Introduction
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.
Item Description and Credits
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.
Suggested Reading
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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