Keeping the Faith

• Print
• Cite
• Share

• Share this Page

  Delicious
  Stumbleupon
  Digg
  

African Americans Return to Congress, 1929–1970

The Second World War

World War II marked a watershed moment in African-American history. It brought economic opportunities and opened new avenues for participation in American society. On the eve of the war, roughly 75 percent of American blacks lived in the South, two-thirds of them in rural areas. For the year 1939, 87 percent of black families were estimated to live below the federal poverty level (compared to less than half of white families), and blacks’ per capita income was 39 percent that of whites. The war effort produced immense change by renewing the Great Migration, which had stalled during the Great Depression. Between 1940 and 1960, more than 4.5 million African Americans emigrated from the South to the urban North and the West. During the war years alone, approximately 700,000 black civilians left the South for destinations such as Los Angeles to take industrial jobs created by the demands of full-scale mobilization and to seek opportunities for political participation that did not exist in the South—where less than 5 percent of blacks were allowed to vote.⁴⁹

Roughly one million blacks served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, with approximately half serving overseas. The war effort offered more opportunities than ever for African Americans to defend their country, though discrimination and segregation circumscribed their ability to contribute. While thousands of African Americans served in combat—among them the army’s 92nd and 93rd all-black divisions, as well as the famed 99th Pursuit Squadron (known as the Tuskegee Airmen)—the most common assignments for black servicemen were rear-guard mopping-up actions and menial supply and requisition roles. A lack of education among blacks generally and the prejudice of local draft boards and the military leadership accounted for much of the army’s reluctance to assign African Americans to combat roles.⁵⁰ In 1942, Representative Mitchell repeatedly called attention to British military reverses in Singapore, noting that the colonial power failed “due in part to its own discriminations” against the native people, which undermined morale. “America might suffer a like fate,” Mitchell warned, “if we insist upon destroying the morale of one-tenth of its fighting strength.”⁵¹ The American call to arms, Mitchell noted bitterly while reflecting on segregation in the army and the navy, “is for white people only, except where Negroes are needed to do the most menial service. Is this democracy? How long will this American practice be kept up?…While we are adjusting affairs the world over, we must not fail to adjust affairs in our own country and in our own hearts.”⁵²

Wartime experiences also mobilized black political activism. Enrollment in the NAACP, which soared from 50,000 on the eve of U.S. intervention in the war to 450,000 in 1946, constituted one measure of renewed political activity. The organization’s “Double V” campaign, with its slogan “Democracy Abroad—At Home,” called for victory over fascism abroad and victory over racism at home. In A Rising Wind (1945), influential NAACP Secretary Walter White suggested that although African Americans were maltreated and maligned even during the war effort, they were too resilient to wallow in “defeatist disillusionment.” Instead, White predicted, as the United States demobilized its wartime effort against the Axis Powers, homeward-bound African-American servicemen would enlist in the effort to conquer Jim Crow, “convinced that whatever betterment of their lot is achieved must come largely from their own efforts. They will return determined to use those efforts to the utmost.”⁵³ In this way African Americans’ wartime experiences helped foster the modern civil rights movement.

Equally significant, the war against fascism and totalitarian regimes reminded millions of Americans of democracy’s shortcomings on the segregated home front. A number of southern states still used the poll tax—a fee as high as $2, earmarked for school improvements, that voters had to pay before casting their ballots. The cost was prohibitive for poor voters, who were overwhelmingly black.⁵⁴ In a brief speech on the House Floor during a 1943 debate on a bill to outlaw the poll tax, freshman Representative William Dawson recalled his meager public education as a boy in Georgia, which was supplemented by private schooling, his family “slaved” to pay for. “You know that any method used to try to keep a citizen from exercising [the right to vote] is against the true spirit of the Constitution of the United States,” he told colleagues. “In the cause of the 13,000,000 patriotic and loyal Negro citizens I beseech the passage of this bill.” Several hours later, the House approved the measure by a sound 265 to 110 vote. However, the bill never cleared the Senate. In 1945, 1947, and 1949, the House again passed anti-poll tax bills. Over time, the measure became less controversial because fewer states employed the poll tax. Still, southern Senators blocked the legislation from being enacted.⁵⁵

Fair Employment Practices Committee

A critical moment in the development of black political activism came in 1941 when civil rights proponents, led by A. Philip Randolph, threatened to march on Washington, DC, to protest discrimination against blacks in the war industry. President Roosevelt consented to act only grudgingly, when his efforts to cajole and dissuade black leaders from vigorously protesting his inaction had been completely exhausted. On June 25, 1941, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, which declared “full participation in the national defense program by all citizens of the United States, regardless of race, creed, color, or national origin,” based on “the firm belief that the democratic way of life within the Nation can be defended successfully only with the help and support of all groups within its borders.” The order required that the federal government, unions, and defense industries “provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers.”⁵⁶ The President intended to mollify black protest in the face of probable U.S. intervention in World War II, but in issuing his executive order, he inspired black activists, who viewed it, and widely portrayed it, as a milestone victory in bending the federal government to their cause.

Roosevelt’s order also created the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) in the federal Office of Personnel Management to investigate complaints about hiring practices. Thousands availed themselves of the FEPC mechanism, though it drew harsh criticism from opponents of the administration’s New Deal programs and racial conservatives. In May 1944, congressional opponents of the FEPC, led by Representative Malcolm C. Tarver of Georgia, introduced a measure to repeal the $500,000 annual appropriation for the committee, presenting arguments on several fronts. Tarver suggested that the FEPC was an executive fiat “and does not have the approval or legislative sanction of Congress.”⁵⁷ Segregationist and avowed New Deal foe John Elliott Rankin of Mississippi declared that the FEPC was“ beginning of a communistic dictatorship, the likes of which America never dreamed.”⁵⁸

Only one African American—William Dawson of Chicago—served in Congress and could defend the record of the committee. Noting that he spoke for “more than a million Negro Americans fighting today with our armed forces and more than 13,000,000 here at home,” Dawson argued that the FEPC finally ensured blacks a fair part in the war production effort. “So when I hear some Members stand here and refer to it as a dictatorial committee, bent on making people do something that they do not wish to do, I know that they are not stating the facts to you. They are merely making statements in order to carry out their own purposes.”⁵⁹ Later that afternoon, the House voted 139 to 95 to agree to the amendment to pull funding for the FEPC. But the Labor Committee, chaired by sympathetic Representative Mary Norton of New Jersey, held hearings on permanently establishing the FEPC—a move that was backed by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt—and funding was temporarily restored.⁶⁰ Opponents of the FEPC prevailed in 1946, when they garnered enough support in both chambers to let the FEPC lapse. Twice, proponents of creating a permanent commission—prodded by liberals like Adam Clayton Powell and California Representative Helen Gahagan Douglas, who represented a large black constituency in Los Angeles—brought an FEPC bill before the House. A version of the bill passed the House in February 1950, but southern opponents had fatally weakened its enforcement powers. The measure, which provided only for investigatory and proposal functions, died later that year when it was filibustered in the Senate.

Continue Reading »

Footnotes