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Activities: Context Activities With Justice for All: From World War II to the Civil Rights Movement  Back to Context Activities
From James Fenimore Cooper to Ernest Hemingway, American heroes have often been defined by their ability to defeat in battle those things and people considered "anti-American." During World War II, many non-European and non-Christian Americans displayed their patriotism by enlisting in the armed forces. Not only was their enlisting a way to gain-or publicly display-citizenship, but it was also a way of resisting government proclamations about who "the enemy" was. Even as Japanese American families were being interned as "enemies of the state," for example, Japanese American men were enlisting, fighting overseas, and being honored for their efforts. As these servicemen returned home, however, they were often recognized not so much as heroes but as racial "others." These situations have been treated by writers like Philip Roth in "Defender of the Faith," N. Scott Momaday in House Made of Dawn, and Ralph Ellison in Invisible Man. These diverse veterans of World War II had hoped that their loyalty and service to the country might demonstrate that the stereotypical and racist attitudes held by many white Americans were unfair and undeserved. As with the war years, the decades beyond the war continued to be a time of segregation and discrimination in the United States. It took a threatened coordinated march on Washington and other major cities by African Americans in June 1941 before Franklin Roosevelt would issue Executive Order 8802, mandating full and equitable participation in defense industries, without discrimination due to race, creed, color, or national origin. This order was, however, rarely enforced over the next few years. Even after the United States entered the war, the War Department refused to integrate military units "on the grounds that it would undermine the morale of white soldiers" (Oxford Companion to World War II 5). African Americans who did enlist early during the war were mostly forced into servile support roles in both the army and the navy. The Army Air Corps resisted accepting African Americans until compelled to do so. Eventually, the 99th Fighter Squadron, an African American unit based in Tuskegee, Alabama, would go on to gain fame in the Mediter-ranean. Many other such units and individuals distinguished themselves in service to their country. By the war's end in 1945, great gains had been made in increased service and command opportunities for soldiers of color. After the war was over, many minority veterans returned to the United States with expectations of social and cultural change, yet in instance after instance they encountered heavy resistance from whites who were determined to return race relations to a prewar state. Just as most of the women who worked in factories during the war were expected to give up their jobs and return to the home, African American workers were also expected to leave industrial jobs that had previously been held by whites who had gone off to war. Fights and riots related to these issues broke out in Detroit, New York, Mobile, and other cities and towns in the United States. Still, by the late 1940s, African Americans had, by working in industry, government, and military positions, made great strides economically, forming the beginnings of a black middle class. Also, in moving to northern, midwestern, and western urban areas to seek better jobs, they left many of the restrictions and the racist culture of the Jim Crow South behind. Many of these themes are seen in the works of Ralph Ellison and Gwendolyn Brooks. The 1950s would see African Americans and other minorities strive for even more gains on cultural, political, and economic fronts in the United States. In December 1955 Rosa Parks initiated a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, and one year later the Supreme Court made bus segregation illegal. In 1957, President Dwight Eisenhower sent U.S. Army troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to enforce the desegregation of its public schools. In August 1957, Congress passed the Voting Rights Bill, attempting to ensure equal voting privileges for minorities. In early 1960, the Greensboro sit-ins began, with students protesting segregation policies at a Woolworth's lunch counter. Such protests spread to many other towns in the South. In the 1960s, mostly under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr., Freedom Rides in the South and marches on Washington helped make the civil rights movement one of the major cultural events of the twentieth century. Still, racial discord and strife continued throughout the 1960s. World War II also had a major impact on Japanese Americans, especially those living and working in the western United States. With the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the United States entered World War II. Fears about national security, especially on the West Coast, influenced by racial ideology, led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 9066 in February 1942. All persons of Japanese ancestry, both citizens and aliens, were ordered out of the Pacific military zone to inland internment camps. Roosevelt's order affected 117,000 people, two-thirds of whom were native-born citizens of the United States. There was no distinction made between designated aliens from Japan, Japanese immigrants, and second-generation American-born citizens of Japanese descent. Many families lost their homes and possessions in the move, as they were unable to work in order to pay rents and mortgages. The struggling United States economy was greatly affected, as Japanese American farmers on the West Coast had been producing a significant amount of the country's vegetables and fruits. The effects of the Executive Order were far-reaching. Medical and legal licenses were revoked, life insurance policies cancelled, and bank accounts confiscated. The inland internment camps were little more than primitive prisons, often located in remote areas. Multiple families were housed in quickly constructed and poorly made barracks with little or no privacy. Some have compared these places to European concentration camps. It took until 1945 for the order barring Japanese Americans from the West Coast to be terminated. Though many Japanese Amer-icans were greatly angered by this treatment and some renounced their citizenship, a large number volunteered to serve in the armed forces. It was decades before the United States government would admit to its error in this decision. In 1989, nearly fifty years after the fact, President George Bush signed the Internment Compensation Act, which awarded twenty thousand dollars to each surviving victim of the camps. A class-action lawsuit in 1993 also recognized that these citizens' constitutional rights had been violated. Many nonfiction works have been written on the subject of Japanese American internment camps, such as Farewell to Manzanar (1973) by Jeanne Wakatsuki Huston. Fiction dealing with this subject includes works like Yoshiko Uchida's Journey Home (1978) and Margaret Poynter's A Time Too Swift (1990). Questions
[3035] Chicago Daily Defender, Newspaper Headline: "President Truman Wipes out Segregation in Armed Forces" (1948), courtesy of the Library of Congress [microfilm 1057]. A major victory against segregation, Truman's executive order eliminated segregation in the military after thousands of African American veterans threatened to march on Washington in protest. African American veterans found the return to life in Jim Crow America especially difficult after the relative freedom and enlightened racial attitudes they experienced in Europe during World War II. Many of these men became local leaders in civil rights struggles in the South. [4087] Arthur S. Siegel, Baltimore, Maryland. Women Learning to Use (?) a Pantograph and Template for Cutting at the Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyards (1943), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USW3-028672-C]. In order to sustain the massive war production needed for fighting on both the European and the Pacific fronts, women were hired in many factory and heavy industry jobs-positions from which they had been previously excluded. Such independence and civic participation helped bolster women's organizing after the war, including protests for equal rights and welfare reform. [5079] NAACP, Sign Reading 'Waiting Room for Colored Only, by Order Police Dept.' (1943), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-120260 (b&w film copy neg.)] Martin Luther King Jr. was a brilliant orator. His skill with language was one of his most powerful weapons in the fight for civil rights. King's fight for equality was crucial to ending the "separate but equal" policy that had reigned in the southern states following Reconstruction. [7865] Charles Keck, Statue of Booker T. Washington (1922), courtesy of the Library of Congress [LC-USZ62-103181]. "I am standing puzzled, unable to decide whether the veil is really being lifted, or lowered more firmly in place; whether I am witnessing a revelation or a more efficient blinding."-Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man. Ellison's narrator's comment reflects the debate over how African Americans should be educated. Born into slavery but freed after the Civil War, Booker T. Washington devoted his life to the advancement of African Americans. Although he was respected by both blacks and whites, Washington came under criticism for his willingness to trade social equality for economic opportunity. [8522] Ansel Adams, Manzanar Relocation Center from Tower (1943), courtesy of the Library of Congress, Ansel Adams Manzanar War Relocation Photographs [LOT 10479-2, no. 8]. In 1943 one of America's best-known photographers, Ansel Adams, documented the daily life of the Japanese Americans interned at the Manzanar Relocation Center in the high desert of California. [8523] Ansel Adams, Loading Bus, Leaving Manzanar for Relocation, Manzanar Relocation Center, CA (1943), courtesy of the Library of Congress, Ansel Adams Manzanar Relocation Photographs [LOT 10479-2, no. 14]. The Manzanar Relocation Center was one of nine Japanese internment camps. In what would come to be seen as among the greatest mistakes made by the U.S. government during World War II, thousands of Japanese citizens were held in camps against their will. [8598] War Relocation Authority, Relocation of Japanese Americans (1943), courtesy of Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University. On February 19, 1942, just over two months after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt signed the Japanese Relocation Act and created the War Relocation Authority. The WRA removed and detained some 120,000 Japanese over the next four years. Over 60 percent of the internees were U.S. citizens; many others had resided in the country for decades. [8600] Earl A. Harrison, Americans of Foreign Birth in the War Program for Victory (1942), courtesy of special collections, Michigan State University Library. Speech delivered in 1942 by Harrison to the American Committee for the Protection of Foreign Born addressing the special role of millions of non-native-born Americans in the war effort. The speech commends this group's loyalty and help to their new country. Though non-U.S. citizens could not fight in the war, they helped "provide the armed forces and the military supplies to facilitate the development of a second military front on the battlefield of Europe to ensure the complete defeat of the Nazi army." |
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