718 Chapter 27 War and Peace, 1941–1945
A poster commemorates Doris “Dorie” Miller, a mess attendant
aboard the USS West Virginiaat Pearl Harbor. Before the ship sank,
Miller manned an antiaircraft machine gun and shot down several
Japanese planes. He won the Navy Cross for courage, the first
awarded to an African American.
for the first time in the air force and the marines, and
they were given more responsible positions in the army
and navy. The army commissioned its first black gen-
eral. Some 600 black pilots won their wings. Altogether
about a million served, about half of them overseas.
The extensive and honorable performance of these
units could not be ignored by the white majority.
However, segregation in the armed services was
maintained. In some cases German prisoners of war
were seated in front of black American soldiers at camp
movies. Such practices led frequently to rioting and even
to local mutinies among black recruits. The navy contin-
ued to confine black and Hispanic sailors to demeaning,
noncombat tasks, and black soldiers were often provided
with inferior recreational facilities and otherwise mis-
treated in and around army camps, especially those in
the South. In 1943 William Hastie, a former New
Dealer who was serving as an adviser on racial matters to
Secretary of War Stimson, resigned in protest because of
the “reactionary policies and discriminatory practices of
the Army and Air Forces in matters affecting Negroes.”
However, economic realities operated signifi-
cantly to the advantage of black civilians. More of
them had been unemployed in proportion to their
numbers than any other group; now the labor short-
age brought employment for all. More than 5 mil-
lion blacks moved from rural areas to cities between
1940 and 1945 in search of work. At least a million
of them found defense jobs in the North and on the
West Coast, often developing valuable skills that had
been difficult for blacks to acquire before the war
because of the discriminatory policies of trade
unions and many employers. The black population
of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Denver, Buffalo,
Milwaukee, and half a dozen other large industrial
cities more than doubled in that brief period. The
migrants were mostly forced to live in urban ghet-
toes, but their very concentration (and the fact that
outside the South blacks could vote freely) made
them important politically.
These gains failed to satisfy black leaders. The
NAACP, which increased its membership from
50,000 in 1940 to almost 405,000 in 1946, adopted
a more militant stance than in World War I.
Discrimination in defense plants seemed far less toler-
able than it had in 1917–1918. A. Philip Randolph,
president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters,
organized a march of blacks on Washington in 1941
to demand equal opportunity for black workers.
Fearing possible violence and the wrath of southern
congressmen, Roosevelt tried to persuade Randolph
to call off the march. “It would make the country
look bad” and “help the Germans,” he claimed. But
Randolph persisted, and Roosevelt finally agreed to
issue an order prohibiting discrimination in plants
with defense contracts.
Prejudice and mistreatment did not cease. In areas
around defense plants white resentment of the black
“invasion” mounted. By 1943, 50,000 new blacks had
crowded into Detroit. A wave of strikes disrupted pro-
duction at U.S. Rubber and several former automobile
plants where white workers laid down their tools to
protest the hiring of blacks. In June a race riot marked
by looting and bloody fighting raged for three days. By
the time federal troops restored order, twenty-five
blacks and nine whites had been killed. Rioting also
erupted in New York and many other cities.
In Los Angeles the attacks were upon Hispanic res-
idents. Wartime employment needs resulted in a rever-
sal of the Depression policy of forcing Mexicans out of
the Southwest, and many thousands flocked north in
search of work. Most had to accept menial jobs. But
work was plentiful, and they, as well as resident Spanish-
speaking Americans, experienced rising living standards.
A larger proportion of Mexican American men
served in the armed forces than the national average,
but some young civilian Hispanics in the Los Angeles
region adopted a kind of civilian dress known as a zoot
suit. These “uniforms” consisted of broad-brimmed