To read more about Bill's emotional journey to find his father, and to learn what happened after the show, read our follow up interview with Bill at The Mixed Museum: mixedmuseum.or...
While Bill’s story does not feature in our digital exhibition on the 'Brown Babies of WW2' - as the African American press at the time dubbed them - he shares a similar life history with many other children born to white British women who had relationships with Black GIs who were stationed across Britain during the Second World War.
Bill’s father Wilbert, an African American GI, met Bill’s mother Betty when he was stationed in the UK during World War Two, and Bill was born in 1944. After the war, Wilbert returned to the US - and neither Bill nor his mother had any contact with him or his wider family again. During this time, interracial marriages were illegal in the majority of US states.
The only information Bill ever had about Wilbert - who was stationed at Leicestershire airbase - was the name written on his birth certificate. Yet incredibly, the team from the BBC series 'DNA Family Secrets', managed to find out what happened to his father, along with other revelatory information.
25 авг 2024
