“Crossing Borders” Comes to VOA Museum March 19

Journalism: The Oxygen of Democracy

SS+D is a proud sponsor of the National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting’s Journalism: The Oxygen of Democracy lecture series.

The popular Journalism: The Oxygen of Democracy series continues at the VOA Museum on Thursday, March 19, at 7:00 PM with local historian, author, and raconteur Dan Hurley. Hurley will discuss his recent book, Crossing Borders/Expanding Boundaries: A White Soldier’s Experience of the WWII Segregated Army.

Unlike many World War II histories focused primarily on battles and military strategy, Crossing Borders/Expanding Boundaries follows the story of Irwin Hurley, the author’s father, and explores how military service challenged one soldier to broaden his worldview. Raised in Northern Kentucky, Irwin Hurley was repeatedly pushed beyond the boundaries of his middle-class, suburban, Catholic upbringing.

Crossing European national borders in 1944 and 1945 brought its own challenges. But the most significant boundary Hurley crossed was here in the United States, between the Upper South of Northern Kentucky and the Deep South, where he helped organize and train a Quartermaster Truck Company made up of 130 African American enlisted men from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. The unit was headed by five white officers and led by Sherman Horowitz, a Jewish captain. That experience brought Hurley face to face with the harsh realities of American segregation and racism.

Hurley’s talk will examine both the personal and historical dimensions of that journey, tracing one soldier’s path from the violence of the segregated American South to the horrors discovered at Dachau.

Event details

• What: Dan Hurley lecture and discussion on Crossing Borders/Expanding Boundaries

• When: Thursday, March 19, 7:00 PM

• Where: National VOA Museum of Broadcasting, 8070 Tylersville Rd., West Chester, Ohio 45069

• Tickets: Free, but RSVP required. Donations welcome.

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