Toward Freedom Land: The Long Struggle for Racial Equality in America

Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War

65 Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War To many, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War” appeared to be merely a variation on the theme of the Detroit race riot article published two years earlier. It was similarly praised by New Leftist historians for describing “the brutality toward and degradation of black soldiers during World War II, the military’s refusal to protect its black members from white mobs, and Roosevelt’s total disregard for violent race riots. Like Wilson’s southern advisers , Roosevelt’s southern advisers refused to alleviate or prevent the numerous lynchings and vicious race riots which occurred throughout the country” (Blanche Wiesen Cook, Alice Kessler Harris, and Ronald Radosh, eds., Past Imperfect: Alternative Essays in American History [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973], 237). Although this was a correct summation of the conditions underlying the riots, what went largely misunderstood or ignored at the time was the extent to which this later essay stressed the stifling, stunting effect of wartime racial violence on black militancy. The riots forced black organizations and newspapers to urge the struggle out of the streets and into the courtroom . Winning white allies and promoting better race relations superseded hopes for an all-black mass direct-action movement. Despite this change, attributing black wartime gains to aggressive militancy won favor among the New Left generation of historians. It became commonplace to describe the Second World War as the watershed in the black freedom struggle and to ascribe that pivotal event to wartime African American militancy. I still don’t think so. Let the debate go on. “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War” first appeared in Journal of American History 58 (December 66 Toward Freedom Land 1971), 661–81, and is reprinted by permission of the Organization of American Historians. World War II opened a quarter of a century of increasing hope and frustration for the black man. After a decade of depression, the ideological character of the war and the government’s need for the loyalty and manpower of all Americans led blacks to expect a better deal from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. With a near unanimity rare in the Negro community, civil rights groups joined with the Negro press and influential, church, labor, and political leaders to demand “Democracy in Our Time!”1 Individuals and organizations never before involved in a protest movement found it respectable, even expedient, to be part of the new militancy in the black community.2 The war stimulated racial militancy, which in turn led to increased interracial violence that culminated in the bloody summer of 1943. Negro leaders then retreated, eschewing mass movements and direct action in favor of aid from white liberals for their congressional and court battles. While many of the goals of the early war years remained, the mood and tactics became increasingly conservative.3 Paradoxically , the wartime violence which summoned forth the modern civil rights movement, enlisting in the struggle scores of liberal organizations and tens of thousands of whites previously blind or indifferent to American racism, also smothered the embryonic black movement for equality by tying it ever more closely to liberal interracialism, which all too easily accepted the appearance of racial peace for the reality of racial justice. By the end of the war two trends emerged which would shape the course of the next two decades. Jim Crow had stumbled badly enough to heighten the aspirations of many Negroes that they would soon share the American Dream; and leadership in the battle for civil rights had been taken over by various communist-front organizations , labor unions, religious groups fighting intolerance, and social scientists making a career of studying race relations.4 At the beginning of this war, unlike World War I, few Negro leaders asked blacks to close ranks and ignore their grievances until the war ended.5 Rather, the very dependency of the government on the cooperation of the Negro intensified his demand for civil rights. “If we don’t fight for our rights during this war,” said one Harlem leader, “while the government needs us, it will be too late after the war.”6 Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War 67 Memories of the false promises of World War I stirred a reader of the Amsterdam-Star News to write: “Remember, that which you fail to get...