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March 1942. "Baltimore, Maryland. Sergeant Franklin Williams, home on leave from Army duty at Fort Bragg, watching his mother put chicken into the oven." Specifically, an Oriole range made by the Standard Gas Equipment Corporation of Baltimore. Medium format acetate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Office of War Information. View full size.
... for Mom to get that chicken the way Franklin likes it, since the oven is turned off.
I find these two most recent Shorpy pictures of Sergeant Williams to be bittersweet: the joy of being home with family combined with the poignant knowledge that he would soon be shipping out. None of the three articles state what happened to Sergeant Williams over the course of the war. I hope he made it back home okay.
[Odds are he didn't ship out anywhere. Only around one in ten of the 1.2 million African-Americans in the military during WW2 served overseas. You can read more about Franklin here. - Dave]
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