The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World: Southern Civil Rights and Anticolonialism, 1937–1955

2. The World at War

2 The World at War Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered his State of the Union Address before Congress in January 1941 a few months after being elected to a third term as president. In this speech, President Roosevelt traced the isolationist tradition in U.S. foreign policy to the present day. He made the case that the United States was being threatened by forces of tyranny that were currently being fought by the Allies across several continents. It was up to Americans, in Roosevelt’s view, to increase the production of arms to support the Allies. This supply of munitions would also help fulfill the future needs of the United States. However, taxes had to be raised in order to pay for the nation’s increased defense program. Roosevelt knew that he was asking the American people to make significant sacrifices on behalf of the cause against fascism. He, therefore, closed his speech with a historic encapsulation of the rationale for taking up arms against the Axis powers : the Four Freedoms.1 These four consisted of the freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Roosevelt brilliantly summarized the case for war in a way that would be accessible to all Americans.As an orator, he was quite skilled at deconstructing complex ideas and had been doing this with much success through his fireside chats since 1933. The man who had explicated and sought support for his legislative overhaul known as the New Deal was now presenting the foundation for war to Congress and the people. In the address, Roosevelt emphasized that any peace secured following a fascist victory could not guarantee the liberties cherished by those living in the republic. He carefully elucidated the kind of future that could be expected following an Allied victory:“we look forward to a world founded on four essential human freedoms.”After listing each freedom, he stressed 65 66 · The Path to the Greater, Freer, Truer World that these freedoms were to be preserved “everywhere in the world.” The ideas of freedom of speech and freedom of worship were very familiar to Americans as they were contained in the hallowed FirstAmendment rights that were added to the U.S. Constitution to protect individual liberties against the potential domination of a strong central government. Freedom from want was a slightly more abstract conception but would have resonated deeply with a populace that was still enduring the worst economic crisis in U.S. history. Roosevelt defined the idea as securing to every nation “a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants.” This could be interpreted in a myriad of manners; however, it is significant that Roosevelt inserted this reference to economic freedom. Democracy, then, was not solely about political freedom but also had to include economic liberties like making a livelihood, supporting one’s family, and, ideally, having access to some degree of financial stability. Freedom from fear meant, in Roosevelt’s view, achieving a global reduction of armaments such that nations did not have to worry about acts of physical aggression from their neighbors. Pacifists and conscientious objectors were probably somewhat puzzled by his logic of arguing in favor of increased military production for the ultimate goal of attaining a worldwide arms reduction. In retrospect, the military buildup of the Cold War that immediately followed World War II ultimately overshadowed Roosevelt’s initial vision of freedom from fear. Yet, this idea acknowledged the sovereignty of individual nations that was expanded upon in the Atlantic Charter in the summer of 1941 and, ultimately, the charter for the United Nations in 1945. The Four Freedoms became a rallying call for the war effort. These essential human liberties positioned the Allies as representing a set of values that was fundamentally different from the authoritarianism of Germany, Italy, and Japan. The formulation of the Four Freedoms was referenced by Roosevelt in other speeches. He, for example, compared them to the Constitution and the Magna Carta; he used them to emphasize the urgency of defeating Hitler; and he highlighted them when declaring a “day of mobilization for freedom and human rights”on December 15, 1941.2 The theme of the Four Freedoms was then depicted in a variety of media for public consumption. For instance, textiles with motifs based on the Four Freedoms designed by Jay Thorpe were available for purchase by patriotic households. The Office of Emergency Management (OEM) constructed a The...