In another hour, it might have been Stacey’s house, too.
Her mother, Evelyn, was 19 years old when she met Clarence Lee Sims of Kemper County. He was one of 240,000 African-American citizens who were part of the 3 million American troops stationed in the United Kingdom during World War II.
Meeting in a neighborhood pub, not far from the Muller orphanage that had served as an American barracks, with which they had fallen in love. Steve became what the media would call the “brown children” of the war, one of around 2,000 children born to white British women and young American soldiers.
Marriage between a white person and a twilight person was still illegal in many US states and was a permit denied by Clarence’s white unit chief. The possibility of retiring to the United States and then the fight when Clarence was sent home was raised, but it was never an option where Stacey’s mother was concerned.
“She knew what it would have been like,” Stacey, now 80, tells BBC Game Wales, her Bristol speech still proudly strong despite speaking from Australia, where she has lived for the past four decades.
Robust could also be how she describes her mother. It was she, with the help of his grandmother, who educated him despite the inevitable glances, or worse still, the disapproving ones. Many “brown children” were sent away with modest chances of adoption and faced hardships for hours.
