Montgomery in the Good War: Portrait of a Southern City, 1939-1946

Introduction - Allen Cronenberg

Introduction Allen Cronenberg World War II had a profound impact on America, including Alabama and the rest ofthe American South, and perhaps shaped society even more than the Civil War. Such was the view cautiously advanced a little more than a decade ago by Morton Sosna.I More recently , a probing collection of essays by Sosna, James C. Cobb, and Clarence L. Mohr, among others, in Remaking Dixie: The Impact of World War II on the American South, edited by Neil R. McMillen, suggests that World War II produced dramatic changes that ultimately led to the modern Sunbelt South.2 While they do not deny the Civil War's significance-most importantly with respect to the preservation of the union and the abolition of slavery-some of these historians maintain that it produced little fundamental long-term change. The South remained overwhelmingly rural, still dependent on cotton and on the industry ofthe North. The planter class, in alliance with a small industrial, financial, and commercial class, retained most ofits power, if not its wealth. Sharecropping and tenancy took the place of slavery. Jim Crow laws robbed African Americans of the elusive promise of equality under the law. The patriarchal social order at home and in the community was still intact. Because of poll taxes, poor whites were as disenfranchised as blacks. On the other hand, some ofthe most important developments that radically altered Alabama and the American South in the second half ofthe twentieth century originated in World War II. Although Gerald Nash has written quite convincingly about the role that World War II played in transforming the American West, especially California, into XVI Introduction the booming juggernaut ofmodern American society, no comparable study exists for the American South. By almost any measure, however -significant industrial and commercial growth; revolutionary changes in race relations and civil rights; remaking of gender relations and family structures; vast expansion of governmental authority , especially federal; demographic shifts, especially urbanization and the influx of nonsoutherners into the region; erosion of the Democratic Party's primacy and the emergence of a genuine two-party political system; and greatly expanded and more democratic access to higher education-World War II clearly marked the start of a comparable transformation in the American South. In contrast to the seemingly endless stream ofbooks and articles on the Civil War and its aftermath, only a few modern studies or anecdotal histories--on Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida--examine the profound impact ofWorld War II on southern states and assess their contributions to the war effort.3 Even fewer accounts ofthe impact ofWorld War II on southern cities have been written. A notable exception is Robert Spinney's splendid and recently published study of Nashville, Tennessee, during World War 11.4 Nashville lacked the booming defense industry or a huge, newly established military facility on the scale ofcomparable medium-sized towns such as Mobile, Norfolk, or San Diego, which almost overnight became heavily impacted metropolitan areas. Nonetheless , Spinney argues, Nashville experienced a decisive rupture with its past. He argues that, in addition to the war's influence on the future of race relations and the role of women in American societyarguably two ofthe defining issues in southern history, and indeed in American history, in the second halfofthe twentieth century-World War II further broke down resistance to the growth ofthe power and scope of the state, especially the federal government, which assumed ballooning responsibilities in subsequent decades. Even in the South, Spinney argues, traditional opposition to the expansion ofstate power eroded when political and economic leaders were confronted with demands for improved public works, better jobs, and, after World War II, access to higher education and improved health care. Introduction XVII Now Wes Newton's book on Montgomery provides another important case study ofthe impact ofWorld War II on a major southern city. This is the first important study of an Alabama city-and its people-in World War II. Newton describes the enormous contributions that Montgomery and its people made to the war and considers how the war served as a catalyst for future change while also reinforcing many traditional values, beliefs, and practices. This book is, in many ways, a personal memoir. Wes Newton's perceptions of events are shaped by his own memories and experiences. Newton came of age in Montgomery during the early 1940s, graduated from Sidney Lanier High School, fought in...