Exporting Race, Gender, and Class: The United States Military's Facilitation of Sex Work in Liberia during World War II

Upon the United States entry into World War II, the Army sent a troop consisting of approximately two thousand African American infantry and less than one hundred European American officers to Liberia to guard the Firestone Rubber Plantation and Roberts Field, a major aviation hub for lend-lease agreements. Once soldiers arrived they sought companionship with local women and soon their venereal infection rate rose to one of the highest in the Army. To combat venereal disease among the troop, the military managed two “tolerated villages” which housed between three and six hundred Liberian women who provided companionship for African American men and submitted to weekly vaginal exams. This system stands apart from military sex work in other World War II countries and provides different yet complimentary insights. The military restricted access to the villages based upon racial, ethnic, and class ideologies exported from the United States which granted access to African American infantry and denied access to European American officers. This paper explores the various ways the military attempted to control sexual behavior, their reasoning for segregated sex work, and the consequences of denying men access to what they considered a sexual privilege. By only allowing African Americans entry, the military created a rich environment for women and men to resist the sexual controls placed upon them and a complicated social hierarchy which put African American men and Liberian women at greater danger than they faced from the Axis.