World War and the Growth of Global Power 275extent they hoped for or expected [as the work of Graham Cox, especially his
doctoral dissertation “What Irony! Herbert Pell, Crimes Against Humanity,
and The Negro Problem” has shown]. The most significant response in the
African-American community to an America at war was “The Double V
Campaign” organized by the Pittsburgh Courier, a Black newspaper, which
sought victory abroad over the Axis and victory at home over racial prejudice.
Many Amerian Blacks wanted to believe they could play a critical role in win-
ning the war and creating equality at home. Some expressed their hope by
joining the NAACP, which increased its membership from 50,000 to over
500,000 as Blacks and Whites alike turned to the organization to demand
racial equality. Others joined a new organization, the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), founded in 1942 on the principle of nonviolent direct
action. Consequently, millions of African Americans played critical roles in the
war effort.
The racial policies of Nazi Germany also energized the Black community
and motivated its leaders to use the war to protest racist policies in the United
States. In March 1941, a full 9 months before the United States was at war,
The Crisis reprinted an article from the Nation, “The Nazi Plan for Negroes,”
with some critical additions by NAACP director Roy Wilkins. The article
listed the “six principles” set up by Germany for “dark peoples.” Wilkins
compared them to conditions in America, leaving to his readers “the question
of whether there is a great deal of difference between the code for Negroes
under Hitler and the code for Negroes under the United States of America
- the leading democratic nation in the world.” As Wilkins saw it, in Germany
and the U.S. South, “Colored people” were “inferior” and kept in their place
by Whites; both Nazis and southerners controlled the labor of Blacks; inter-
marriage and voting rights were forbidden; and members of the “inferior
race” were not allowed to join Nazi or the southern Democratic party.
At the start of the war, there were 13 million African Americans in the
U.S., 10 million still living in the South. Despite more than a half-century of
change, most Blacks were still sharecroppers or tenant farmers. But during
the war, millions moved north to work in war production industries. As war-
time production grew, so did labor demand and so minorities had more
opportunities, and more than a million Black Americans moved, both north
and west, the greatest numbers moving to the large cities in Michigan, Illinois,
New York, Ohio, and California. For African Americans, this was an oppor-