount. She was
Speaker 1: talking about some money that I guess he has already
Speaker 1: sent her. She said, I paid my mother what I
Speaker 1: owed her out of it, so there wasn't a lot left.
Speaker 1: You are as wrong as hell, she says, to think
Speaker 1: I want to get rid of him. I'm his mother
Speaker 1: and I love him very much, and I can't keep him.
Speaker 1: So there's a part in here where it says that
Speaker 1: she was changing my diaper or something, and I looked
Speaker 1: up at her and I smiled at her for the
Speaker 1: first time. It just kind of broke her heart that,
Speaker 1: you know, she had to give me up. This was
Speaker 1: a turning point for Leon. Understanding more about his mother
Speaker 1: and her struggles had a profound effect on him. This
Speaker 1: letter was so uplifting to my spirit and helped me
Speaker 1: define more about my mother and myself and everything in
Speaker 1: my life. I just wanted to talk to her. I
Speaker 1: just wanted to find out what she was going through.
Speaker 1: Leon also discovered that he had a half sister, Pauline.
Speaker 1: When he spoke to her on the phone for the
Speaker 1: first time, she was flawed. She had no idea that
Speaker 1: Leon was even out there. Pauline and Leon have since
Speaker 1: grown close, going to visit their mother's grave together and
Speaker 1: talking about the woman. Leon never knew. Stumbling upon that
Speaker 1: photo of a gravestone, the one bearing the name John
Speaker 1: Lars Hendricks, Terry Harrison knew he had to determine once
Speaker 1: and for all if he was connected to this man.
Speaker 1: I went and wrote to the American War Graves Commission
Speaker 1: to see if this man was related to me, and
Speaker 1: forgive me if I get emotional. Amazing one of the
Speaker 1: things that happened that this man was named Hendrix. When
Speaker 1: I worked to America Wargraves Commission, I got back a
Speaker 1: big envelope full of papers which has been burnt around
Speaker 1: the edges as it had been poured out of fire.
Speaker 1: And what it was. The American War Graves Center had
Speaker 1: been burnt down and the managed to retrieve this particular package.
Speaker 1: And in the package it was the way this man
Speaker 1: was died. And he died in a place called Butte
Speaker 1: Street in Wales, and he was shot by a white
Speaker 1: American policeman. But what was interesting within the parcel there
Speaker 1: was a letter of my mom's handwriting, and it was
Speaker 1: to the general conducting the court martial of the shooting,
Speaker 1: and it said did you know that John Larns Hendrix
Speaker 1: is the father of my two children? So that when
Speaker 1: I realized that this man must have been my father,
Speaker 1: and that was a great for me because it was
Speaker 1: a closure. And from then ARO went straight away to
Speaker 1: where he was buried, and that was quite emotional day,
Speaker 1: and there was had some kind of closure. But life
Speaker 1: is seldom so simple. Every year I went down to
Speaker 1: see his grave and it wasn't until a few years
Speaker 1: ago that I had an inquiry to do a DNA test.
Speaker 1: To Terry's shock, there was no correlation between his DNA
Speaker 1: and the of John Lars Hendricks. He wasn't Terry's father,
Speaker 1: I felt. I felt absolutely deflated and emotional. But it
Speaker 1: did point to another match, and it went to a
Speaker 1: person called vander Lee Ellis, and that was my father.
Speaker 1: He died in nineteen eighty five, so if I'd known that,
Speaker 1: I perhaps could have met him. But what was interesting
Speaker 1: I also found that he had several children, and thankfully,
Speaker 1: in a few weeks time, I'm going to meet two
Speaker 1: sisters in New Jersey and South Carolina, and that to
Speaker 1: me is amazing. So in June twenty twenty two, Terry
Speaker 1: packed his bags bordered a plane and crossed the Atlantic
Speaker 1: to meet his half sisters for the very first time.
Speaker 1: He sent us a voice note afterwards. It was just
Speaker 1: an amazing, amazing feeling. I couldn't wait to get inside
Speaker 1: the thousand greet my sister, and it's something I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone can explain. I waited so long. After seventy
Speaker 1: eight years, we see my sister for the first time,
Speaker 1: and that was dublicated when I'm out with the second sister.
Speaker 1: I think one of the most amazing moments was when
Speaker 1: I went to see my father's grave, even now just
Speaker 1: thinking about it and standing there, and it was such
Speaker 1: an emotional moment, not only me, but to have my
Speaker 1: two sisters alongside me. It was a very, very wonderful
Speaker 1: event and one that I shall never forget. The story
Speaker 1: of the so called Brown Babies is yet another grim
Speaker 1: chapter in a history of the Second World War. The
Speaker 1: cruelty and inhumanity of the segregation forced on black giyes,
Speaker 1: the hostility shown to the British women who fell in
Speaker 1: love with them, and then the vileness of the treatment
Speaker 1: meted out their innocent and bewildered offspring. For Terry Harrison,
Speaker 1: who's upbringing was so marred by hatred and prejudice. One
Speaker 1: lesson stands out from all. The most important thing is
Speaker 1: being good to others. That is crucial. Money means nothing
Speaker 1: to me. It's being good and treating people wherever there,
Speaker 1: whatever they're, what color they are, it doesn't matter. It's
Speaker 1: what's inside, because sooner or later we all end the
Speaker 1: same way. This bonus episode of Bad Women, The Blackout Ripper,
Speaker 1: was hosted by me Hallie Rubbinhold. It was written and
Speaker 1: produced by Courtney Guarno, Ryan Dilley, and Alice Fines. Pascal
Speaker 1: Wise Sound designed and mixed the show and composed all
Speaker 1: the original music. The show was recorded at Warder Studios
Speaker 1: by David Smith and Tom Berry