Fighting Racism at Home and Abroad
Hard Times Again
THE new Negro of the 1920s who had struck out for "the Promised Land"
found, in the 1930s, that his old enemies of hunger, cold, and prejudice
were lurking outside the door of his newly chosen home. Hope slid into
despair and cynicism. The dynamic, self-confident Harlem which Johnson
had described in 1925 as the Culture Capital of the Negro World became
choked with disillusionment and frustration, and, in 1935, it was the
scene of looting, burning, and violence.
While the Depression which swept America in 1929 was a national disaster,
it did not hit all segments of society equally, In America, poverty and
starvation are also discriminatory. To quote the old adage again, "The
Negro is the last to be hired and the first to be fired." The Depression
also proved that Harlem, like other Afro-American communities, was not as
economically self-sufficient as Johnson had imagined. Although such
communities had many Negro-owned businesses thriving on a Negro trade,
these businesses were still dependent on the economy at large. Therefore,
they were not at all free from the racial discrimination in the nation.
Their clientele was largely employed in white-owned businesses. Many
Negroes were laid off, and Negro-owned businesses immediately felt the
pinch.
Although Negro businesses had grown significantly during the 1920s, most
were small establishments and, in the age of mass production and mass
marketing, always had to struggle hard in order to compete. In 1929, the
Colored Merchants Association was established in New York City, and it
attempted to buy goods for independent stores on a cooperative wholesale
basis. This aided them in competing with chain stores. The Association
also urged blacks to patronize stores owned by Afro-Americans.
Nevertheless, the Association only survived for two years. The
Afro-American community felt the Depression sooner and harder than did
the rest of the country.
By 1932, the government believed that 38 percent of the Afro-American
community was incapable of self-support and in need of government relief.
At the same time, it considered that only 17 percent of the white
community fell into this category. In October of 1933, between 25 percent
and 40 percent of the blacks in many of the large cities, to which they
had moved to find a brighter future, were on relief. This percentage was
three or four times higher than that of the whites in the same cities. As
affluent whites felt the economic pinch, one of the first items to be
trimmed from their shrinking budgets was the maid or the gardener. In
1935 the number of unemployed Negro domestics was at least one and a half
million. In that same year, the government estimated that 65 percent of
the Negro employables in Atlanta were on public assistance while, in
Norfolk, 80 percent of the Afro-American community was on relief.
As Negro unemployment statistics skyrocketed in the early thirties,
The-Jobs-for-Negroes Movement strove to alleviate the crisis. It was
begun by the Urban League in St. Louis. A boycott was organized against
white-owned chain stores which catered to Negroes, but refused to employ
them. The movement spread throughout the Midwest and had some success in
"persuading" white-owned stores in the heart of the ghettoes to hire
Negro employees. When the idea reached Harlem, it resulted in the
establishment of the Greater New York Coordinating Comittee. One of its
founders and organizers was the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and the
Comittee received considerable support from his church, the Abyssinian
Baptist Church.
It was Powell's claim that the Comittee was shunned by most "respectable"
Negroes but that its supporters included an unusually wide variety of
radicals. The group referred to its members as antebellum Negroes by
which, Powell said, they meant before Civil War II. Some of them, he
claimed, favored repatriation to Africa; others were for black
capitalism; still another group, including Powell himself, wanted the
Negro to achieve full dignity within the American system. In spite of the
variety of their objectives, all of them believed that the Afro-American
must first achieve economic security before any of these specific goals
could be attained.
It was on this primary tactical necessity that they were able to
coordinate their activities. They picketed white-owned stores on 125th
Street. They carried signs advocating, "Don't buy where you can't work,"
and Powell maintained that they were able almost to stop trade totally at
any target they chose to picket. He claimed to be able to call a meeting
with only forty-eight hours notice and have 10,000 persons in attendance.
The 125th Street stores soon negotiated and began employing Negro
employees. Next, the Comittee hit the city's utility companies. They
urged Negroes not to use electricity on specified days. They harassed the
telephone company by urging Negroes to demand that the operator place
their calls instead of their dialing the number and utilizing the
automatic exchanges. Both companies changed their employment patterns in
response. The Comittee also boycotted the bus company until it began
employing Negroes as drivers as well as on other levels of the company's
staff.
By 1935 Harlem had become a pressure cooker which was heated to the
boiling point by economic and racial frustrations. When a young Negro
stole a knife from a 125th Street store, it became the incident which
triggered a social explosion. Although he had escaped from the pursuing
officer a rumor spread around the community that he had been beaten to
death. A mob soon gathered and began to protest everything from the
discrimination practices of merchants to slum landlords and police
tactics. Window-breaking, looting, and burning soon followed. Before
peace was restored, three Negroes had been killed, some two hundred
stores smashed, and it was estimated that approximately $2,000,000 worth
of damage had been done. Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia appointed a study
commission which was headed by the noted black sociologist E. Franklin
Frazier. The commission concluded that the causes of the riot were
rooted in resentment against racial discrimination and poverty. The
"promised land" of the large northern cities had not lived up to
expectations.
The Depression, however, brought its own kind of hope. Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, who had been elected in 1932, promised the country a "New
Deal." It was to be a new deal for the workers, the unemployed and, it
seemed, for the Negro too. In response, black voters switched to the
Democratic party in droves. While Franklin D. Roosevelt was not the first
president to appoint Negroes to government positions, his appointments
were different in two major respects. First, there were more of them.
Second, instead of being political payoffs, the appointees were selected
for their expert knowledge, and their intellectual skills became part of
the government's decision-making processes.
This group, which became informally known as the "Black Cabinet,"
included such prominent Afro-American leaders as Robert L. Vann of The
Pittsburgh Courier, William H. Hastie of the Harvard Law School, Eugene
Kinckle Jones of the Urban League, Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune of the
National Council of Negro Women, Robert C. Weaver, and Ralph Bunche, who
later became the first Negro to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The
number of Afro-Americans hired by the Federal Government mushroomed
rapidly.
Between 1933 and 1946 the number rose from 50,000 to almost 200,000.
Most, however, were employed in the lower, unskilled and semi-skilled,
brackets. It was also during this period that the civil service
terminated its policy of requiring applicants to state their race and to
include photographs. Individual personnel officers, nevertheless, could
and did continue to discriminate.
In spite of the attempt of the Roosevelt Administration to elevate the
status of the Afro-American, the New Deal itself became enmeshed in
racial discrimination in three ways: through discriminatory practice
within government bureaus, through exclusion carried on by unions, and
also as an indirect by-product of the success of the New Deal programs.
In a government bureaucracy, power and authority are distributed
throughout the administrative hierarchy. Officials at varying levels were
still influenced by their personal prejudices, and they continued to use
their positions in a discriminatory manner. Regardless of the intentions
at the top, prejudice continued to exist in varying degrees throughout
the lower levels of the structure.
In 1935 the Wagner Act protected the rights of labor unions, but because
most unions practiced racial discrimination, it served indirectly to
undercut the status of the Negro worker for a short time. Actually, with
the heightened competition for jobs, unions tended to intensify their
discrimination. The American Federation of Labor largely consisted of
trade or skilled workers. Its member unions regularly practiced racial
exclusion and kept blacks out of the trades. To the contrary, the United
Mine Workers Union which had been organized on an industry-wide basis
rather than a craft basis had encouraged the participation of Negroes
within the union since at least 1890. In 1935, several union leaders, led
by John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers, decided that the union
movement must break away from its craft orientation and begin to organize
the new mass production industries on an industry-wide basis.
While the A. F. of L. dragged its feet, the dissidents withdrew and
formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations. Immediately they began
to organize the steel workers, the meat packers and the automobile
workers. These were all industries which employed significant numbers of
Afro-Americans, and the CIO followed an aggressive, nondiscriminatory
policy. In the beginning, black workers were suspicious, but they soon
joined the new unions in large numbers. In the long run, both black and
white labor benefited from the Wagner Act.
Finally, the New Deal failed to extend its program to include either
agricultural or domestic workers. These were areas in which
Afro-Americans were employed in unusually high proportions, and this
meant that a large portion of the Afro-American community was not covered
by this legislation. For example, both the Social Security and the
Minimum Wage laws excluded both agricultural and domestic workers.
Nevertheless, it was estimated that in 1939 some one million Negroes owed
their livelihood to the Works Progress Administration. If it had not been
for the W.P.A., the National Youth Administration, the Civilian
Conservation Corps, and other similar organizations, Afro-Americans would
have suffered even more during the Depression.
Some relief was brought to farmers through the Agricultural Adjustment
Administration. However, white landlords usually kept the checks which
had been intended for the sharecroppers. This resulted in the formation
of The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, an interracial organization.
Despite the landlords' attempts to use racism to destroy it, the Union
showed that white and black farmers could cooperate on the basis of their
common economic plight. This alliance of poor whites and poor blacks was
reminiscent of the earlier Populist Movement.
Although the New Deal did much to help the Negro, it tended to further
undercut his self-confidence and independence. Alain Locke has argued
that the significant fact about the northward migration by blacks had
been that the Afro-Americans had made a decision for themselves. The fact
of having made a decision and of taking action on it, Locke maintains,
was the event which created the aggressive self-confident New Negro. In
helping him to survive the Depression, the New Deal turned him again into
a passive recipient. The large number of Afro-Americans who were
receiving government aid in one way or another were aware of their
dependency. Afro-American communities, which had been regarded as "The
Promised Land," slid into poverty and dejection.
The Second World War
As ominous war clouds began to gather over Europe in the late 1930s, most
Americans were preoccupied with domestic problems resulting from the
Depression. Those who took notice of the ascendancy of Mussolini and
Hitler were apt to be impressed with their successes in combatting the
effects of the Depression in Italy and Germany. The Afro-American
community, however, was more concerned with the imperialistic and racist
elements in the teachings of Fascism and National Socialism. Usually,
American Negroes were prevented from looking beyond their own problems by
the immediacy of racial prejudice which they faced daily, but this time
they were among the first to warn of impending danger.
Racist thought in Germany did not begin with the rise of Adolf Hitler.
European anti-Semitism can be traced back into the past for centuries.
Although it originally had its roots in a religious feeling, racism
became secularized and, by the middle of the nineteenth century, took on
political overtones and tried to assume a scientific foundation.
Aggressive nationalism began to bloom at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and went on to spread across Europe. The political unification
of Germany, instead of being the glorious culmination of this
nationalistic drama, only signaled the end of one act and the beginning
of another. Even the German defeat in the First World War did not
persuade ardent nationalists to be content with the victories they had
already achieved. Instead, they probed the heart of the nation to find an
explanation for their defeat. These nationalists contended that the
defeat had been due to pollution of racial purity by the presence of a
large, alien element--the Jews. If it had not been for this impurity, it
was argued, Germany would certainly have been victorious, and it would
have demonstrated its global superiority. Aggressive nationalism became
virulent racism.
Adolf Hitler exploited this need for a political scapegoat and turned it
into a national, anti-Semitic campaign. The racial stereotypes and
accompanying feelings were already widespread. Nineteenth century
popular German literature was full of such trite symbols. The Jew was
always portrayed as a villainous merchant, shifty-eyed, large-nosed,
unscrupulous, and wealthy. In contrast, the German was invariably
portrayed as a solid, blond-haired peasant, hard-working, loyal, and
exploited.
The drama in such literature sprang from the tension between the wealthy
Jewish merchants and the hard-working but poor German peasants. Here
could be found the same kind of exploitation which Hitler used to explain
the German defeat in the war. These popular stereotypes were then joined
to the teachings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain which had built on
elements from biology, anthropology, sociology, and phrenology. In his
book Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, Chamberlain had developed
them into a philosophy of world history which centered on the concepts of
racial conflict. Human progress and racial purity were equated. He
predicted an eventual struggle to the death between the Jewish and the
Teutonic races. The Germans, he believed, would emerge victorious.
Through the survival of the fittest and the destruction of the weak,
mankind would reach a higher stage of evolution. Although Nazi racist
thought was concerned almost exclusively with the conflict between the
Germans and the Jews, it was clear that the Negro race was, if anything,
consigned to an even lower level of importance than the Jews. In the
survival of the fittest, Negroes were also destined for extermination in
the name of human progress.
Afro-American suspicions about the nature of Mussolini's imperialism
proved to be justified when Italy invaded Ethiopia. Mussolini's dream of
reviving Roman glory included rebuilding a powerful empire. However,
underdeveloped countries which were not already dominated by European
nations and which could easily be colonized, were few in number. When
Italy invaded Ethiopia, Afro-Americans saw it as another white nation
subjugating another black nation. At the very time when Africans and
Afro-Americans were looking forward to the liberation of Africa from
European domination, Italy was extending imperialism even further and
conquering the last remaining independent supposedly black nation in
Africa. Afro-Americans were outraged. They looked to the League of
Nations hoping that it would take decisive action against the Italian
aggression. Their hopes were in vain.
The war that began in 1939 came to be expressed in terms which were even
more ideological than had been true of the First World War. The Allies
depicted themselves as being the champions of freedom and humanity while
they portrayed their enemies as tyrants and barbarians. Afro-Americans
were painfully aware of some of the imperfections in this simple
dichotomy. While aghast at the racist teachings propagated by Germany,
they could not forget the racism which confronted them daily within the
United States.
They were also aware of the imperialism which was practiced by both the
British and the French who dominated and exploited Africa almost at will.
Nevertheless, Hitler's form of brazen racism did give a note of validity
to this ideological formulation. Afro-Americans viewed the war both with
more enthusiasm and with more pessimism than they had felt at the
outbreak of the First World War. On the one hand, they could eagerly
support a war to defeat Hitler's racist doctrines. On the other hand,
they did not believe that any display of patriotism on their part would
significantly diminish racism at home. During the First World War they
had thought that a demonstration of patriotism would help to knock down
the walls of antagonism. Instead, they found that manliness on the part
of Afro-Americans, even in the name of patriotism, was a threat to those
whites who believed that Negroes should be kept in their place.
Afro-Americans were prepared not to be disillusioned in that way again.
For them, the war would still be a double struggle-fighting racism at
home as well as abroad.
The Second World War began to affect Americans long before the country
was actually drawn into the fighting. Although the American nation stood
on the sidelines for the first two years, America became a major source
of money, supplies, and encouragement for Britain and France. Providing
materiel for the Allies gave new life to the sagging American economy.
There were still some five million unemployed in the nation, and
something more seemed to be needed. Unfortunately for the Afro-American,
most of the new jobs were not open to them. Aside from the fact that he
was the first to be fired and the last to be hired, many of the new
defense industries made it clear that they would hire no Negroes at all
or, at most, would restrict their employment to janitorial positions
regardless of the training or education of the applicant.
Hostility was expressed quite openly by some leaders in the West Coast
aircraft industry. As better jobs became available, they were quickly
filled by white workers eager to improve their economic status. This left
some of the more undesirable jobs to go begging, and, as the result, the
war boom benefits began to trickle down to the Afro-American community.
Afro-Americans, however, were not content with the crumbs from the
industrial table. Complaints began to flood into Washington. Several
government officials made pronouncements condemning discrimination in
defense industries, but they were not heard. It became clear that
nothing would change without strong government action, and it was also
evident that this would not occur unless the entire Afro-American
community could exert united, political pressure.
Early in 1941, A. Philip Randolph put forth the idea of a gigantic March
on Washington, and he expressed the belief that a hundred thousand
Afro-Americans could be organized to participate in such an undertaking.
The immediate response from most of the leaders of both black and white
America was one of skepticism. Most of them felt that there was too much
apathy in the Afro-American community for such a grandiose scheme to be
taken seriously. Nevertheless, interest on the grass-roots level
gradually grew and Randolph's idea was transformed into a project
involving scores of organizers all across the country, all of whom were
working diligently to enlist potential marchers. In the meantime,
Randolph began to formulate the complex plans for organizing the actual
march. By late spring, skepticism had turned to worry. Many government
leaders and finally President Roosevelt himself tried to talk Randolph
into canceling the march. They suggested that such an aggressive protest
would do more to hurt the Afro-American than help him.
Randolph remained unyielding. Others tried to suggest that the protest
would be bad for the American image and therefore was unpatriotic. When
they suggested that it would create a bad impression in Rome and Berlin,
Afro-Americans retorted that white racism had already created such an
image. Finally, Roosevelt contacted Randolph and offered to issue an
executive order barring discrimination in defense industries and promised
to put "teeth" in the order, provided Randolph call off the march. When
Randolph became convinced that Roosevelt's intentions were sincere, he
complied.
Roosevelt fulfilled his promise by issuing Executive Order 8802, which
condemned discrimination on the grounds of race, color, or creed. Then,
he established the Fair Employment Practices Commission and assigned to
it the responsibility for enforcing the order. Many Afro-Americans felt
that Executive Order 8802 was the most important government document
concerning the Negro to be issued since the Emancipation Proclamation.
Their immediate joy was somewhat dampened when they found that
discrimination still continued in some quarters. Nevertheless, the
F.E.P.C. did condemn discrimination when it found it, and, as the result,
many new jobs began to open up for Negroes.
Once America was drawn into the fighting, Afro-Americans hurried to the
enlistment centers to volunteer their services in the war against
Hitler's philosophy. However, it soon became clear that America intended
to fight racism with a segregated army. The fact that Negroes were
confined to the more menial positions in the armed forces was what
irritated Afro-Americans the most. The Negro army units were obviously
going to be led by white officers. The Marine Corps was still not
accepting any Negroes in its ranks at all. Complaints again began to pour
into Washington.
Afro-Americans generally admitted that the Selective Service Act per se
was not discriminatory and that it was applied impartially in most
places. One of the reasons for this impartiality, undoubtedly, was the
fact that both local and national Selective Service Boards included
Afro-American representation. In the course of the war, about one million
Afro-Americans saw service on behalf of their country. Their ratio within
the armed forces was almost the same as that within the nation. This had
been the stated goal of the Department of War.
Gradually, the armed forces modified their discriminatory policies in
response to the flood of complaints. The Air Force began to train Negro
pilots although they still received segregated training and served in
segregated squadrons. The Marine Corps accepted Negro recruits for the
first time in its history. They, too, served in segregated units. The
Navy, which had restricted Negroes to menial positions, gradually began
to accept them in almost all noncommissioned positions. Eventually, it
even began to commission some Negro officers. The Army, too, introduced
an extensive program to prepare Negro officers. It trained most of them
in integrated facilities, but they continued to lead segregated units.
As the war grew to a close, the Army announced that it intended to
experiment with integration. However, when the experiment took place,
the integration proved not to be quite what had been expected. Instead of
putting individuals from both races together in the same unit, the Army
took segregated black and white platoons and merged them into an
integrated fighting force although the platoons themselves remained
segregated.
This integrated unit did fight well in the field and made a significant
contribution to the defeat of Germany in 1945. Negro units, as well as
individual Negro soldiers, made outstanding contributions to the war
effort both in Europe and in the Pacific, and they received numerous
commendations and citations. Skeptics noted, however, that not a single
Negro soldier had received the Congressional Medal of Honor in either the
First or Second World Wars, and they suggested that the nation's highest
award was being reserved for whites.
Although most of the hostilities were focused on the enemy, racial
tensions still ran very high within America. Southern whites were
displeased with the self-confidence and manliness brought out in Negroes
by military experience, and they were unhappy with the dignity which a
military uniform conferred upon them.
At the same time, Negro soldiers in the South were angry over the
harassment and segregation with which they were confronted. In
particular, they were irritated by the fact that German prisoners of war
were permitted to eat with white American soldiers in the same dining car
on a railroad train traveling through the South, while Negro soldiers
could not. Racial riots occurred at Fort Bragg, Camp Robinson, Camp
Davis, Camp Lee, Fort Dix, and a notorious one at an American base in
Australia. The policy of the War Department was to gloss over these
events. Casualties which resulted from riots at bases in the United
States were officially listed as accidental deaths. Those which resulted
from riots overseas were officially reported as being killed in action.
On several occasions, Negro soldiers refused to do work which they
believed had been assigned to them purely because of their race. For this
they were charged with mutiny.
There was also one serious civilian race riot during the war; it occurred
on June 20, 1943, in Detroit. A fist fight between a white man and a
Negro sparked the resentment which had been mounting in that city.
Thousands of Afro-Americans had been moving again from the South into the
North to fill vacant jobs in war industry, and this was resented by local
white residents. Before the Detroit riot ended, twenty-five Negroes and
nine whites had been killed. President Roosevelt had to send in federal
troops to quell the disturbance. Another factor which irritated
Afro-Americans was that the Red Cross blood banks separated Negro and
white blood. This was particularly humiliating in that it had been a
Negro doctor, Charles Drew, who had done the basic research that made the
banks possible.
In spite of this, Afro-Americans were eager to demonstrate their
patriotism and to support the war effort. Besides the hundreds of
thousands who were involved directly in the military, millions more
supported the war effort in countless other ways. Besides growing their
own vegetables, saving tin cans and newspapers, they were avid
contributors to the War Bond issues. Others volunteered to serve as block
wardens in case of enemy air raids. Negro newspapers had their own
journalists at the front, and the Afro-American community eagerly kept up
with the war news. They took special pride in stories of heroism about
Negro soldiers. When Hitler and his racist philosophy went down in
defeat, they felt that they had achieved a personal victory and that at
the same time they had made a contribution to America and the world.
Thus, as the war came to a close and Afro-Americans looked forward to the
postwar years with both apprehension and determination, they feared that,
with the foreign antagonism eradicated, racist feeling at home might
increase. At the same time, they were possessed by a new drive to make
American democracy into a reality. The ideological character of the war
had reminded them of America's expressed ideals of brotherhood and
equality. Their participation in the war convinced them that they were
worthy of full citizenship. Many had broken the bonds of tradition which
had held them in fear and apathy. Some had left their communities to
fight in the Army, and some had moved into large urban centers to work in
defense industries. Although the war against racism abroad had ended,
they were intent to see that the struggle for racial freedom and equality
at home would continue.
The U.S. and the U.N.
The San Francisco Conference which founded the United Nations
organization was looked upon by peoples around the world as the sunrise
of a new day of peace and brotherhood. While hope ran high in most
quarters, some of these same peoples were suspicious about its lofty
ideological character. Humanitarian ideologies had made their appearance
before, but there had always been a gap between theory and practice.
Colored peoples and other minorities around the world observed the San
Francisco Conference with hope mixed with caution. They wanted to see
whether it was mere ideological rhetoric which would salve the
consciences of the exploiters and dull the senses of the exploited, or
whether, perhaps, its aims might spring from genuine conviction and
become established in a framework which would be fully implemented.
The U.N. was to be more sweeping in its goals and programs than the
League had been, and it was hoped that it would have more power to carry
out its decisions. Its very initials signified that the peoples of the
world were to be one people bound together in brotherhood, freedom, and
equality. This should have meant the end of imperialistic exploitation as
well as the end of minority persecution. The Afro-American community
wondered if the U.N. would apply these principles to them. Many skeptics
suggested that the U. S. initiative in founding the U.N. was only part of
a plan to create a world image which would help America in her new role
as a world leader.
Several Afro-Americans were accredited as official observers at the San
Francisco Conference. Their number included Mrs. Mary McLeod Bethune, Dr.
Mordecai W. Johnson of Howard University, W. E. B. DuBois and Walter
White, both of the N.A.A.C.P. Ralph Bunche was an official member of the
American staff. There were also a large number of Negro journalists, and
the conference was widely covered in the Negro press. Once the U.N. was
organized and in operation, several other Afro-Americans worked for it in
a number of ways. While some held diplomatic posts, others used their
specific scientific and scholarly skills to help various branches of the
U.N. They were particularly interested in the departments concerned with
the treatment of colonial nations and with the various scientific
organizations involved in helping underdeveloped countries.
The United Nations Charter defended universal human rights more clearly
than any previous political document in world history. The Charter
proclaimed human rights and freedom for all without respect to "race,
sex, language or religion." Minority groups were particularly interested
in the work of UNESCO which, among other things, studied the nature of
prejudice and racism and tried to develop programs to eradicate these
evils. The U.N. also formed a Human Rights Commission, and Afro-Americans
expected that whatever action the U.N. took to support human rights
throughout the world would also have an impact on their situation.
The first test came in 1946 when India charged South Africa with
practicing racial discrimination against Indian nationals and their
descendants who were living within South Africa. Minority groups
throughout the world eagerly waited to see what, if anything, the U.N.
would do. When a resolution was passed by a two-thirds majority, charging
South Africa with the violation of human rights, and requiring it to
report back on what steps had been taken to alter the situation,
religious and national minorities were overjoyed. However, the enthusiasm
of Afro-Americans was dampened by the fact that both the United States
and Britain had voted against the resolution. While posing as the leaders
of democracy and humanitarianism, they seemed more concerned with
protecting their sovereign rights as nations against similar future
charges which might impinge on their sovereignty, than they were with
protecting the human rights of oppressed peoples.
The attitude which the U. S. Government took towards human rights sheds
considerable light on the internal conflict concerning race within
America itself. The U. S. led the fight at the U.N. for the approval of
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet the American government
has been reluctant to support the inclusion of specific economic and
social rights in a draft treaty. The U.N. had endeavored to write a
draft treaty which its member nations would sign and which would be
binding on them. If the U. S. Senate had ratified such a document, its
terms presumably would then be binding on the entire nation. At that
time, senators from the Southern states were still staunchly defending
legal segregation and disfranchisement of Afro-Americans. The government
found itself supporting human rights ideologically while backing down on
them in practice.
As the Cold War deepened, the U. S. became increasingly sensitive about
its world image. While fighting for world leadership, Russia and America
each claimed that its way of life was based on the principles of
brotherhood and humanitarianism. Each, in turn, tried to prove to the
rest of the world that its ideology was genuinely humane and democratic,
while its opponent's ideology was, in reality, oppressive and
dehumanizing. The communist bloc attacked the West for being purveyors of
imperialism and racism. This forced the American government to face up
to the discriminatory policies within the nation and, especially, to
reexamine the legal discrimination existing within the Southern states.
It was particularly embarrassing to the American ambassador to the United
Nations to have to be berated by the Russian delegate concerning some
unpleasant racial events which had happened somewhere in the South. The
Federal Government had always followed a policy of "hands off," at least
since the days of Hayes and the end of Reconstruction. Party politicians
always opposed taking a strong federal stand against an established state
policy within the South for fear of what would happen to that party
within the South. Party unity had almost always been put above civil
rights or justice.
However, these same party politicians could not ignore world opinion.
Even from a narrow political point of view, a party could not permit the
nation's world image to become tarnished, lest the electorate become
dissatisfied. World leadership brought with it the need to be concerned
with world opinion. Racism was no longer a local or state question. In
fact, as W. E. B. DuBois had predicted, it had become the leading
question of the twentieth century. At the end of the Second World War,
Walter White, then executive director of the N.A.A.C.P., toured Europe
and drew conclusions concerning the effect of the war and the course of
the future. In his book Rising Wind, White demonstrated a relationship
between the oppressed peoples of the world, racism, and imperialism.
Though a relative moderate, White warned of a future worldwide racial
conflict.
As the war was drawing to an end in the Pacific theater, the Japanese
cautioned Asiatics about American racial oppression. What they called
attention to was that the British dominated colored peoples in Africa and
Asia and that the Americans persecuted their racial minority at home.
White believed that this propaganda was taking root in the hearts of many
Asiatics. He also believed that most of Asia would slide into the
Russian camp, thereby preparing the way for a third world conflict. He
contended that Britain and America had a choice between ending their
policies of racial superiority and preparing for the next war.
In 1948 A. Philip Randolph began to advocate civil disobedience on the
part of Afro-Americans, rather than ever again allowing themselves to be
part of a segregated army. He recommended that they refuse to serve in
future wars, and the idea received widespread attention. In a Senate
comittee inquiry, Senator Wayne Morse from Oregon suggested to him that
such civil disobedience in wartime could well be viewed as treason and
not merely as civil disobedience. Clearly, Randolph's suggestion had hit
a sensitive nerve. A nation which had been skeptical about permitting
Afro-Americans in its armed forces was now becoming extremely uneasy at
the thought that Afro-Americans might not want to serve. In the same
year President Truman appointed a commission to study race relations in
the military. Its report, Freedom to Serve, recommended that the Armed
Forces open up all jobs regardless of race, color, or creed. As a result,
the military began to move slowly in the direction of integration.
However, when the communists invaded South Korea, the issue quickly came
to a head. Unless integration was achieved, America would have to fight
communists and colored Asiatics with a segregated army and would have to
do it in the name of the United Nations.
In 1950 General Matthew Ridgway began to accelerate integration
in the forces under his command. He did this partly as a matter
of philosophy and partly from necessity. The Army needed the fullest and
most efficient use of the few troops available in order to stem the flow
of a much larger communist force into South Korea. This integration
proceeded very well, and when he was put in charge of all forces in the
Far East, he asked the Defense Department for permission to integrate all
of the forces in the area. Within three months, the extent of
integration in the Armed Forces jumped from nine percent to thirty
percent. While Afro-Americans were pleased, they were also convinced
that it had been done more from the pressure of world opinion than from a
genuine humanitarian conscience.
During this period, the Federal Government took a more active role in
several other ways in regard to improving race relations. How much of
this action sprang from internal motivation and how much resulted from
the pressure of world opinion is a matter of conjecture. In any case, the
Truman Administration deliberately created an atmosphere favorable to
changing race relations within America. In 1946 Truman appointed a
comittee on civil rights which, after intensive study, published its
report, To Secure These Rights.
The report set forth that the Federal Government had the duty to act in
order to safeguard civil rights when local or state governments either
could not or did not take such action. The comittee recommended enlarging
the size and powers of the civil rights section of the Justice Department
and also recommended that the F.B.I. increase its civil rights activity.
The threat of federal intervention in state racial policies led to a
revolt by several Southern Senators within the Democratic Party. In 1948
they formed the Dixiecrat Party and refused to support many of the
policies and candidates of the Democratic Party. Truman also appointed a
comittee to study higher education in America, and its report recommended
an end to discrimination in colleges and universities. In 1948 Truman
issued an executive order aimed at achieving fair employment within
government service. He also continued the practice of attacking
discrimination within industries working under government contracts. In
1948 the Supreme Court declared that restrictive covenants in housing
were unconstitutional. Many state and local governments across the
country also took action against discrimination in the fields of housing
and employment.
Thus the principles underlying the United Nations and the Declaration of
Human Rights had the effect of stirring democratic and humanitarian
ideals in many parts of white America. Sensitivity to world opinion had
made all branches of the Federal Government more willing to act on racial
matters. Although most Americans would have insisted that these
activities sprang from a genuine concern for racial justice,
Afro-Americans were convinced that it had been the pressure of world
opinion which had turned these humanitarian convictions into action.