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. See timeline for this period
In this letter, labor leader A. Philip Randolph suggests to Walter White “a mass March on Washington” by thousands of African Americans to protest discrimination in defense industries and the armed forces. On June 18, 1941, A. Philip Randolph and Walter White met at the White House with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of War Robert Paterson, and other government officials. On June 25, the threat of the march prompted President Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in defense industries receiving government contracts. The Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) was established to investigate and monitor hiring.
A. Philip Randolph to NAACP Secretary Walter White, March 18, 1941. Facsimile. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (050.01.00) Courtesy of the NAACP Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj050
Civil rights leader and labor activist A. Philip Randolph (1889–1979) relates an Oval Office encounter in 1941 with President Franklin D. Roosevelt that resulted in Roosevelt issuing Executive Order 8802, which banned discrimination in government and defense industry employment. The excerpt was included in A. Philip Randolph’s 50th Anniversary, a satellite news feed produced by the Labor Institute of Public Affairs (AFL-CIO), ca. 1991.
Kenje Ogata (1919−2012) felt called to serve his country after the December 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and enlisted in the Army the very next day. Despite being a trained pilot, he was denied entry into the Army Air Corps because he was Japanese American. After two years of fighting for a chance to join the corps, Ogata finally gained a spot on a flight crew—not as a pilot, but as a turret gunner. His Library of Congress Veterans History Project collection includes this poignant letter to his wife describing his passion for service as well as his love for her.
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James L. Farmer (1920–1999), civil rights activist and educator, grew up in Texas. His father was one of the first African Americans to earn a Ph.D. and his mother was a teacher. He graduated from Wiley College at the age of eighteen and studied for the ministry at Howard University. While at Howard, he became a part-time secretary for the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR). In 1942, Farmer cofounded the FOR-affiliated Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and, in 1943, used nonviolent direct action tactics to integrate a Chicago restaurant. Farmer later worked in a drive to organize Southern unions for FOR and as the NAACP’s program director under Roy Wilkins. In 1961, Farmer became CORE’s first national director and initiated Freedom Rides into the Deep South. As director, he organized new branches and led voter registration projects and desegregation protests throughout the country. Farmer left CORE in 1966 to direct a national adult literacy project. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj055
The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was organized by a group of students on the campus of the University of Chicago in 1942. Many of the students were members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a Christian pacifist organization. CORE experimented with nonviolent direct action methods to tackle racial problems. In 1943, CORE conducted a sit-in at a Chicago restaurant and, in 1947, launched the first Freedom Ride into the South. From 1949 to 1953, CORE members successfully used picket lines and sit-ins to break segregation at lunch counters in St. Louis. In 1961, CORE again set out on Freedom Rides. After launching the Voter Education Project (VEP) in 1962, CORE’s focus shifted to voter registration.
Congress of Racial Equality. CORE Action Discipline, n.d. Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (054.00.00) Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj054
Anna Arnold Hedgeman was the executive secretary of the National Council for a Permanent FEPC, established by A. Philip Randolph in 1943. With the end of the war, a conference was called to plan a nationwide strategy for bringing a permanent FEPC bill to the floor of Congress quickly. The Senate, dominated by Southern Democrats, successfully filibustered the bill in 1946. Subsequent bills to establish the FEPC as a permanent federal agency were blocked by the Senate in 1950 and 1952. In altered form, the idea of an FEPC evolved into the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
National Council for a Permanent FEPC. Digest of Findings from a Working Conference of Local Councils held September 12 and 13, 1945, in Washington, D.C., by the National Council for a Permanent FEPC. Page 2. Anna Arnold Hedgeman Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (058.00.00) Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj058
The Texas Democratic Party contended that a political party was a private association that could freely select its membership. This strategy was upheld by the Supreme Court in Grovey v. Townsend (1935). In United States v. Classic (1941), however, the court conversely held that a primary was an integral part of the electoral process, not a private activity. Inspired by this decision, Thurgood Marshall decided to launch a new attack on the white primary. His client, Lonnie E. Smith, was a black dentist from Houston who had been denied the right to vote in the 1940 primary by Judge S. E. Allwright. On April 3, 1944, in Smith v. Allwright, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Smith declaring the white primary void as a violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.
Thurgood Marshall’s “Saving the Race” Memorandum to the NAACP legal staff, November 17, 1941. Memorandum. Page 2. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (059.00.00) Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj059
Serving with the Quartermaster Corps in the European and North African Theaters in World War II, Master Sergeant Ellis Ross (1910−1996) used his camera to document the sights and sounds of his military experience. His Library of Congress Veterans History Project collection contains 278 original photographs; here, he poses with comrades in various locations in Austria, Italy, and France. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj061
Tuskegee Airman Lee Archer (1919–2010) recalls an army study that tried to prove African Americans could not be pilots during World War II in an interview conducted by Camille O. Cosby (b. 1945) for the National Visionary Leadership Project in 2002.
U.S. Senator Edward Brooke (1919–2015) (R-MA) explains the segregation he faced in the army during World War II in an interview conducted by Renee Poussaint for the National Visionary Leadership Project in 2001.
When Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) began his rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947, he became the first African American to play major league baseball in the twentieth century, breaking down the “color line” in effect since 1876. In this letter to Ralph Norton, a fellow alumnus of Pasadena Junior College, Robinson reports on his historic debut, the appointment of the Dodgers’ manager, and the welfare of his wife and infant son.
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In 1947, Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) became the first African American to play baseball on a major league team in the modern era. After the season ended, he answered reporters' questions in this interview from the Library’s Bob Wolff Collection.
Courtesy of Bob Wolff Collection, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division
Lawyer and U.S. Assistant Attorney General Roger Wilkins (b. 1932) describes his hero, Jackie Robinson, in an interview conducted by Renee Poussaint for the National Visionary Leadership Project in 2007.
On July 16, 1944, Irene Morgan refused to surrender her seat to white passengers and move to the back of a Greyhound bus while traveling from Gloucester County, Virginia, to Baltimore, Maryland. She was arrested and convicted in the Virginia courts for violating a state statute requiring racial segregation on all public vehicles. The NAACP appealed her case to the Supreme Court. On June 3, 1946, by a 6-to-1 decision, the court ruled that the Virginia statute was unconstitutional when applied to passengers on interstate motor vehicles because it put an undue burden on interstate commerce.
NAACP Secretary Walter White soliciting funds to support the litigation of Morgan v. Virginia, May 20, 1946. Typed letter. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (062.00.00) Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj062
Born into a Quaker family in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Bayard Rustin served as race relations secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) from 1941 to 1953. During that same period he was a youth organizer for A. Philip Randolph’s proposed 1941 March on Washington and became the first field secretary of CORE. He planned and participated in the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, the first Freedom Ride into the South. Rustin was an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr., and an organizer of the Montgomery bus boycott and Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He also organized the 1957 Prayer Pilgrimage, the 1958 and 1959 Youth Marches for Integrated Schools, and the 1963 March on Washington. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj066
To test the Supreme Court’s decision in Morgan v. Virginia banning segregation in interstate travel, Bayard Rustin of FOR and George Houser of CORE planned and participated in the Journey of Reconciliation. Sixteen black and white men left Washington, D.C., on a bus and train trip through the upper South. In North Carolina, three people, including Rustin, were arrested and sentenced to serve on a prison chain gang. Rustin wrote an article about his experience for the New York Post, which led to the abolition of chain gangs in North Carolina. The Journey of Reconciliation served as a model for the Montgomery bus boycott and the Freedom Rides of 1961. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj067
On December 5, 1946, President Truman signed Executive Order 9808 creating the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. The fifteen-member committee’s task was to determine how current law enforcement and federal, state, and local governments could be “improved to safeguard the civil rights of people.” The committee released its report, To Secure These Rights, on October 29, 1947. Among the recommendations were an antilynching law, the abolition of the poll tax, a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), the desegregation of the military, and laws to enforce fair housing, education, health care, and employment.
To Secure These Rights: A Brief Summary of the Report of the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1947. Pamphlet. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (284.00.00) Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj284
For more than twenty years the NAACP initiated lawsuits to nullify restrictive covenants with little success. In 1945, J. D. Shelley, a black man, purchased a home in St. Louis covered by a restrictive covenant. Louis Kraemer, a white neighbor, obtained an injunction in the Missouri Supreme Court to bar occupancy. The NAACP appealed Shelley v. Kraemer along with similar cases from Detroit and Washington, D.C., to the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 3, 1948, the court affirmed in Shelley v. Kraemer the right of individuals to make restrictive covenants, but held that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause prohibited state courts from enforcing the contracts.
George L. Vaughn to Thurgood Marshall concerning Shelley v. Kraemer, January 13, 1947. Typed letter. Page 2. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (070.00.00) Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj070
On July 26, 1948, President Harry Truman issued two executive orders. Executive Order 9980 instituted fair employment practices in the civilian agencies of the federal government. Executive Order 9981 directed the armed forces to provide “equality of treatment and opportunity for all personnel without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin” and established a presidential committee chaired by former Solicitor General Charles Fahy to monitor compliance. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj072
Korean War veteran Samuel Tucker (b. 1932) describes fighting for freedom overseas and being denied those same rights at home in an interview conducted by Bill Tressler for the Veterans History Project in 2007.
Korean War veteran Bill Saunders (b. 1935) discusses the blatant racial prejudice he and other comrades faced while serving the country in the armed forces in the Korean War in an interview conducted by Kieran Walsh Taylor for the Civil Rights History Project in 2011.
Joseph L. Rauh (1911–1992), the son of a factory owner, grew up in Cincinnati. He graduated from Harvard College and was first in his class from Harvard Law School. From 1935 to 1942, he clerked for Supreme Court Justices Benjamin Cardozo and Felix Frankfurter, his former professor, and also worked as counsel to several New Deal agencies. In 1947 he opened a law office and helped found the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). Walter Reuther hired Rauh as Washington counsel for the United Automobile Workers in 1948. By the mid-1950s, he was a leading civil rights attorney and political advisor. Rauh served as an NAACP board member, general counsel for the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and chairman of the ADA. He was a delegate to all the Democratic National Conventions from 1948 to 1972, and remained active in politics until his death. Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj074
This 1949 map divides the states into three major categories: states with “discrimination for race or color forbidden by law;” states with “segregation of white and colored enforced by law (or permitted);” and states with “no legislation” related to civil rights. The map further describes the types of discrimination allowed in each state: “travel, hotels, resorts, theaters, public schools, state and private colleges, private and public employment, civil service, health and welfare facilities, insurance,” and “public or state-aided housing.” Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj076
In October 1949 the NAACP’s National Emergency Rights Committee invited sixty advocacy organizations to unite in a National Emergency Civil Rights Mobilization that would organize a conference and mass lobby for a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) and other civil rights proposals. For three days (January 15–17, 1950), more than 4,000 delegates representing the NAACP, labor, religious, and civil liberties groups descended on Congress to urge passage of the bills. They also agreed to form a Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition to lobby for civil rights laws and monitor their compliance.
NAACP Acting Secretary Roy Wilkins to Officers of Branches, State Conferences, Youth Councils and College Chapters, October 21, 1949. Memorandum. Page 2. NAACP Records, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (075.00.00) Bookmark this item: //www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/world-war-ii-and-post-war.html#obj075 Back to top |
Which document, written after world war ii, specifically condemned these types of actions?
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