The Call and the Answer
Travel and Literature in the Work of Addie B. Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson'
Professor Mia Bay, University of Cambridge
29 October 2026 - 5.00 p.m. - 6.30 p.m.
Auditorium, Garden Quad, St John's College
Professor Bay will discuss the travel, work and thought of Addie B. Hunton and Kathryn M. Johnson, two YMCA workers sent to France in 1918 to investigate the treatment of 200,000 segregated black troops stationed there during World War I.
Along with their colleague Helen Curtis, Hunton and Johnson were the only three Black women to participate in the American Expeditionary Force’s (AEF) mobilisation of American women auxiliary workers prior to the War’s end. They did remarkable work all the same.
On their return home, Hunton and Johnson published a written record of what they saw in Europe, producing a co-written work entitled Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces (1920) that describes both their experiences and those of the troops, documenting the segregation and discrimination experienced by the Black Americans stationed in France.
Professor Bay will explore the convergence between travel and activism in their text.
Mia Bay is Paul Mellon Professor of American History and Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. Her research focuses on the history of ideas about race, the intellectual work of black women, the study of African American approaches to citizenship, and the history of race and transportation.
For further details and to book please visit https://www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/events/black-history-month-lecture-2026/
Professor Mia Bay (University of Cambridge)