African Americans in WW2
African Americans played a significant role in World War II, serving in segregated units and facing discrimination both at home and abroad. Their contributions helped to challenge racial segregation in the military and paved the way for the civil rights movement. The war experience also led to increased activism and demands for equality and justice within the African American community.
5 Key excerpts on "African Americans in WW2"
eBook - ePubThe Black Experience in America
From Civil Rights to the Present
- Britannica Educational Publishing, Jeff Wallenfeldt(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Britannica Educational Publishing(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 1 O VERVIEW : W ORLD W AR II TO THE P RESENT T his study of recent African American history starts with a survey of the period that begins with World War II and continues into the early 21st century. Its primary purpose is to introduce the people, events, organizations, and concepts that will be the focus of more detailed treatment in the ensuing chapters, but it is also intended as a summary that provides sufficient background to allow readers to jump into the rest of the book at any point. WORLD WAR II The industrial boom that began with the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939 ended the Great Depression. However, unemployed whites were generally the first to be given jobs. Discrimination against African Americans in hiring impelled A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, to threaten a mass protest march on Washington. To forestall the march, scheduled for June 25, 1941, Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 banning “discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government” and establishing a Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) to investigate violations. Although discrimination remained widespread, during the war, African Americans secured more jobs at better wages in a greater range of occupations than ever before. This World War II war bonds poster features a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first African American flying unit in the U.S. military. Hulton Archive/Getty Images In World War II as in World War I, there was a mass migration of blacks from the rural South; collectively, these population shifts were known as the Great Migration. Some 1.5 million African Americans left the South during the 1940s, mainly for the industrial cities of the North. Once again, serious housing shortages and job competition led to increased tension between blacks and whites...
eBook - ePub- James S. Humphreys(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- The Kent State University Press(Publisher)
...In comparison to the 1930s and the 1960s, for example, according to Harvard Sitkoff, “blacks in World War II faced greater resistance to change, in a milieu less hospitable to disruptive protests, with reduced internal wherewithal and external support.” As a result, although change occurred, it did so “in a limited manner.” 40 But, taking an opposite view, Tim Tyson concluded that the “war against fascism brought African Americans their first viable opportunities to break the confines of … civility and challenge … ‘our little Hitlers here in America.’” Conceding the moderation of black middle-class leaders, and that “the wartime struggle did not end segregation,” Tyson nonetheless found that the Second World War was no less a racial watershed, when African Americans “launched the decades of political activism that would win back their full citizenship during the 1960s.” 41 M ILLENNIAL E RA The notion of “the more things change, the more they stay the same” has continued to mark this historiography into the next millennium. Indeed, with the twenty-first century, interpretations of the war’s impact on southern race relations have not departed significantly from earlier historiographical eras. However, millennial scholars do expand the horizon on the landscape of racial change in the 1940s-era South, thereby deepening our understanding of the complexities of the war’s impact. Among other trends, these historians often deemphasize World War II itself as the pivotal moment, pointing toward the later civil rights movement. They also bring “new” players to the debate, such as Latinos, Asians, nonsoutherners, and segregationists. And finally, millennial scholars consider the war’s racial impact in a global context, not just as an impetus for regional or national change...
eBook - ePubAllied Communication to the Public During the Second World War
National and Transnational Networks
- Simon Eliot, Marc Wiggam, Simon Eliot, Marc Wiggam(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
...In 1944 the US military—like much of American society—was segregated. African American leaders hoped that black military service would help make the moral case for desegregation and civil rights when the war was over. To make this case, it was imperative that the sacrifices made by African Americans in the war effort be documented, recognized, and remembered by white America. Black visibility during the Second World War was seen as an essential part of the so-called Double V Campaign, which argued that victory over fascism in the war would help achieve victory over racism in the United States. The Pittsburgh Courier introduced the notion of a “Double Victory”—or “Double V” for short—in February 1942. Adapting the “V is for Victory” campaign slogan, the Courier suggested that African Americans should rally to support the war effort while pushing for civil rights on the home front, urging its readers to fight for democracy by waging, “a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who will enslave us. WE HAVE A STAKE IN THIS FIGHT. . . WE ARE AMERICANS, TOO!” 4 Key to the aims of the Double V Campaign was making visible to white America the wartime participation and sacrifices of African Americans. How could the war effort be used to push for civil rights gains, if African American sacrifices were being concealed from the American public? It was in the context of these debates over black visibility that the US government aimed to address questions of African American morale through its wartime motion pictures. Even before the outcry over the Roosevelt footage erupted in the black press, the US War Department had commissioned a film designed to boost black morale in the military. The Negro Soldier was released in January of 1944—just as the furor over the lack of black soldiers in the newsreels was peaking. Two years later, at the end of the war, the War Department released, Teamwork (1946)...
- Caroline Bressey, Hakim Adi(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Fighting Racism: Black Soldiers and Workers in Britain during the Second World War Gavin Schaffer School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK The Second World War led to a substantial increase in the number of black people living and working in Britain. Existing black British communities were bolstered in this period by the arrival of war volunteer workers from the Empire, who came to serve Britain in a variety of military and civilian roles, as well as by the arrival of 130,000 black GIs in the US army’s invasion force. This article considers the reception that these communities received from the British government and the British general public, questioning the extent to which racial ideas of white difference and superiority continued to shape white British reactions to black workers and soldiers. Using a variety of sources, including government papers and Mass Observation reports, this article interrogates the roots of changing dynamics of racial thought in wartime Britain, highlighting in particular the extent to which fears of racial mixing continued to undermine white responses to growing black British communities. In the mid-1980s, pioneering scholars of immigration and minority histories offered a series of important interventions concerning the reception of black people, and the development of black communities, in wartime Britain...
eBook - ePubThe Price of Whiteness
Jews, Race, and American Identity
- Eric L. Goldstein(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Princeton University Press(Publisher)
...Harrison, to finally reconsider the decades-old policy, which he now described as arbitrary and without foundation in American law. 11 The tolerance campaigns of the World War II era often decried discrimination in the broadest terms, condemning racism against African Americans as well as against those of various immigrant backgrounds. In practice, however, by offering a much greater degree of incorporation to Jews and other European groups than to blacks, the government’s wartime policies had the effect of redrawing American racial boundaries rather than erasing them altogether. Ultimately, the Roosevelt Administration believed that domestic stability would best be achieved by consolidating immigrants into the “white” population and by reestablishing the clear division between blacks and whites that had been in doubt in American society for several decades. This process of stabilizing the black-white divide was most evident in the organization of American military forces, where blacks and Asians were segregated into their own units while Jews, Italians, and Irish were assigned to “white” units along with men whose families had been in the United States for generations. 12 The existence of a Pacific warfront where the Japanese enemy was defined as a nonwhite racial menace also gave credence to the notion of a unified white American fighting force. 13 More than any other wartime development, the thorough integration of Jews and Catholics into the American military helped cement the public’s view of these groups as unambiguously white. Although they were never embraced universally by the American public, the government’s attempts to both counter prejudice and stabilize racial boundaries helped relieve much anxiety about the place of Jews in national life...
