886 ★ CHAPTER 22 Fighting for the Four Freedoms: World War IIItalo and started becoming Americans.”
But the event that inspired this com-
ment, the Harlem race riot of 1943,
suggested that patriotic assimilation
stopped at the color line.The Bracero Program
The war had a far more ambiguous
meaning for non-white groups than for
whites. On the eve of Pearl Harbor, racial
barriers remained deeply entrenched in
American life. Southern blacks were
still trapped in a rigid system of segre-
gation. Asians could not emigrate to
the United States or become natural-
ized citizens. As noted in the previous
chapter, more than 400,000 Mexican-
Americans had been “voluntarily”
repatriated by local authorities in the
Southwest during the Depression. Most
American Indians still lived on reserva-
tions, in dismal poverty.
The war set in motion changes that
would reverberate in the postwar years.
Under the bracero program agreed to by
the Mexican and American governments
in 1942 (the name derives from brazo, the Spanish word for arm), tens of thousands
of contract laborers crossed into the United States to take up jobs as domestic and
agricultural workers. Initially designed as a temporary response to the wartime
labor shortage, the program lasted until 1964. During the period of the bracero pro-
gram, more than 4.5 million Mexicans entered the United States under govern-
ment labor contracts (while a slightly larger number were arrested for illegal entry
by the Border Patrol). Braceros were supposed to receive decent housing and wages.
But since they could not become citizens and could be deported at any time, they
found it almost impossible to form unions or secure better working conditions.
Although the bracero program reinforced the status of immigrants from
Mexico as an unskilled labor force, wartime employment opened new oppor-
tunities for second-generation Mexican-Americans. Hundreds of thousands of
men and women emerged from ethnic neighborhoods, or barrios, to work in
defense industries and serve in the army (where, unlike blacks, they foughtOne series of posters issued by the Office of War
Information to mobilize support for the war effort
emphasized respect for the country’s racial and
ethnic diversity. This one, directed at Hispanics,
suggests that there is no contradiction between
pride in ethnic heritage and loyalty to the United
States.