George Washington to New Hampshire, 29 December 1777 (Detail, GLC03706) Great Depression, World War II, and the American West: World War II and black Americans: roots of the Civil Rights Movement by Ian Cummings Midland School 1) Mark Jonathan Harris et al., The Home Front: America during World War II (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1984), 251-52; 2) Michigan Chronicle, April 3, 1943, 2. As World War II began, 75 percent of black Americans remained in the South, 90 percent lived in poverty, only 25 percent had a high school education. One-third of employed black men were sharecroppers or tenant farmers, and the majority of working black women labored as domestic servants or farmhands. As the nation's economy revived during the war, however, black leaders - particularly Asa Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters - siezed the moment to press President Franklin Roosevelt to use his authority to improve the lives of black Americans by guaranteeing them access to jobs in the rapidly growing defense industry. A reluctant Roosevelt ultimately complied with Executive Order 8802; issued on June 25, 1941, it banned "discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin." The effect of Roosevelt's order was dramatic, as David Kennedy writes in Freedom From Fear: "The lure of defense-industry jobs and the assurance of at least a measure of federal protection triggered an enormous black exodus from the South, one that eventually rivaled in size the huge European migrations earlier in the century. Some seven hundred thousand black civilians left the region during the war years. In every month of 1943 ten thousand Negroes.. .streamed into Los Angeles alone." (David Kennedy, Freedom From Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999], 763-70) The following two documents provide the student the opportunity to consider the effects that the mid-century migration of black Americans had on their lives and on race relations in general. The first document is testimony of Sybil Lewis, an African-American woman who left her home in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, where she earned $3.50 a week as a domestic servant, and moved to the Los Angeles area, where she worked as a riveter, a "bucker," and a welder for various defense industries. In the second document, Louis Emanuel Martin, editor of the Michigan Chronicle, a weekly black newspaper in Detroit, addresses Attorney General Francis Biddle regarding a series of racially motivated "wildcat" strikes in defense-industry plants in the Detroit area. Tensions between the races ran high in Detroit throughout the spring of 1943 (Martin, for instance, mentions the "Sojourner Truth controversy," in which racial violence broke out over a housing shortage) and culminated in a riot that killed 25 blacks and nine whites less than three months after Martin wrote to Biddle. . Document One Sybil Lewis: Had it not been for the war I don't think blacks would be in the position they are now. The war and defense work gave black people opportunities to work on jobs they never had before. It gave them opportunity to do things they had never experienced before. They made more money and began to experience a different lifestyle. Their expectations changed. Money will do that. You could sense that they would no longer be satisfied with the way they had lived before. When I got my first paycheck, I'd never seen that much money before, not even in the bank, because I'd never been in a bank too much. I don't recall exactly what it was in the aircraft plant, but it was more than three hundred dollars a month, and later, in the shipyard, it was even more. To be able to buy what you wanted, your clothing and shoes, all this was just a different way of life. Other experiences I had during the war were important, too, like having to rivet with a white farm girl from Arkansas and both of us having to relate to each other in ways that we had never experienced before. Although we had our differences we both learned to work together and talk together. We learned that despite our hostilities and resentments we could open up to each other and get along. As I look back now I feel that experience was meaningful to me and meaningful to her. She learned that Negroes were people, too, and I saw her as a person also, and we both gained from it. It's too bad it took a war to motivate people to move here to want to make more of their lives, but if it had not been for the war offering better jobs and opportunities, some people would have never left the South. They would have had nothing to move for. Had it not been for the war I probably would have ended up a schoolteacher in rural Oklahoma, but the impact of the war changed my life, gave me an opportunity to leave my small town and discover there was another way of life. It financed my college education and opened my eyes to opportunities I could take advantage of when the war was over. Document Two Attorney General Francis Biddle Washington, D.C. Dear Sir: We wish to call to your attention a series of incidents involving race relations among war workers in the Detroit area which we believe may be traced to the activity of subversive elements. During the last eight weeks a number of work stoppages, walkouts, and strikes have taken place in various war plants where Negro workers have been up-graded and given new job opportunities. Doubtless your office is familiar with some of these cases. White workers in several divisions of the Packard Motor Car company, in the Duplex Printing company, the Ex-Cell-O Corporation, United States Rubber and Detroit Aluminum and Brass company, to mention a few, have demonstrated against the integration of Negro war workers in the last few weeks which resulted in significant loss of production. The leaders of the unions to which most of these workers belong have worked to avert these stoppages and to obviate conflicts which menace war production and damage the morale of all workers in the plants. In most instances the various managements have cooperated with the unions in this effort. Neither union leadership nor the company representatives have been able to do a thoroughly effective job, and we believe that they will be the first to admit this fact. In each of the cases, it has been reported, that the demonstrations of the white workers are well organized, calculated, and deliberate. In other words, the whites are being given leadership in these affairs and the latent racial prejudices of the workers are being effectively exploited. It is our considered judgement that pro-Axis agents and subversive forces are at work among the rank and file of workers in many of these war plants. You will recall that in the Sojourner Truth controversy a federal grand jury indicted three persons for subversive activity. Racial conflicts in this area would, because of its overwhelming importance to our war effort, play directly into the hands of the Axis powers. We believe that a deliberate effort to destroy the peace of this community is being diligently pressed andd that unless some remedial measures are taken shortly a crisis may be expected. Certainly it is unnecessary to tell you of the damaging effect these anti-Negro demonstrations are having on the morale of our Negro workers who are producing for victory. The fact that they have increased in the last few weeks is an ominous portent. Many articles and a great many conferences in the last few months have dealt with the attitude of the Negro toward the war effort. Even the federal government has recognized the need for attacking the vicious anti-Negro employment practices of employers and combatting the propaganda of Klan-minded elements in our society. The Nazi government has boasted that our country is divided and that we can be conquered from within. Indeed without unity, our victory will be delayed and we will pay for our prejudices in an unnecessary loss of human life. The serious implications of this new wave of demonstrations against Negro war workers and the direct effect it has upon war production impel us to appeal to your office for immediate action. Pro-Axis elements are at work and we cannot permit them to thwart the war effort without serious injury to ourselves and to the cause of the United Nations. It is our hope that you will order an immediate investigation of these anti-democratic developments in this arsenal of democracy. Sincerely yours, Louis Emanuel Martin, Editor 1. In what ways did the opportunity to obtain defense-industry jobs change the lives of black workers like Sybil Lewis? 2. Explain how the integration of defense industries affected race relations. 3. In what ways did the war and the employment of blacks in defense industries give blacks some degree of political leverage? How does Mr. Louis Emanuel Martin attempt to exploit that leverage in his letter? 4. How might the experience of black Americans in their new homes and new jobs, in defense industries in particular, have contributed to the Civil Rights Movement that flowered in the two decades that followed the World War II?