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Vol. 73/No. 9      March 9, 2009

 
The fight for Black rights during World War II
(Books of the Month column)
 
Printed below is an excerpt from Fighting Racism in World War II, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for March. In 1941 Black rights organizations called for a March on Washington to demand equality in employment and an end to segregation in the South and in the U.S. armed forces. With the U.S. rulers gearing up to enter World War II, the Franklin Roosevelt administration pressured the groups’ leaders to call the march off. The March on Washington movement did organize mass rallies in 1942 in New York and Chicago. In April 1943, 10,000 people—many of them in United Auto Workers contingents—marched in Detroit against discrimination. The piece below is based on material that originally appeared in the Militant. Copyright ©1980 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY ALBERT PARKER  
A committee of prominent Negroes headed by A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, is now engaged in furthering a march on Washington, which is scheduled to take place July 1.

Ten thousand Negroes, it is planned, will join in the march, demanding an end to Jim Crowism and discrimination in the armed forces and industry.

Certainly, if ever there was a time for the Negro people to take action against Jim Crowism and discrimination, this is the hour.

Never before has the plight of the Negro stood out so sharply against the national scene, now loud with talk about democracy and the rights of minority groups—somewhere else. Not even in 1917, just before this country entered the First World War, was there such a contrast between the treatment of the Negro and the high and shining words used to describe the advantage of living under capitalist democracy.

And now, as in 1917, there are misleaders who say that this is not the time for action, that the Negro people should wait. “Wait,” they say, “wait until later; don’t take advantage of the crisis; let us show them how loyal we are, and they will treat us differently after the war is over.”

But to do what these Uncle Toms urge would be to close our eyes to what happened last time. In 1917 the Negro people followed this advice, with tragic results. A larger proportion of Negroes than whites went into the army. They gave up their lives; they suffered insult and discrimination both in the American training camps and abroad in the AEF [American Expeditionary Forces]. And when it was all over, they were forced back into the same old Jim Crow straitjackets, Negroes who dared to continue wearing uniforms were lynched, and the Negro people did not have a single right or privilege in addition to those they had before the war.

Maybe the Negro misleaders can afford to wait—those who have soft jobs in the government, or are angling for them as a reward for their advice to sit and wait, or—that small top layer of Negroes who live well.

The Negroes dare not wait. The condition of the average Negro worker is getting worse. Nobody has all the figures—no government agency is anxious to collect them—but everyone knows that Negroes just aren’t getting jobs in any numbers or of any importance in the booming war industries.

The old saying “last hired, first fired” applies as much as ever in the present expanding industrial picture. Most of the comparatively few jobs which Negroes are getting are the lower-paid occupations abandoned by workers getting employment in the strategic industries. Those jobs Negroes do get in the big industries are limited to the menial categories. The heads of big corporations controlling airplane and similar production have openly stated they refuse to hire Negroes except as janitors and similar categories. Most of the other corporations, more discreet, say nothing, but follow the same policy.

This would be bad enough for the Negro at any time, but it is critically serious because of the economic background against which it is taking place.

The cost of living is going up. As a result of profiteering and curtailed production of consumers’ goods, food, shelter, and clothing cost more. The increased taxes to raise more money for the war machine hit the Negroes; before long these taxes will include sales taxes on everything workers use and income taxes on practically everyone working. All this is a heavy burden for the workers lucky enough to have halfway decent jobs. For the Negro people it is truly crushing.

Relief and WPA [Works Progress Administration] appropriations are being slashed. The argument that some workers have gotten jobs is being used to justify cuts in the individual relief allowances of those who aren’t getting jobs. The argument that there is less unemployment is being used to justify discontinuance of most WPA projects, although they employ the people who haven’t been able to get jobs. Since Negroes were the group that suffered the most in the depression, and since they find it hardest to get jobs today, these reductions in relief and WPA hit them the hardest.

In addition to being denied work, Negroes are being denied the right to learn how to work at skilled and semiskilled jobs. The usual argument of the officials in charge of the training schools is that there is no use in “wasting the training” when Negroes won’t be able to get jobs afterward to utilize the training. To complete this picture, it should be remembered that one of the many alibis of employers who are put on the spot is that they can’t find Negroes “qualified to handle skilled work.”

In short, because the Negro is locked out of the war boom and because at the same time he is being forced to share the costs of the war program, his plight doesn’t remain the same but grows constantly worse.

They won’t take the Negro into the factories, but they take him into the armed forces. But not as an equal. He can die for democracy but he can’t have it in life.  
 
 
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