[2] General Lesley J. McNair, the commander of Army Ground Forces, successfully argued that "colored" units should be employed in combat.

At McNair's suggestion, the U.S. Army began to experiment with segregated combat units in 1941; the program was supported by, and given national exposure in, Life magazine.

In the days before the civil rights advances made in the 1960s, black people were still treated harshly in the South and often considered an inferior race there.

[12][13][14] Battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Paul L. Bates refused to consider the court-martial charges put forward by the arresting military policemen.

After the two-year training session in Texas, 761st Tank Battalion received the order in 9 June 1944 for overseas movement three days after the D-Day landings in Normandy.

The battalion aboard the British troop carrier Esperance Bay from New York and arrived in Britain on 8 September 1944 and was initially assigned to the Ninth Army.

The unit saw action in Northern France from October 1944, it fought in the Battle of the Bulge, later proceeding to the Rhineland, and spent the final months of the war on German soil.

"[21] Patton's biographer Carlo D'Este explained that "on the one hand he could and did admire the toughness and courage" of some black soldiers, but his writings can also be frequently read as "disdaining them and their officers because they were not part of his social order.

"[22] Historian Hugh Cole pointed out that Patton was also the first American military leader to integrate rifle companies "when manpower got tight.

"[23] Retired NBA Hall-of-Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, co-author of Brothers in Arms: The Epic Story of the 761st Tank Battalion, WWII's Forgotten Heroes, agreed that although Patton was a bigot the fact remains that he did lend his name to the advancement of blacks in the military at the time, unlike most other military officers (Patton did prevent a black soldier from being lynched while serving as commander of a fort in El Paso before the war).

Most of the veterans of the 761st that Abdul-Jabbar interviewed stated they were proud to have served under a general widely considered one of the most brilliant and feared Allied military leaders of World War II.

[27] As part of the effort to drive the Germans from the vicinity of Bastogne, the battalion fought to capture the municipality of Tillet [fr], less than 15 km west of the town, in early January 1945.

In the final days of the war in Europe, the 761st was one of the first American units to reach Steyr, Austria, at the Enns River, where they met with the 1st Ukrainian Front of the Soviet Red Army.

On 24 November 1947, the 761st was reactivated (as an integrated unit) at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and assigned to the Regular Army, where it served until again inactivated on 15 March 1955.

[37] Several of the later episodes of The History Channel series Patton 360 featured 761st veteran William McBurney who related his experiences with the battalion in the Lorraine Campaign, the Battle of the Bulge, and in the ultimate conquest of the German homeland.

A 1993 episode of Law & Order titled "Profile" featured a 72-year-old assault victim played by Joe Seneca who credited his experiences with the 761st for saving his life.

In an episode of The Cosby Show, Cliff Huxtable and some male friends are discussing their military experiences and one of them describes in detail his World War II exploits as a member of the 761st Tank Battalion.

Actor Morgan Freeman and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar are co-producing a new movie about the 761st, based on Jabbar's and co-writer Anthony Walton's 2004 book, Brothers in Arms.

In the 1981 police mystery Chiefs, written by Stuart Woods, and the CBS mini-series of the same name, the 761st is mentioned as the unit of the ill-fated black mechanic Marshall Parker, killed after being arrested on false pretenses by Sonny Butts and Charley Ward, beaten and shot.