Question

What ways did the Depression or World War II assisted African-Americans in their fight for freedom and equality in the US?

Answer 1

In the spring of 1941, hundreds of thousands of whites were employed in industries mobilizing for the possible entry of the United States into World War II. Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a mass march on Washington unless blacks were hired equally for those jobs, stating: “It is time to wake up Washington as it has never been shocked before.” To prevent the march, which many feared would result in race riots and international embarrassment, President Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order that banned discrimination in defense industries. His Executive Order 8802, June 25, 1941, established the Committee on Fair Employment Practices (known as FEPC) to receive and investigate discrimination complaints and take appropriate steps to redress valid grievances.

The fight against fascism during World War II brought to the forefront the contradictions between America’s ideals of democracy and equality and its treatment of racial minorities. Throughout the war, the NAACP and other civil rights organizations worked to end discrimination in the armed forces. During this time African Americans became more assertive in their demands for equality in civilian life as well. The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), an interracial organization founded to seek change through nonviolent means, conducted the first sit-ins to challenge the South’s Jim Crow laws.

After the war, and with the onset of the Cold War, segregation and inequality within the U.S. were brought into sharp focus on the world stage, prompting federal and judicial action. President Harry Truman appointed a special committee to investigate racial conditions that detailed a civil rights agenda in its report, To Secure These Rights. Truman later issued an executive order that abolished racial discrimination in the military. The NAACP won important Supreme Court victories and mobilized a mass lobby of organizations to press Congress to pass civil rights legislation. African Americans achieved notable firsts—Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, and civil rights activists Bayard Rustin and George Houser led black and white riders on a “Journey of Reconciliation” to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses.

African-Americans endured racial prejudice that compelled them to fight racism in World War II while fighting in segregated units. It was particularly hard to accept because the war was fought against the racist Nazis who were attempting to eradicate the Jews grounded in racially-based totalitarianism. For black soldiers, the stark contradiction with American wartime ideals was as repulsive as their daily condition of fighting separately. Many black units—most famously the Tuskegee Airmen—fought just as courageously as their white counterparts. Fighting for the “Double V” for victory over totalitarianism and racism, returning black veterans were not keen on returning to the Jim Crow South with legal (de jure) segregation nor to a North with informal (de facto) segregation.

In the postwar years, civil rights leaders prepared a dual strategy of attacking all discrimination throughout American society. On the national level, African-Americans sought to overturn segregation with legal challenges up to the Supreme Court, pressuring presidents to enforce equality, and lobbying Congress for changes in the law of the land. On the local level, marches were held to demonstrate the fundamental immorality and violence of segregation and to change local laws.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which was established by W.E.B. DuBois and other black and white, male and female reformers in 1909 to struggle for civil rights, helped lead the legal battle in the courts. The NAACP legal team, led by Thurgood Marshall, who would later become the first black justiceon the Supreme Court, scored the first major success of the Civil Rights Movement