Even though most of Garvey’s business ventures failed
and the U.S. government deported him for mail fraud in 1927,
his contribution to the development of black consciousness empowered
the “New Negro” and helped lay the foundation for the civil rights movement
in the 1950s
and 1960s.
World War II
The majority of the more than 1 million blacks who joined
the Allied forces during World War II served in segregated, noncombat service
and maintenance units, just as they had in World War I. There were
exceptions, however, perhaps the most notable of which was the elite
all-black Tuskegee Airmen bomber unit.
Segregated or not, black Americans made significant
gains during the war. Civil rights leaders, for example,
pushed their “Double V” campaign for both victory abroad
and victory at home. NAACP membership soared during the war years
to more than half a million people. The newly formed Congress
of Racial Equality(CORE) launched peaceful
protests in order to gain sympathy for the movement from white Americans.
National Negro Congress President A. Philip Randolph even
threatened President Franklin D. Roosevelt with a massive
march on Washington, D.C., if the federal government failed to pass
more civil rights legislation.
Roosevelt and Civil Rights
Hoping to avoid civil unrest, Roosevelt compromised with
Randolph by signing Executive Order 8802,
which outlawed racial discrimination in the federal government and
in war factories. Roosevelt also established the Fair Employment
Practices Committee to execute the order. As a result, more
than 200,000 Northern blacks
found work in defense-related industries during the war. Roosevelt’s
election victories during the Great Depression and World War II
happened, in part, because a majority of black Americans began voting
for Democrats rather than Republicans. Continued support from the
Democratic Party proved to be vital in securing the passage of civil
rights legislation in the 1960s.
Truman and Civil Rights
After the war, in 1946,
President Harry S Truman established the President’s
Committee on Civil Rights. The committee pushed for antilynching
laws in the South and tried to register more black voters. Although
symbolically powerful, the committee had little practical influence.
More significant was Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces
with Executive Order 9981 in 1948. Truman’s support
for civil rights angered many southerners within the Democratic
Party, though, and many left the nominating convention in 1948 to
back their own presidential candidate, segregationist Strom Thurmond of
South Carolina.
Notable Firsts
Two major color barriers were broken shortly after the
war’s end. The first was in 1947, when Jackie
Robinson became the first black professional baseball player
in the major leagues. Robinson’s contract with the Brooklyn
Dodgers opened professional sports to black players and helped
integrate blacks into white American culture.
