News

WWII: Hate • Prejudice • Race

Propaganda papered over bias at home

By LEONORA LaPETER
Published August 28, 2005

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	[National Archives
	The U.S. government, aware of the demoralizing effects of racial prejudice, promoted posters like this highlighting the participation of African-Americans in military and civilian life.

ST. PETERSBURG - Many black veterans remember World War II with pride for what they accomplished and anger for how they were treated after returning from overseas.

An estimated 185,000 black World War veterans are still living today, the last veterans to serve in a segregated military.

The U.S. government had waged a propaganda campaign here in the United States called "United We Win," touting the benefits of white and black people working together to win the war.

But when the 1.1 million black Americans who served in World War II returned home, they still could't eat with their white counterparts or use the same bathroom in public.

"It didn't feel too good," said Eddie Barrington, 85, a veteran from Tallahassee who during World War II helped build the Ledo-Stillwell Road, a 1,079-mile supply and transport highway from India through Burma to China.

"I tell you, when I got back home and all this discrimination and denying me to go get a drink of water or a meal, I felt like a dog without a tail," he said.

Segregation was in complete hold when the U.S. entered the war in 1941.

Labor leader A. Philip Randolph organized protests against racism in the armed forces and defense industry. President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded by creating a policy against "discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or Government because of race, creed, color, or national origin."

But as black workers went to work at defense industry plants, white workers began protesting.

"The government wanted to use black manpower but often there were work stoppages when they tried to do so," said Christopher Paul Moore, curator of the Stromberg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City and author of Fighting for America: Black Soldiers, the Unsung Heroes of World War II. "That was the genesis of the United We Win program."

Aware that it needed to bring blacks and whites together to fight the war, the government tried to promote a policy of "United We Win" with posters, pamphlets and films highlighting the participation of blacks in the war and civilian life.

By 1942, a black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier, had initiated a call for a "Double V," victory over facism abroad and racism at home.

Most black servicemen were relegated to menial jobs during World War II. At the same time, many got their first taste of freedom overseas - of being able to walk into a restaurant and get a meal.

But many were bitterly disappointed when they arrived back in the U.S. - despite the successes of some black troops, including the Tuskeegee Airmen fighter pilots who demonstrated that blacks could do just as well as whites in combat.

While the war did not end segregation, many believe these black servicemen who went overseas provided the seeds of dissent that got the civil rights movement rolling in this country more than 50 years ago.

"I think it was more about a general attitude that African-Americans were not going to continue to be Americans in a time of war and not Americans when it's time to be a citizen," said Geraldine Seay, an associate professor of English at Florida A&M University, who specializes in Jim Crow literature. "People came to a path when they came home from these military campaigns and they were going to affect some change."

-- Times researchers Caryn Baird and Carolyn Edds contributed to this report.

[Last modified August 22, 2005, 12:37:19]

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