Black Yanks. Kate Werran in Conversation with Jo Durrant

In the countdown to D-Day, the plight of an African American GI sentenced to death for a rape he did not commit gripped the nation. Leroy Henry’s story unfolded against the backdrop of Operation Overlord, provoking an extraordinary response in Bath and the nation. The ticking clock narrative of a controversy that rattled American and British authorities gives us an entirely new prism through which to view the historic watershed. This fresh perspective challenges our assumptions on race, the ‘special relationship’ and the British people’s collective power in D-Day Britain.

Jo Durrant, BBC stalwart of 20 years and now celebrated literature festival interviewer, talks to Kate about this remarkable story – asking what happened, why and its significance for us 80 years on from D-Day. Tracing the story from its very beginning, Jo and Kate in conversation will unravel the story to reveal an edgier wartime society, hidden tensions in Anglo-American relations and the moment the British tabloid press learned to roar. Ultimately Leroy Henry’s court martial, and everything it stood for, provoked mind-blowing decision-making at the highest military level. The talk is a pacy walk through a moment in history that will reveal how the first significant – if uncelebrated – win in the civil rights movement came about; something overlooked for eight decades. Until now.

Dr Kate Werran
I am passionate about social history in WW2 and have specialist knowledge of the USA’s ‘Jim Crow’ army that was stationed in Britain before, during and after D-Day. My two books explore controversial courts-martial of African American soldiers in Britain for mutiny and rape in 1943/4. An American Uprising in Second World War England: Mutiny in the Duchy (Pen & Sword, 2020) and Black Yanks: Defending Leroy Henry in D-Day Britain (The History Press, 2024) formed the basis of my PhD by Publication in History from the University of Exeter (2025). This came after a decade of working for TV documentarian Denys Blakeway, for whom I produced critically acclaimed 20th Century history programmes about subjects ranging from Churchill’s ‘war’ with his generals and the Abdication Crisis to films about the Falklands conflict, the Miners’ Strike and Live Aid. Previously, I qualified as a journalist after serving an apprenticeship with Westminster Press’s Watford Observer.

Jo Durrant
Jo Durrant is the award-winning presenter of the independent arts & science podcast ‘Jo Durrant’s Beautiful Universe’. She’s a highly respected and accomplished interviewer and event chair, and a familiar face at literature, history, and science festivals. For over 20 years Jo was a presenter, producer & reporter with BBC radio and interviewed hundreds of people, from Melanie C to Tim Peake. She is now freelance.