Part 18 (1/2)

This ma.s.s migration, especially to cities outside the south, was of profound importance to the future of American race relations. It meant first that the black ma.s.ses were separating themselves from the archaic social patterns that had ruled their lives for generations.

Despite virulent discrimination and prejudice in northern and western cities, Negroes could vote freely and enjoy some protection of the law and law-enforcement machinery. They were free of the burden of Jim Crow. Along with white citizens they were given better schooling, a major factor in improving status. The ma.s.s migration also meant that this part of America's peasantry was rapidly joining America's proletariat. The wartime shortage of workers, coupled with the efforts of the Fair Employment Practices Committee and other government agencies, opened up thousands of jobs previously denied black Americans. The number of skilled craftsmen, foremen, and semiskilled workers among black Americans rose from 500,000 to over 1,000,000 during the war, while the number of Negroes working for the federal government increased from 60,000 to 200,000.[5-3]

[Footnote 5-3: Selective Service System, _Special Groups_, vol. I, pp. 177-78; see also Robert C.

Weaver, ”Negro Labor Since 1929,” _The Journal of Negro History_ 35 (January 1950):20-38.]

Though much of the increase in black employment was the result of temporarily expanded wartime industries, black workers gained valuable training and experience that enabled them to compete more effectively for postwar jobs. Employment in unionized industries strengthened their position in the postwar labor movement. The severity of inevitable postwar cuts in black employment was mitigated by continued prosperity and the sustained growth of American industry. Postwar industrial development created thousands of new upper-level jobs, allowing many black workers to continue their economic advance without replacing white workers and without the attendant development of racial tensions.

The armed forces played their part in this change. Along with better food, pay, and living conditions provided by the services, many Negroes were given new work experiences. Along with many of their white fellows, they acquired new skills and a new sophistication that prepared them for the different life of the postwar industrial world.

Most important, military service in World War II divorced many Negroes from a society whose traditions had carefully defined their place, and exposed them for the first time to a community where racial equality, although imperfectly realized, was an ideal. Out of this experience many Negroes came to understand that their economic and political position could be changed. Ironically, the services themselves became an early target of this rising self-awareness. The integration of the armed forces, immediate and total, was a popular goal of the newly franchised voting group, which was turning away from leaders of both races who preached a philosophy of gradual change.

The black press was spokesman for the widespread demand for (p. 126) equality in the armed forces; just as the growth of the black press was dramatically stimulated by urbanization of the Negro, so was the civil rights movement stimulated by the press. The Pittsburgh _Courier_ was but one of many black papers and journals that developed a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject of discrimination in the services. One black sociologist observed that it was ”no exaggeration to say that the Negro press was the major influence in mobilizing Negroes in the struggle for their rights during World War II.”[5-4] Sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied the opposition to segregation during and after the war.

[Footnote 5-4: E. Franklin Frazier, _The Negro in the United States_ (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p.

513.]

Much of the black unrest and dissatisfaction dramatized by the press continued to be mobilized through the efforts of such organizations as the National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Urban League, and the Congress of Racial Equality. The NAACP, for example, revitalized by a new and broadened appeal to the black ma.s.ses, had some 1,200 branches in forty-three states by 1946 and boasted a members.h.i.+p of more than half a million. While the a.s.sociation continued to fight for minority rights in the courts, to stimulate black political partic.i.p.ation, and to improve the conditions of Negroes generally, its most popular activity during the 1940's was its effort to eliminate discrimination in the armed forces. The files of the services and the White House are replete with NAACP complaints, requests, demands, and charges that involved the military departments in innumerable investigations and justifications. If the complaints effected little immediate change in policy, they at least dramatized the plight of black servicemen and mobilized demands for reform.[5-5]

[Footnote 5-5: Clark, ”The Civil Rights Movement,”

pp. 240-47.]

Not all racial unrest was so constructively channeled during the war.

Riots and mutinies in the armed services were echoed around the country. In Detroit compet.i.tion between blacks and whites, many recently arrived from the south seeking jobs, culminated in June 1943 in the most serious riot of the decade. The President was forced to declare a state of emergency and dispatch 6,000 troops to patrol the city. The Detroit riot was only the most noticeable of a number of racial incidents that inevitably provoked an ugly reaction, and the postwar period witnessed an increase in antiblack sentiment and violence in the United States.[5-6] Testifying to the black community's economic and political progress during the war as well as a corresponding increase in white awareness of and protest against the mistreatment of black citizens, this antiblack sentiment was only the pale ghost of a similar phenomenon after World War I.

[Footnote 5-6: _Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, 1 March 1968_, Kerner Report (Was.h.i.+ngton: Government Printing Office, 1968), pp. 104-05; see also Dalfiume, _Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces_, pp.

132-34. For a detailed account of the major riot, see R. Shogan and T. Craig, _The Detroit Race Riot: A Study in Violence_ (New York: Chilton Books, 1964).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PRESIDENT TRUMAN ADDRESSING THE NAACP CONVENTION, _Lincoln Memorial, Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., June 1947. Seated at the President's left are Walter White, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Senator Wayne Morse; visible in the rear row are Admiral of the Fleet Chester W. Nimitz, Attorney General Tom C. Clark, and Chief Justice Fred M.

Vinson_.]

Nevertheless, the sentiment was widespread. Traveling cross-country in a train during Christmastime, 1945, the celebrated American essayist Bernard De Voto was astonished to hear expressions of antiblack (p. 127) sentiment. In Wisconsin, ”a state where I think I had never before heard the word 'n.i.g.g.e.r,' that [dining] car was full of talk about n.i.g.g.e.rs and what had to be done about them.”[5-7] A white veteran bore out the observation. ”Anti-Negro talk ... is cropping up in many places ... the a.s.sumption [being] that there is more prejudice, never less.... Throughout the war the whites were segregated from the Negroes (why not say it this way for a change?) so that there were almost no occasions for white soldiers to get any kind of an impression of Negroes, favorable or otherwise.” There had been some race prejudice among servicemen, but, the veteran asked, ”What has caused this anti-Negro talk among those who stayed at home?”[5-8]

About the same time, a U.S. senator was complaining to the Secretary of War that white and black civilians at Kelly Field, Texas, (p. 128) shared the same cafeterias and other facilities. He hoped the secretary would look into the matter to prevent disturbances that might grow out of a policy of this sort.[5-9]

[Footnote 5-7: Bernard De Voto, ”The Easy Chair”

_Harper's_ 192 (January 1946):38-39.]

[Footnote 5-8: Ltr, John H. Caldwell (Hartsdale, New York) to the Editor, _Harper's_ 192 (March 1946): unnumbered front pages.]

[Footnote 5-9: Ltr, Sen. W. Lee O'Daniel of Texas to SW, 27 Feb 46, ASW 291.2 (1946).]

Nor did the armed forces escape the rise in racial tension. For example, the War Department received many letters from the public and members of Congress when black officers, nearly the base's entire contingent of four hundred, demonstrated against the segregation of the officers' club at Freeman Field, Indiana, in April 1945. The question at issue was whether a post commander had the authority to exclude individuals on grounds of race from recreational facilities on an Army post. The Army Air Forces supported the post commander and suggested a return to a policy of separate and equal facilities for whites and blacks, primarily because a club for officers was a social center for the entire family. Since it was hardly an accepted custom in the country for the races to intermingle, officials argued, the Army had to follow rather than depart from custom, and, further, the wishes of white officers as well as those of Negroes deserved consideration.[5-10]

[Footnote 5-10: This important incident in the Air Force's racial history has been well doc.u.mented.

See AAF Summary Sheet, 5 May 45, sub: Racial Incidents at Freeman Field and Ft. Huachuca, Arizona, and Memo, Maj Gen H. R. Harmon, ACofS, AAF, for DCofS, 29 May 45, both in WDGAP 291.2. See also Memo, The Inspector General for DCofS, 1 May 45, sub: Investigation at Freeman Field, WDSIG 291.2 Freeman Field, and Memo, Truman Gibson for ASW, 14 May 45, ASW 291.2 NT. For a critical contemporary a.n.a.lysis, see Hq Air Defense Command, ”The Training of Negro Combat Units by the First Air Force” (Monograph III, May 1946), vol. 1; ch.

III, AFSHRC. The incident is also discussed in Osur, _Blacks in the Army Air Forces During World War II_, ch. VI, and in Alan L. Gropman's _The Air Force Integrates, 1943-1964_ (Was.h.i.+ngton: Government Printing Office, 1978). Gropman's work is the major source for the history of Negroes in the postwar Air Force.]