African-Americans & World
War II
Double V or Win the War First?
KKK lynching
Lynching
Average of 56 blacks lynched in US between 1882
and 1935. Congress refused to pass anti-lynching
bill.
Conditions in US in 1940
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Jim Crow laws
3,000 blacks lynched 1882-1935
Congress refused to pass anti-lynching
One black member in Congress
Limited voting rights
Discrimination in every aspect of
American life--sports to armed services
A Unified US in WWII?
• Whites unified in desire for victory
• Blacks wanted victory and end to racism
• 38% believed end to racism in US more
important than defeating Germany
• 18% said Japanese would treat them
better than Americans
Black and the press
• White newspapers rarely reported any
news from the Black community
• Unless it concerned a crime
• To white Americans Black community
did not exist
• Most considered Blacks inferior in all
ways to whites
• Not just a Southern point-of-view
Black media
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Pittsburgh Courier---350,000
Chicago Defender--230,000
Baltimore Afro-American--170,000
Norfolk Journal--100,000
Black press demanded a Double V-victory against fascism abroad and at
home
• Pittsburgh Courier--most militant
– Long series comparing Nazi racism with racism in
Georgia
– Only difference was that the Nazis were trying to
do what was common place in Georgia
– Of course that wasn’t true and the paper didn’t
know about the Holocaust
– But the point was how do you fight for freedom if
you don’t have freedom
• When Black press reported on real racial
conditions in the South
• When it reported on Black soldiers being
beaten at Southern bases
• When it reported the details of war industry
factories refusing to hire blacks
• The reaction of the federal government was
to investigate the press for sedition
• FBI--J. Edgar Hoover was especially
determined to prove press disloyal
Robert Vann, Pitt. Courier
Robert Abbott, Chicago
Defender
WWII a white man’s war
Why should I shed my blood for FDR’s
America, for Cotton Ed Smith and Senator
Bilbo, for the whole Jim Crow, Negro hating
South for low paid jobs, dirty jobs for which
Negroes have to fight, for the few dollars of
relief and the insults, discrimination, policy
brutality, and perpetual poverty to which
Negroes are condemned even in the more
liberal North.
Black Newspapers WWII
• Ted Carrell
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Amsterdam New York
Star
Charles Alston, Chicago Bee, 1943
George Mercer, Baltimore Afro-American, 1942
Double V Campaign
Internal migration
Job discrimination
Discrimination in war factories
Vultee Air factory: “It is not the policy of this
company to employ other than of the Caucasian
race.”
Standard Steel of Kansas City: “We have never
had a Negro worker in 25 years and don’t intend
to start now.”
But both did have to start to hire black workers
A Philip Randolph
FEPC
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FDR Executive Order # 8802
Alabama rejected a war contract
No enforcement provisions
But simple math created new
democracy
• War production needed workers and
black and women filled the call
Black War Workers
Race Riots--1943
Americans maul and murder each other as Hitler wins
a battle in the nation’s most explosive city
34 blacks killed but police only
arrested blacks
White mob roams city
• Race riots in Detroit, New York
• 4 days in Zoot Suit Los Angeles
Langston Hughes
Looky here, America
What you done done-Let things drift
Until the riots come.
You tell me that hitler
Is a mighty bad man
I guess he took lessons
From the ku kulx klan
Now you policeman
Let the mobs run free;
I reckon you don’t care
Nothing about me
You jim crowed me
Before hitler rose to power
And you’re STILL jim
crowing me
Right now, this very hour
Yet you say we’re fighting
For democracy
The Armed Forces
Baltimore Afro-American 1943
• Beaumont, Texas mob attacked blacks
• Martial law
• In Marianna, Florida black taken from
jail and beaten to death
• A black soldier shot to death after
refusing to ride in the back of a bus
Armed Forces
Nowhere was discrimination against blacks more
troubling that in the armed forces
Navy--only as a cook or messman
Marines--not allowed
Army Air Force--no
In 1940 4,700 blacks in service--all in segregated
units--by 1943 500,000 blacks in the army
But Was it?
Jim Horton
I’m just a Negro soldier
Fighting for “Democracy”
A thing I’ve often heard of
But very seldom see . . .
They expect me to be loyal
But in my heart I’m not
For how can a second-class citizen
Be a first class patriot?
Discrimination in Armed
Forces
Selective Service Director Lewis Hershey
“What we are doing, of course, is simply
transferring descrimination from
everyday life into the army.”
But discrimination already in the armed
forces
General Ben O. Davis
West Point--no one would talk
Commander of 332nd--the
Tuskegee flyers
Flew 60 missions
The 332nd lost only 25 bombers
in over 200 missions
Tuskegee Airmen
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Southern Camps/Northern
Soldiers
White officers--black soldiers
Separate training facilities
Poor housing, bad rations
No r&r for black soldiers in Southern towns
White MPs regularly beat black soldiers
Black guards took German POWs to local
restaurants--but could not go in
Race riots on army bases throughout the south
• White soldiers refused to salute black
officers
• Separate PX and water fountains
• Yet by end of the war more than 1
million blacks served
• 1940 2 black officers--1945 7,000
Black medics at Normandy, 1944
Soldiers
Conditions for Black Pilots
Segregation enforced--only white officers could
train black flyers
Black pilots could not fly to or from fields where
white pilots were stationed
Black and white pilots could not fly together
Not until 1943/1944 did Tuskegee pilots see
action in Europe
Did an outstanding job--film “Tuskegee Airman”
(1995) Laurence Fishburne does an excellent job
of showing racial hated of black pilots by whites
Chicago Standard
Joe Lewis
Joe Lewis in uniform
Admiral Nimitz and Dorrie
Miller
Movies
• Stepin Fetchit
Lena Horne
Ethel Waters