Home Front: North Carolina during World War II by Julian M. Pleasants (review)

Using document collections, contemporary newspapers (especially the Raleigh News and Observer), and almost one hundred oral history interviews with ordinary North Carolinians, Julian Pleasants argues that World War II, more than the New Deal, ushered in the modern age for the Tar Heel State: the war ended the Great Depression and changed North Carolina from a rural, provincial, poor, racist society to an urban, industrialized state.

At the outset of the war, North Carolina was one of the poorest states in the Union, with per capita income ranked forty-fifth out of the forty-eight states. In World War II, it had the highest draft rejection rate of all the states as determined by the Selective Service. Illiteracy and a lack of education, particularly in rural areas, were the primary reasons for the exclusion of many draftees. Poor health, namely lack of dental care, rickets, pellagra, and malnutrition, also contributed to the high rate of draftees being rejected.

But World War II transformed the state. The federal government created over fifty new military bases in North Carolina to train two million troops. These bases brought an influx of outsiders, both civilian and military personnel, who challenged the state's status quo and brought different attitudes and cultural changes. The war also invigorated the Tar Heel State's economy. The timber, mineral, textile, tobacco, and shipbuilding industries boomed due to federal contracts, thus enabling farmers and manufacturing firms to achieve economic success heretofore unimaginable.

Although racial and gender discrimination remained, World War II provided new social and economic opportunities for black North Carolinians and women by filling jobs once limited to white men and helping to pave the way for the postwar civil and women's rights movements. Seven thousand of North Carolina's women served in all-female branches of the military, while thousands of others began to work outside the home for the first time. Black and white women worked in agriculture, textile mills, tobacco factories, and shipbuilding and took on highly-skilled jobs in defense industries as welders and riveters. War gave black women a chance to get out of domestic work and led to increased income, but the gain for them was not as great as for white women. As interviewees point out, black women were relegated to the lesser-skilled positions and were paid less than their white counterparts. These jobs, nevertheless, gave both black and white women a newfound sense of self-confidence, and many emerged from the experience stronger and more independent than ever before. Seventy-five thousand African American men served in the military during the war. These returning veterans, moreover, did not intend to tolerate Jim Crow laws and legal segregation after their wartime experiences overseas. They helped form the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement as they challenged the entrenched social order in North Carolina as well as in other southern states.

The war also led to a more important role for the state government, which then provided expanded services for its citizens. North Carolina had accumulated a large budget surplus during the war and began to use those funds to improve education and health and to finance infrastructure projects. Higher education also received an important boost with the introduction of the GI Bill of Rights as the state's veterans could look forward to a free college education and a more promising future.

Going beyond guns and battles, Julian Pleasants helps fill a void in our knowledge of home front America during World War II. He is a master of the historian's craft, cleverly combining oral history interviews with the paper trail to bring a human quality to his work as individual North Carolinians describe how the war changed their lives. Almost every family in North Carolina had been affected by the war in one way or another. Interviewees tell poignant accounts of lost...