The World War II Experience of Minorities

• African-Americans

• Women

• Mexican-Americans

• Japanese Americans

• during WWII African Americans were asked to actively participate in fighting for democracy in Europe

• African Americans served in military & were a source of labor in factories at home

• many felt conflicted about supporting democracy abroad when they were denied democracy at home

• Double V Campaign emerges to encourage (V #1) - victory in war and (V #2) expanded freedoms at home

• Legal Segregation (“de-jure segregation”)

• “Jim Crow” Segregation Laws

• began after Reconstruction

• laws segregating Blacks and Whites in the South

• Poll Taxes & Grandfather Clauses

• created to prevent Blacks from voting in the South

• Plessy v. Ferguson

• Supreme Court case that upheld segregation

• “separate but equal” facilities

• African Americans in American Wars

• Revolutionary War

• about 5,000 Blacks fought for the Patriots

• Civil War

• about 180,000 fought for the North in segregated units

• World War I

• many Black volunteers

• more than 350,000 served (still segregated)

• World War II

• more than 1 million served (still segregated)

African Americans served in segregated units in most of these wars. Why would they continue to volunteer to fight?

Growing Racial Friction in Northern Cities

• Farming in the south was increasingly mechanized (less need for sharecroppers)

• FDR, threatened in 1941 by black leaders (A. Phillip Randolph) with a strike, agreed to outlaw discrimination in defense industries

• When white men went off to war, a mass migration of blacks to northern industrial cities began

• Blacks and whites were increasingly ‘crammed together in Northern cities rioting and racial crimes

Women

• Rosie the Riveter– Symbol of the woman in the factory

Women (cont.)

• 12 million (1941) 18 million (1944) in the workforce

• Unequal wages • ‘Double Shift’ • (WACs) First women in American history in

combat roles – Supporting roles (but still) – 200 women killed on the battlefield during the war

• New Roles in War would lead to a movement for women’s rights in the decades after the war

Mexican-Americans

• Like other minorities, saw new opportunities in war time

• American laws were passed to allow some non-citizens to enter the U.S. to work during wartime, to deal with labor shortage during the war– (interesting tie to today, yes? Immigration

question is not new)

Zoot Suit Riots

Zoot Suit Riots

• Clashes between white servicemen (members of the military) and Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles

• Police didn’t do much to stop the servicemen