Let Us Fight as Free Men

Black Soldiers and Civil Rights

Christine Knauer

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780812209594
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

Today, the military is one the most racially diverse institutions in the United States. But for many decades African American soldiers battled racial discrimination and segregation within its ranks. In the years after World War II, the integration of the armed forces was a touchstone in the homefront struggle for equality—though its importance is often overlooked in contemporary histories of the civil rights movement. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from press reports and newspapers to organizational and presidential archives, historian Christine Knauer recounts the conflicts surrounding black military service and the fight for integration. Let Us Fight as Free Men shows that, even after their service to the nation in World War II, it took the persistent efforts of black soldiers, as well as civilian activists and government policy changes, to integrate the military. In response to unjust treatment during and immediately after the war, African Americans pushed for integration on the strength of their service despite the oppressive limitations they faced on the front and at home. Pressured by civil rights activists such as A. Philip Randolph, President Harry S. Truman passed an executive order that called for equal treatment in the military. Even so, integration took place haltingly and was realized only after the political and strategic realities of the Korean War forced the Army to allow black soldiers to fight alongside their white comrades. While the war pushed the civil rights struggle beyond national boundaries, it also revealed the persistence of racial discrimination and exposed the limits of interracial solidarity. Let Us Fight as Free Men reveals the heated debates about the meaning of military service, manhood, and civil rights strategies within the African American community and the United States as a whole.

Chapter 1

Fighting for Respect

For A. Philip Randolph, it was a fight with “gloves off.”¹ The black labor leader was no longer willing to accept the mistreatment African Americans experienced on a daily basis. Long before America’s direct involvement in the Second World War, Randolph was among the many African Americans who vehemently articulated their growing impatience and dissatisfaction with their social and political status in the United States. The war created millions of new jobs, especially in war industries. But despite the need for workers in all lines of work, discrimination and segregation continued. Moreover, the military intended to uphold segregation based on the discriminatory and oppressive “separate but equal” doctrine. African Americans now advocated most vigorously for a modification of employment regulations to ensure equal employment opportunities for blacks and the desegregation of the armed services. They attempted to capitalize on the correlations between segregation at home and fascist oppression abroad. In the light of the vastly growing criticism of fascism, their demands seemed more pressing than ever before. Racism in the armed forces, according to the African American Carolina Times, was “downright dumbness” in an international war in which Americans wanted to distinguish themselves as a democratic country.² Blacks’ frustration grew, spurring their activism against the perpetuation of inequality.³

In an attempt to push President Franklin D. Roosevelt to improve the lot of African Americans and make America live up to its own standards, Randolph founded the March on Washington Movement (MOWM), one of the most prominent and groundbreaking grassroots movements at the time. He was convinced that a mass demonstration in Washington would be the most effective way to fight the employment inequalities in government and government-related industries as well as the military segregation faced by African Americans.⁴ Based on Gandhian principles of nonviolent protest,⁵ the “first crisis concerning the racial management of the war”⁶ fought injustices in the labor market and in the military. The movement’s slogan, “We loyal Negro-American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country,”⁷ represented its unique rhetoric, which paired American patriotism with severe social criticism and used unprecedented strategies in the fight for equality and civil rights.

The movement’s primary goal was to instigate the issuance of an executive order by the president that would abolish racial discrimination in the armed forces and national defense industry, something Roosevelt was reluctant to do. According to Randolph, the president continued to treat African Americans as “half-men,” and patience was no longer an option in breaking Roosevelt’s reluctance.⁸ Many African Americans hailed and supported Randolph’s call for an African American mass march on Washington. They were impressed with its unprecedented radicalism and hoped it would be effective in the struggle for fair employment and equality.⁹ The significance of Randolph’s campaign lay in its expression of black agency; it was about making change happen rather than waiting for white cooperation and support. Building and showing racial pride and self-reliance were essential elements of the march.¹⁰

The federal government initially demanded that the march be canceled, contending that it would only stir racial hatred. Yet the campaign organizers remained unwilling to comply with President Roosevelt’s request; this, along with the rising number of African Americans planning to participate in the demonstration, began to worry government officials and the president. Randolph continued to vouch for blacks’ Americanism, patriotism, and willingness to “fight for Uncle Sam!” However, it was essential to rid society of African Americans’ status as “half-men; as semi-citizens, begging for a pittance.”¹¹ Using rhetoric of manhood, Randolph demanded recognition and respect for black men, and called for black civil rights. His calls grew increasingly impatient. He informed Roosevelt that 100,000 people were planning to participate in the march and that only issuance of an executive order that banned all racial discrimination in the war industries and armed forces could prevent the march from taking place.¹² Despite serious reservations within the government, the president acquiesced to the demands, at least partly.

On June 25, 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 that prohibited employment discrimination based on race, creed, color, or national origin in federal agencies and war-related industries. The order furthermore established the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) to monitor employment in defense industries and government agencies. Its issuance dealt a rather considerable blow to Jim Crow.¹³ Roosevelt, however, was not willing to end segregation in the military. To the dismay of many of his followers, Randolph called off the march on Washington.¹⁴ Yet his activism against discrimination and segregation of the armed forces remained steadfast; he considered the issue to be of too much importance and too much of a problem for the continued success of the black labor movement to give up.

As Randolph established the MOWM as a permanent organization, he continued to push for equality in the defense industry and, despite financial problems, to reinforce the movement’s efforts to achieve military desegregation.¹⁵ Under its auspices, Dwight and Nancy Macdonald published a pamphlet The War’s Greatest Scandal: The Story of Jim Crow in Uniform that graphically outlined the injustices and violence experienced by black soldiers at the hands of their white countrymen. The pamphlet claimed to present “a true picture of jimcrowism in the armed services and to enlist the mind and will of all Americans, Negro and white, who are concerned with democracy.”¹⁶

Mirror Image

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, subdued anti-interventionist tendencies held by some African Americans.¹⁷ Disagreements within the black community abounded with regard to African Americans’ involvement in the war effort and the extent to which it should exist, as well as attitudes toward European, African, and Asian powers, and Communism. However, the overwhelming majority of blacks still considered military service necessary, believing that an Axis victory would be a far worse outcome for all, should the war effort fail. Most blacks wanted to join the war effort, but they also intended to make a clear case for their right to equality and full civil rights and express their unwillingness to accept white supremacy.¹⁸ The war years represented “crucial period in African American history generally as well as in black engagement with foreign affairs.” Residing in more urban and Northern areas, the African American population became even more “engaged with national and international political events than ever before.” This increased interest in politics was coupled with growing influence of blacks in the urban, northern political sphere as voters and government actors.¹⁹

The black press presented a powerful platform for black leaders and intellectuals to discuss the war. They exchanged ideas, led discussions, and affected a large readership.²⁰ The 1930s and 1940s were, as historian Brenda Gayle Plummer has argued, “black journalism’s golden age.” Growing in circulation by 40 percent, black newspapers affected the lives of many more African Americans and their take on life as an oppressed minority in the United States than ever before.²¹ They criticized the hypocrisy of fighting for democracy abroad, while denying social equality to blacks or minority groups in general at home. The African American press and civil rights movement announced the launch of the “Double V” campaign to triumph over the enemies of democracy abroad as well as over segregation at home. The Pittsburgh Courier, the first to use the term, wrote:

We, as colored Americans, are determined to protect our country, our form of government and the freedoms which we cherish for ourselves and for the rest of the world, therefore we have adopted the Double “V” war cry—victory over our enemies at home and victory over our enemies on the battlefields abroad. Thus in our fight for freedom we wage a two-pronged attack against our enslavers at home and those abroad who would enslave us. WE HAVE A STAKE IN THIS FIGHT. . . . WE ARE AMERICANS, TOO!²²

This call for racial pride and proof of patriotic allegiance demanded profound changes in America’s racial hierarchy as well as a victory on foreign territories. The press linked military service and the end of discrimination to the international sphere. A successful defense of the nation would be possible only if national unity was achieved, while giving in to the racist demands of American Southerners would spell failure. Democracy, they claimed, had to be defended against vicious attacks, “RIGHT NOW and RIGHT HERE.”²³ The link between the defeat of Hitler’s Germany and Imperial Japan, and the defeat of “irresponsible and prejudiced white trash” in the United States became strong thematic trends in the African American press.²⁴

As early as 1933, black newspapers had drawn parallels between the American South and Nazism to point to the inherent hypocrisy in fighting for democracy and equality abroad, while racist ideologies existed in strength at home.²⁵ In 1936, an incensed reader of the Chicago Defender even protested the participation “of our Negro brethren” in the Olympic Games in Berlin because “The Jews are being mercilessly persecuted in Germany, and for our boys to engage in the coming Olympics is an endorsement of Nazism.”²⁶ In 1938, Roy Wilkins of the NAACP wrote: “The South approaches more nearly than any other section of the United States the Nazi idea of government by a ’master race’ without interference from any democratic process.”²⁷ During the war, George Schuyler, “an out-spoken right-winger”²⁸ and columnist for the Pittsburgh Courier, noted that “what struck me . . . was that the Nazi plan for Negroes approximates so closely what seems to be the American plan for Negroes.”²⁹ The fates of Jews in Germany and African Americans in the United States were positioned in direct relation to one another.

Throughout the war, black America aligned the Jim Crow South with Nazi Germany and listed racial violence and oppression of blacks in the United States as a victory for the enemy. In a letter to the Chicago Defender, a black recruit stationed in the South wrote, “We are shown many pictures of why we fight. They consist of how the Germans and Japanese treat other people . . . They must think we are blind not to see through all this. They talk of how the Germans and Japs do but never of how they treat thirteen million who help them fight.”³⁰ The obvious parallels between Southern Jim Crow and Nazism were considered to be powerful tools in the struggle for equality. Claude Barnett, founder of the Associated Negro Press (ANP), asked President Roosevelt what blacks had “to hope and fight for? It is not enough to say that under Hitler conditions for the Negro would be worse.”³¹ Many black commentators pointed out an inevitable foreign loss of trust in the United States, should the self-proclaimed guardian of democracy and human rights continue to allow discrimination, segregation, and violence against minorities, foremost blacks. A few African Americans even considered Japan a haven of racial equality and a potential supporter in their fight against white supremacy.³² With their willingness to serve in the military, blacks believed they had earned every right to protest, and especially among black soldiers, impatience with the unequal system was growing. African American newspapers printed numerous letters from black soldiers who condemned the mistreatment of themselves and their fellows in arms or avowed their willingness to resist and fight back against white domination.³³ Black soldiers represented the most visible and, despite their subjugated status, empowered men, who managed to seriously put white supremacy into question.

Jim Crow in Uniform

Despite a growing need for recruits during the Second World War, the military upheld restrictions on its induction and use of black soldiers. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 ruled that “any person, regardless of race or color” should be able to volunteer within the limits of the quota. Furthermore, it allowed “no discrimination against any person on account of race or color.” At the time, African Americans hoped this would ensure more openness and equality in the system. However, the military found ways to circumvent these regulations, fearing that enormous numbers of blacks would seek to join the armed forces...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Fighting for Respect
• 2. Coming Home
• 3. Stepping up the Fight
• 4. Mass Civil Disobedience
• 5. Truman’s Order
• 6. A Country They Never Knew
• 7. Black Men at War
• 8. A Mixed Army
• Epilogue
• List of Abbreviations
• Notes
• Index
• Acknowledgments