Internet Resources
- African Americans and World War IIThis collection illustrates the inequalities faced by African Americans in the 1930s and 1940s, and examines the ways in which African Americans participated in World War II. These primary sources demonstrate how responses to racial discrimination and violence at home shaped the fight against fascism and hatred abroad.
- African Americans in World War IIExplore profiles, oral histories, photographs, and artifacts honoring African American contributions to World War II from the Museum's collection.
- Black Americans Who Served in WWII Faced Segregation Abroad and at HomeSome 1.2 million Black men served in the U.S. military during the war, but they were often treated as second-class citizens.
- Fighting for the Right to FightIn the years leading up to World War II, racial segregation and discrimination were part of daily life for many in the United States. For most African Americans, even the most basic rights and services were fragmented or denied altogether. To be black was to know the limits of freedom—excluded from the very opportunity, equality, and justice on which the country was founded.
- Honoring Black History World War II Service to the NationBlack History Month promotes education and honors our country's African American heritage. In 2020, the Department of Defense (DoD) commemorates the 75th Anniversary of World War II (WWII) by recognizing the contributions and sacrifices made by all Service members and Civilians on the homefront.
- Pictures of African Americans During World War IIWorld War II began over 80 years ago and as we continue to honor those Americans who undoubtedly and courageously contributed to the defense of our nation, we often overlook in our remembrances the valiant efforts of African Americans. Throughout the war years they repeatedly had to battle adversaries on two fronts: the enemy overseas and racism at home. African-Americans recognized the paradox of fighting a world war for the "four freedoms'' while being subjected to prejudicial practices in the United States. Thus, as the war unfolded, they vehemently insisted on the privileges of full citizenship. African-Americans were ready to work and fight for their country, but at the same time they demanded an end to the discrimination against them.
Databases
- African American Experience This link opens in a new window
The African American Experience supports research and scholarship in the field of African American Studies with a full library of works analyzing the contributions and challenges of African Americans throughout history, including the complete WPA Slave Narratives collection.
Perspectives
Fighting for America
"The African-American contribution to winning World War II has never been celebrated as profoundly as in Fighting for America. In this inspirational tribute, the essential part played by black servicemen and servicewomen in that cataclysmic conflict is brought home to twenty-first-century readers." "Here are letters, photographs, oral histories, and rare documents, collected by historian Christopher Paul Moore, himself the son of two black WWII veterans. Interweaving his family history with that of his people and nation, Moore has created an unforgettable tapestry of sacrifice, fortitude, and courage."--BOOK JACKET.
The African American Experience During World War II
Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Neil A. Wynn combines narrative history and primary sources as he locates the World War II years within the long-term struggle for African Americans' equal rights. It is now widely accepted that these years were crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement through the economic and social impact of the war, as well as the military service itself. Wynn examines the period within the broader context of the New Deal era of the 1930s and the Cold War of the 1950s, concluding that the war years were neither simply a continuation of earlier developments nor a prelude to later change. Rather, this period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. Black self consciousness at a national level found powerful expression in new movements, from the demand for equality in the military service to changes in the shop floor to the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. As the nation played a new world role in the developing Cold War, the tensions between America's stated beliefs and actual practices emphasized these issues and brought new forces into play. More than a half century later, this book presents a much-needed up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship. Accessible to general and student readers, it tells the story without jargon or theory while including the historiography and debate on particular issues.
Divided Arsenal
Divided Arsenal compares the causes and effects of federal race policy during World War II in factories, the Army, and agriculture. While scholars such as Gunner Mydrdal have suggested that wars promote the salience of the nation's founding democratic and egalitarian ideals, two imperatives - the mobilization of industrial production and the maintenance of the New Deal Coalition - outweigh the goals of interracial reform. The history of industrial employment policies confirms the role of party and war-fighting concerns in the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee and the committee's investigative casework. While military racial policies were initially repressive, by spurring black soldier resistance they paradoxically facilitated steps toward desegregation by transforming the executive's calculation of military efficiency. Important similarities in the timing and quality of reform in the three fields indicate that war-fighting concerns affected policy outcomes despite variations in African-American political and economic opportunities in various sectors and sections.
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II
A Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the "Age of Neoslavery," the American period following the Emancipation Proclamation in which convicts, mostly black men, were "leased" through forced labor camps operated by state and federal governments. In this groundbreaking historical expose, Douglas A. Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history--an "Age of Neoslavery" that thrived from the aftermath of the Civil War through the dawn of World War II. Using a vast record of original documents and personal narratives, Douglas A. Blackmon unearths the lost stories of slaves and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude shortly thereafter. By turns moving, sobering, and shocking, this unprecedented account reveals the stories of those who fought unsuccessfully against the re-emergence of human labor trafficking, the companies that profited most from neoslavery, and the insidious legacy of racism that reverberates today.
To Serve My Country, to Serve My Race
The story of the historic 6888th, the first United States Women's Army Corps unit of African American women to serve overseas While African American men and white women were invited, if belatedly, to serve their country abroad, African American women were excluded for overseas duty throughout most of WWII. However, under political pressure from legislators like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the NAACP, the Black press, and even President Roosevelt, the US War Department was forced to deploy African American women to the European theater in 1945. African American women answered the call to serve from all over the country, from every socioeconomic stratum. Stationed in France and England at the end of World War II, the 6888th brought together women like Mary Daniel Williams, a cook in the unit who signed up for the Army to escape the slums of Cleveland and to improve her ninth-grade education, and Margaret Barnes Jones, the unit's public relations officer, who grew up in a comfortable household with a politically active mother who encouraged her to challenge the system. Despite the social, political, and economic restrictions imposed upon these women in their own country, they were eager to serve, not only out of patriotism but out of a desire to uplift their race and dispel bigoted preconceptions about their abilities. Elaine Bennett, a First Sergeant, joined because "I wanted to prove to myself and maybe to the world that we would give what we had back to the United States as a confirmation that we were full- fledged citizens." Filled with compelling personal stories based on extensive interviews, To Serve My Country, To Serve My Race is the first book to document the lives of these courageous pioneers. It reveals how their Army experience affected them for the rest of their lives and how they, in turn, transformed the US military forever.
Streaming Media
- Liberators: Fighting on Two Fronts in World War IIA feature documentary about African-American soldiers in World War II who fought in the segregated US Army and helped liberate Nazi concentration camps.
- A Distant Shore: African Americans of D-Day1.2 million African Americans served in World War II in some capacity, and although largely forgotten by history, nearly 2,000 African Americans were among the troops who stormed the beaches of Normandy.