Ford Foundation President Darren Walker hosted a book party for Alexis Clark's new book, Enemies In Love, Wednesday at Ford Foundation headquarters. A former editor at Town & Country, Clark became fascinated with the role African-Americans played in the U.S. military during World War II, from her relative, Colonel Charles Young, to Army nurses. Six years in the making, the book focuses on Elinor Powell, who met and married a German prisoner of war.
"This is a beautiful book of love, courage and redemption," said Walker. "Only in America could such a remarkable narrative be found!"
The evening began with an informative question and answer session, with Walker interviewing Clark. Susan Fales-Hill, Crystal McCrary, Alex Hitz, Judy Byrd, and Chris Albert, the nurse and POW's son, were enraptured by the story. Here, Alexis Clark talks about Enemies In Love.
Can you tell me how the idea for the book came about?
After discovering that I was a distant relative of Colonel Charles Young, the highest-ranking African-American in the U.S. military until his death in 1922, I started reading a ton of military history. I happened to be reading a book called “G.I. Nightingales: The Army Nurse Corps in World War II”, and there was a brief chapter about black nurses who served. I didn’t know that; I knew about the Tuskegee Airmen and black soldiers, but not African American nurses. And then one line in the book changed everything for me. It mentioned that one black nurse, Elinor Powell, met and later married a German prisoner of war, Frederick Albert, who was detained at a POW Camp in Arizona where she was stationed. I was hooked immediately. I had to tell their story and unpack the history behind it. I first wrote about Elinor and Frederick for The New York Times a few years ago, and the idea to expand the story into a book came shortly after.
What do you hope the reader will take away from it?
This book reveals a dramatic and mostly unknown chapter in American history, when hundreds of thousands of German POWs were detained in the United States and the circumstances behind the black nurses who were tasked to care for them. I hope readers will be moved as they discover this moment when Jim Crow and Nazism collided and the remarkable interracial love story that spawned from it.
If a movie is made, who ideally would play the main characters?
I love this question, because I think Elinor and Frederick’s story would be so powerful on screen. I think Michael Fassbender as Frederick and either Condola Rashad or Kerry Washington as Elinor.
Do you have any other projects in the works?
Yes! While researching Enemies in Love, I uncovered another lesser-known piece of history that deals with the aftermath of World War II and the fate of the mixed-race children of black soldiers and German women during the American occupation. I’m also reworking a novel I wrote four years ago that’s very loosely based on my years as a magazine editor.
