FDR and the Desegregation of the Military
In June of 1941, five months before the United States'
entry into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt
signed into law Executive Order 8802, prohibiting racial
discrimination by government defense contractors. The
order, which required defense contracts to include a
"provision obliging contractors not to discriminate
against any worker regardless of race, creed, color,
or national origin," was challenged in January
1942, when a US merchant ship refused to take on twenty-five
African American sailors. Roosevelt responded with a
strongly worded letter stating that "questions
of race, creed and color have no place in determining
who are to man our ships. The sole qualifications for
a worker in the maritime industry, as well as any other
industry, should be his loyalty and his professional
or technical ability and training."
Roosevelt's order of June 1941 and his letter below,
in defense of the African American merchant sailors,
were harbingers of President Truman's 1948 order desegregating
the US armed forces and the nascent civil rights movement.
GLC06686: Letter to Joseph Curran. Roosevelt, Franklin D., Washington, D. C., Typed letter signed, 1942/01/14
For more information or to obtain copies, contact Alyson
Barrett at reference@gilderlehrman.com
or call (212) 787-6616 ext. 209.
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Dear, I.C.B. and M.R.D. Foot, eds. The Oxford Companion
to the Second World War. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995.
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. No Ordinary Time: Franklin
and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Kersten, Andrew W. Race, Jobs, and the War.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Wynn, Neil. The Afro-American and the Second World
War. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1976.
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