>> my name's jeremy collins here at the national world war ii museum's institute for the study of war and democracy, and we have a great program for you today. it is going to feature dr. william sturkey. this is continuing the rich and wonderful content the museum's been providing throughout this black history month, a great story for this particular month, but it's a great story for any month.

and to lead us in this conversation, it's my pleasure to happened it off to the institute's research historian, dr. jason dossey. jason? >> jeremy, thank you very much. let me extend my welcome to everyone out there as well to this webinar, give us faith, americas expect home front. and -- americans and the home front. i wanted to say a little bit about dr. sturkey, he is historian of the modern american south at the university of north carolina-chapel hill where he teaches classes on modern american history, southern history, the civil rights movement and the history of america in the 1960s. his first book, the write in the -- to write in the light of freedom, is a co-edited collection of essays and poems produced by african-american

freedom school students during the summer of 1964. his most recent book, and i have a copy of it right here for those who are interested, his most recent book is hattiesburg, an american city in black and white. a biracial history of jim crow that was published by harvard university press in march of 2019. so, william, with that introduction, let me just say it's great to see you, welcome and thank you for joining us. >> jason, thank you so much for having me. it's really a pleasure to be here. >> william and i, for our audience should be aware, william and i have this webinar as a way of reconnecting. we were both teaching at the university of southern mississippi several years ago as we were getting close to completion of our dissertations, and we were on the same wing of the liberal arts building there and used to talk, you know,

college football, about teaching and about history. and so this has been really great, william, that we can kind of resume some of those conversations from several years ago. so for a topic like this, as a huge topic, there's so much to it when there's always the issue of what you include, what you realize you can't get to, you know, where do you start, where do you wrap up. and so it seems like one place to really begin, a really interesting point to begin a conversation, william, is with african-americans at pearl harbor. and so what i wanted to start with that is to ask about if you could tell our audience something about how black americans responded to december 7, 1941. were there reactions really any different from that of other groups in the u.s.

and then a final point is a political one in that african-americans could begin to vote in large numbers for the democratic party. and do you think that made any real difference in the way they responded to the japanese attack on pearl harbor? >> jason, well, thank you. so, you know, broadly speaking, african-americans reacted to the attack on pearl harbor just like many other americans, you know? this sense of shock and dismay that our country, that their country had been attacked. and, you know, they were stunned, and most people didn't know, of course, the inner workings of this burgeoning rivalry in the pacific, you know, that predated pearl harbor for decades. and they were just so stunned that america had been attacked by an enemy that they didn't believe we were at war with, which was technically true. so african-americans, many people, black folks, rushed to

join the military in the wake of pearl harbor. they wanted to help defend their country. one of the early heroes of pearl harbor, in fact, was an african-american. that man named dory miller, right, who was aboard the west virginia and, of course, worked to save the lives of many of his fellow soldiers. and so, yeah, african-americans were, you know, chomping at the bit oftentimes to go ahead and join military service in order to help the united states in this fight after the attack. i think that it was pretty universal for african-americans to, you know, be inspired to pick up this cause to defend the country not just for people who supported franklin roosevelt and the democratic party, but even for black republicans too. in the 1940s there were plenty of black republicans. there were plenty of black republicans really up until the

1954 elections. many african-americans jumped at the chance to help defend their country in the wake of that attack. >> thank you. i'm glad you brought up the reference to dory miller. the museum has some programming about him recently, and his story is so important and interesting. and what is interesting about 1941 prior to imperial japan's attack on pearl harbor is that had been quite a year already in the african-american community around issues about freedom and democracy which, of course, were going to be central to the way, to the war effort, to the way the united states understood the war, waged the war, how it a talked about the importance of fighting and winning that war. and that, this is a question here about the march on washington. and i think when many americans hear those words, march on washington, they automatically

think about 1963 and about dr. martin luther king jr.'s famous i have a dream speech. but there was an earlier or plans for an earlier march on washington going back to 1941. and could you tell us about what was involved with this earlier march and what happened to, what happened to the idea for the march. >> yeah, sure. this is one of the more fascinating sort of what ifs in america, you know, what if this march had actually happened. this march was planned largely by this guy named a. philip randolph, head of an all-black union of car carporters. and he had been the head of this since the 1920s. this union started off pretty small, but it had been growing through the 1930s, and going into the 1940 it was getting

pretty big and pretty influential. they met in harlem, and, you know, they were put influential in terms of getting people who worked on trains into this union and fighting for increased african-american civil rights. because they were becoming so influential in new york especially both in the state and the city of new york, a lot of white politicians, you know, stopped by their organization or at their convention to speak to pay homage, because they wanted the black vote. and so their union meeting in 1940 attracts thousands of people. but among the thousands of people who come to that meeting are new york city mayor laguardia, new york state governor and future senator lehman, the united states secretary of labor, frances perkins, and the first lady herself was at this union meeting. and she speaks to the union meeting that night. she say, and i quote, the color line is gradually being broken down and becoming a thing of the

past. all of the other speakers say we're going to attack jim owe crow in the south -- jim crow in the south. twelve days after that meeting, the president hosts the naacp and a. phil line up randolph in the -- a. philip randolph in the white house. the democratic party needs to do something to address their concerns, there's this growing feeling, especially coming out of new york. about exactly the same time, randolph says i'm going to flex my if muscles, we want even more. we're going to demonstrate on washington, okay in what they want to do they want to desegregate the armed forces, one of the things they're calling for, and they're also continuing this push to end jim crow in the south. so they plan this march for 1941, and they think that by the late spring of 1941, they through there's going to be the -- think there's going to be

about 100,000 african-americans who are going to show up to this march. they think about 100,000 in 1941 were going to come to this which would have been a very large number of people to demonstrate on the mall in washington. especially at a moment where the united states has not yet entered the war, but it's made very clear which side it's on, okay? the president of the united states had sign on to this atlantic charter, okay, with the british. he's also consistently calling the war a war for democracy saying that the united states is on the right side of this conflict even though it's not formally in it yet. it's still helping out britain and russia. and so this would have been enormously embarrassing on the world stage if all these black people came and demonstrated, right, over violations to their civil rights in this country as the united states was saying we're the good guys here across the globe. and so what happened, basically, was that a. philip randolph was

convinced by the roosevelt administration to call off the march which is exactly what they did. and in response to the that, there were some problems that, okay, after the war we're going to really, you know, take a harder line on civil rights which they did. of course, franklin roosevelt didn't live to see that. but what roosevelt did live to see and what he did do was executive order 8802 which created the fair employment practices commission. and there's a lot of thing we can say about that, but the most important thing is this: if you got a defense contract during the war, there were a lot of defense contracts going around. everybody want a defense contract, okay? it said if you get one, you can't desegregate your factory, and that was huge. it wasn't in terms of desegregating all factories in the south, but it was the promise of the federal

government coming in and saying segregation in these southern states is wrong, and we're not going to do business with companies that have session redivision or with cities that have segregation. so it's sort of a seed that's planted, right? if after the war a lot of peoplr employment practices commission. but to see this plan that says the federal government will step the up and protect african-american civil rights in the south. >> i'm really glad you mentioned the name a. phil lip randolph in there -- a. philip randolph. he can often get overlooked because of the importance of figures like dr. king and others. there were so many kind of a younger leadership group there, but a. philip randolph has been such an enormous figure in the american labor movement and struggling against jim crow, etc., seeing his role right here in 1941 even before the u.s. gets into war. and that, speaking of the issue

of labor and war, you've already talked about african-americans signing up to fight in large numbers, and obviously large numbers of black men and women will be entering the work force as part of, you know, winning the war effort at home. obviously, there had been huge numbers already in the work force who want to come talk about the issue of african-americans labor and the war effort with a couple of questions. so the first one is this, is that we knew this issue about black workers and the war effort, what should we know about their experience of the war? what do you think is really significant, distinct about that? and then a follow-up is that what did the shift to war production mean for african-american women? >> so african-americans played enormous roles in making all of the goods that we use to make

war, okay? so a lot of factories were still segregated in a lot of places except in d.c., which was loosely enforced. with but in major centers like detroit and oakland, california, los angeles, philadelphia, black folks go and apply for the jobs that are being produced by this need to make all of the bombs and the tanks and the planes. this is total war, o.k.? so once the united states starts producing war-making materials in the 1940s, the economy trust starts to boom come -- just starts to boom coming out of the great depression, and african-americans get a lot of these jobs. we think there are about 17 million new jobs created largely in the defense industry, and wages start to go up. there's a lot more money to go around. unemployment falls to virtually zero during world war ii, and so african-americans move to places

where these jobs are. we think roughly about a million and a half black folk moved largely out of the jim crow south to places like pennsylvania, california, illinois with, new york, new jersey, places like that. so it's a huge, great migration with. that's one of the most obvious effectses here, huge migration out of states like mississippi. in 1940 there were more black people in mississippi than white people. by 1950 that was not true because so many black people had left. sol that's one of the big -- so that's one of the big parts of this shift. it changes the demographics of our country. all the black people that go to harlem, detroit and chicago, many of them are still there. that's when many people's families first arrived in those places, okay? so black folks get better jobs using those better wages to, you know, buy new homes where they could, you know, to pay for rent in the cities where they could. not everything was peachy,

certainly, you know with, but a lot of african-americans became middle class at that time, if you will, because they were able to tap into these war industry jobs. for african-american women especially working outside of the south, they were automobile to get jobs that were well paid for the first time in many of their lives. if you were a black woman and you lived in alabama, before world war ii the only job you could probably get was working as a domestic, right? think somebody's maid, nanny or cook, something like that. if you had a college degree, you could be a teacher. that's pretty much it. but if you leave alabama and you go to oakland are, you could get a job as a welder. you could join a union. you could get a good hourly wage-paying job that paid you 800 or 900% more than what therapy making back in alabama -- you were making back in alabama. so it was transformative for many african-americans and their

families who moved out of the south to take these jobs. even for the people that stayed in the south, it was enormously transformative because a lot of them still work in defense industries. even if they didn't necessarily take a job in new orleans, for example, a lot of them could take a job on an army base. and if your washing laundry on an army base, you're probably making more than if you were washing laundry in that small town in alabama. so african-americans tapping in, it leads to the second great migration and then, of course, it leads to improved economic outlook, financial outlook for a lot of african-american families. >> you really are kind of drawing our attention to just how transformative the war was on the home front for african-americans. i mean, people especially after the great depression, that compounded by jim crow there in the south, and then now they're

seeing real opportunitieses open up. and they required them to movings but there are real opportunities -- to move, but there are real opportunity for getting a better life at least economically even in the, you know, the jim crow which we're going to get to in a few questions here. >> let me just add one more thing, jason. >> please. >> it's that i think people take for granted, you know, our current political makeup, okay? how do we get all these -- we just saw this in the last presidentialing election. there's all these black voters in detroit and milwaukee. how did they get there? it's literally world war ii. that's how they get to places like detroit and milwaukee. one of the things that happens right out of the war is we get black congressmen coming out of harlem, chicago and detroit, right? that's all because of the great migration. we also get national presidential elections where people have to pay more attention to black voters because when african-americans moved during world warm ii, they

moved -- world war ii, they moved almost exclusively to seven states, okay? follow me here. new york, new jersey, pennsylvania, michigan, ohio, california, illinois. you take those states in the presidential election, you're doing pretty well, okay in california, michigan, ohio, etc. and so because of that the even in 1948, 1952, a lot of national politicians have to start looking more toward black voters who now live in places like ohio where they can vote, and before they lived in mississippi, they couldn't. so it really transforms our national elections in that way. >> right. and that, you know, we're still seeing, as you point out, the effects of this, about the enhancement of black political power in so many different states. and world war ii was crucial to that. and i think maybe at the end we may be able to come back and saw more about that. now, william, i think one of the

things that always comes up when you talk about african-americans and the home front during the second world war, i think much of our audience is already at least generally aware of this, but it's definitely worth revisiting -- which is the campaign, can you tell us how this campaign originated, and i don't think it's an exaggeration, it became a national phenomenon during world war ii. >> yeah. double v means victory at home, victory abroad. and this term is coined by the pittsburgh courier, and it largely comes out of a response from world war i. when world war i happened, a lot of black leaders and newspapers said, okay, if we're going to fight for the country, we want to have greater civil rights, o.k.? and when world war ii happened, black people still couldn't vote in most of the south, and they said okay, this time, you know,

really, okay? the president is constantly talking about this being a war for democracy, you know, this is a war against fascism, okay? let's make sure that we can participate in the democracy here if we're going to now have this global understanding that democracy beats far up, okay? -- fascism, okay? it's constantly saying, yes, go out, buy the liberty bonds, work in the factories, serve your country. but when this is over, we've got to bring this democracy home. constantly reminding people through this double v campaign about the stakes of the war in europe, africa and his, but also re-- and asia, but also reminding people about the stakes back here at home. that's the double v campaign used by all sorts of black lead arers everywhere. it's all over the media. >> yeah. and it does really become this moment for, not only for african-americans, i think when you look at other countries too

were aware of the black freedom struggle and what that's going to to mean, what kind of impact that's going to have as well which it has a kind of trans-national, international echo as well with. that's really important, i think. wanted to give us some perspective on how this started and how it's going to to be really transformative in the country. in terms of your own work, when you've already referred several times to the jim crow south and to the state of mississippi. and i want to have a few questions here the really connect to your very important 2019 book on the city of hattiesburg, a city obviously both of us know well where we were living and working at when we met. a couple things here about the city of hattieses burg, about the state of mississippi. hattieses burg. how did wartime expansion of the training center at camp shelby,

for our audience, it's about 100 miles from us here in new orleans, how did the wartime expansion impact the deep south kind of like hattieses -- hattiesburg? >> yeah. there's a lot to say there and this is endlessly fascinating because you have the issue of the jim crow south, but not only that the other issue here is this total war. to world war ii is the last time the united states was engaged in what we might think of as being a total war, and that means just everything down, everything else is secondary, everything is aside, everybody's involved. little kids picking up bottles to men fighting on the front lines. but the one exception to that total war, right, where we don't actually say, okay, let's throw all this aside for now so we can fight the nazis is jim crow

itself. so what happens in hattiesburg. they had a world war i era military, and because the south had better weather, when the united states began to mobilize before pearl harbor even happened, it starts sending troops out to these troop training centers that revitalizes a lot of former world war i installations like camp shell by and they start -- she'll by, but there's a problem. the problem itself jim crow. when they're training people, they can't just say, okay, go, send 'em. they can't just say that because it's the jim crow south. if you're sending black troops to texas or alabama or mississippi or louisiana, you've got to think, okay, how are they going to fit into that society. because with all the things we're willing to compromise to fight this war, that is one

thing they will not compromise. so you can't just say, okay, we've got 25,000 black troops, let's send them here. it's a negotiation, right, between the local chamber of commerce, the local army commanders, the local black community that already existed and, you know, leaders who want to have these guys trained up. that's one of the issues that the army constantly faced in a place like hattiesburg. black soldiers couldn't ride in a taxi with white soldiers, okay? if the taxi companies are saying if i've got a capacity for four passengers and i've got two black soldiers and two white soldiers and they both want to go to the same place -- the city's like, no, no, no, sorry. must have segregation. so there's all these little ways that it's up convenient to try and make war in a place like hat fews burg, mississippi, or in the south in general. then there's like where do we put a all these folks, where do

they stay? how do we make sure the black troops go to the black communities and the white troops go to the white communities? and there's a couple dust-ups. so that's a very, very tricky situation all over the south is. and we can only imagine the nightmare but also the frustration where you can't just say, okay, we're in a total war, let's go balls to the wall, do whatever we have to do. no, you've got local session redivision ordinances. the ore thing -- segregation ordinances. they're getting guys coming in with big government checks, right? soldiers who are getting paid. they also need a lot of construction crews, they need a lot of workers. this is a region that's coming out of the great depression, things were bleak, okay? all across the south. and when you start building mess halls, field hospitals and that

sort of thing, that provides jobs. they get people -- when they start the construction program at camp shelby, they get people from 17 different states. they get a guy that hutch hikes from rhode island to -- hitchhikes from rhode island to take one of those jobs. it's a huge financial boom to the local economy in hattieses burg and everything that had a military base. but also during the war they need all sorts of things. soldiers need things to eat, things to do. is so local farmers, what happens with them, right? local construction crews, people that run the movie house, it's a great financial opportunity for the city of hat fews burg -- hattiesburg. overall, it's an incredible economic boost to the local economy in hattiesburg and elsewhere. >> such an important moment in that city's history, william. i think living there we used to see, you know, you could get

some remnants of that and stories about that. your research has really filled that out, showed just, you know, in terms of the kind of, as you call it, a biracial history of hattiesburg, just what kind of impact the war had. this next question kind of an elaboration on that which is can you say more about some of the specific challenges the u.s. army faced in hattiesburg? you kind of noted, alluded to that already, but to develop that a bit, because there were very distinct challenges that the army encountered having such a huge operation in a place like camp shelby. >> yeah. so one of the challenges was this race issue. and and one of the things that they did have going for them in hattiesburg is that hattiesburg had a vibrant black community. so because of that, they could work with the leaders of that black community; local businessmen, teachers and clergy is largely who they worked with.

and hattiesburg actually built a black uso, one of the few places in the country that built brand new black uso just to have a place for all the black soldier toes to go. to this day, it's the only standing black uso that was built originally during world war ii. now it's a military museum. so there's this challenge of race and what you do with all these folks, but honestly the biggest challenge that the army had in hattiesburg was about price control. so, you know, people are coming in, they've got their girlfriends, they've got their wives, they want to spend time in town, they want to go out and have a good time, they're going off to war, they also want to go to church. a lot of people just want to get off the base with the army chaplain and go to actual, you know, presbyterian or methodist or whatever they were, you know? but when they're doing that, they're getting gowned because -- gouged because all the local people know soldiers have nowhere else to go.

so they start throwing up blankets dividing them up, charging exorbitant prices, and the local army folks are begging people, stop charging them ought or nine times what you should be getting because they knew that they could. there was this conversation with this price control issue. locals in hattiesburg make a culling on charging rent to the -- culling on charging rent -- killing on charging rent to the soldiers in world war ii. >> incredible. we'll probably have some more questions regarding the deep south and african-americans and the war end when we get to the q and a. but this next question takes us out of the south to a really crucial moment of the war. that's detroit in 1943. there's obviously this stereotype, still endures, about

war time unity. and what we saw, what we see in a place like detroit in 1943 with the race riot there is the limits of that unity. it's important moment and often overlooked. can you talk about the detroit race riot of 1943 and what exactly happened there and how we should think about this in relation to the larger war effort and the home front for african-americans. >> yeah, man, so there are two, there are two stories from world war ii that when you tell young people today, it just blows their mind. this and the soldier's vote bill too which i'd be happy to talk about. yeah, detroit 1943 had a race riot. yeah, exactly. in the middle of world war ii, we've got a total war, america's

fighting the nazis, and in the middle of all this, there's a race riot. detroit is, obviously, a booming industrial center at this moment in time. okay, between 1940 when the u.s. really starts gearing up for the war and 1943, about 550,000 people move to detroit. that's probably more people than actually live in detroit proper today. an enormous amount of people move to detroit. now, about 500,000 of those people are white, and about 50,000 of those people are black, okay? many of them came from the south. and so african-americans are there getting some of the jobs that we talked about. can and there's a public housing program, okay, to house all these people. you've got to do something if you're the government, right, to make homes for all of these people pouring into the city. and so when black people were accepted into a public housing project, right, that also had white people in there, this riot broke out. thousands of local whites begin

attacking black people across the city in this movement to resist integrated public housing, right? and there are some great pictures of in that you can find. so 1943 in the middle of this war, detroit has what we call a race riot. 34 people were killed during these grassroots acts of violence throughout the city. several hundred others were wounded. and during this major military emergency of world war ii, the united states had to call in 6,000 troops not to go to burma, not to go to japan, to go to detroit to put down this race riot in the middle of this war for democracy which is pretty mind-blowing, i think, if you really think about it. >> it really is. it's, i think, one of the reasons why it's so important to not, not lose it when one's talking about the history of the war and the sort of spurt of democracy -- spirit of

democracy, the anti-fascist struggle that this happens and it's not just any city, it's the motor city, it's detroit. the center of the american economy, has been for decades where that breaks out. i think that's very helpful for us, william, when we're thinking about these issues about unity and about the war effort and about the role of democracy and expectations of democracy and equality and how that actually plays out during the war itself. well, this next question is, i think, something that's been of great to you. there are really two films that have a huge impact on african-americans. not only on african-american, but certainly on them. and i think we should just take them in this order which is one that i think is also overlooked which is the soldier's vote bill. and then how the g.u. bill, how

that -- g.i. bill, how that affects african-americans. so these two bills, they really do have a huge effect, huge impact. >> yeah. so the soldiers vote bill, 1944, right? this is the one presidential election that is square in the middle of world war ii, okay? so world war ii affects many elections, but this is the one that's right in the middle of the conflict. and, of course, this is a war for democracy, okay? and so because it's the war for democracy, because there are men stationed all across the globe fighting in this war for democracy, a lot of politicians want to make sure that the very soldiers fighting the war can vote themselves, okay? this makes perfect sense. the guys fighting for democracy should be allowed to participate in the democracy. okay, great. so pass the soldiers vote bill -- or introduce the soldiers vote bill, but there's

a hiccup. you might think that all politicians would say yes. fighting for democracy, of course they can participate in the democracy. but not everybody thinks so. and so what happens is that there's a deal brokered in congress which basically allows the decision to fall back on the states. it's not going to be the federal government mandating that all states have to accept these soldiers absentee ballots. it falls back on states to run their own elections which is essentially what states do anyway. so some of the states decide to allow absentee ballots to come in from soldiers, okay? north carolina is one of those states. but a few states decline this opportunity, okay? alabama, mississippi, louisiana. they all say, no, we're not going to let absentee ballots come in from soldiers stationed overseas. and a lot of your audience can probably understand why.

when you get an absentee ballot, you can't tell if the person who sent it all the time was black or white. and so because they didn't want to allow african-american soldiers to vote because they could not actually see them to judge their race, they decided to reject absentee ballots and not allow american soldiers to vote during this war for democracy. and so this is one of the saga with the soldiers vote bills. it's just maybe the most stunning contradiction of the entire war itself. the guy's actually doing the fighting on the ground and aren't allowed to vote because of jim crow era voting restrictions. the g.i. bill, there's a lot we can say about this, okay? let me just give you the basic good news and bad news. we'll do bad news first. so the g.u. bill itself is not necessarily segregated, but again, so the federal government

largely in response to what happened with the bonus if army in the 1930s says we've got to do something more for these guys to help them. and it's right in line with new deal era economic thinking, let's empower people to be able to participate in the economy, okay? great. so we're going to give soldiers opportunities to get some tuition money if they want to go to college, to get money if they want to apprentice as a plumber or something like that and also to buy a home, okay? we'll give them low interest mortgages to buy a home. sounds great in principle. the law can apply to people who served, black or white. awesome. the problem though is that segregation prevented all people from accessing benefits equally. for example, if you are an african-american from new york city, you go fight in the war and you try and get the g.i. bill, you might be very successful. you might get your loan. but guess what? there's entire neighborhoods on long island that don't want

black people to live there. you might be able to buy another home in a neighborhood that, you know, might not have the same sort of increase in equity over generations, right? is so that's one way. if you're from the south, if you're medgar evers, for example, you know, medgar evers dropped out of high school in response to pearl harbor, went and fought for his country. he couldn't go to the university of mississippi. he got the g.i. bill. he couldn't go to ole miss, right in he had to go to the black college. he got a great education at that black college, but that's one way that the g.i. bill was discriminatory because back people could not access all the possible benefits of using that g.i. bill itself. so, sorry, i shouldn't call it -- the g.i. bill itself was not discriminatory, but the way that people who got it could access resources certainly was. but the good news, on the other hand, is that it does help a lot of people jump up9 into the middle class. and medgar evers is a great

example of that. he got to go to college because of that. he went to college, he got a job, he became a middle class african-american at the time. and one of the things that we see in the wake of world war ii is the african-american economic situation improving greatly because of all the work and stuff we've been talking about, but also the g.i. bill, okay? people can start businesses, they can get loans to do that, a lot of people can go to college. so there were many benefits each though they weren't quite the same benefits that white people might be able to access. and if a lot of people that end up with this g.i. bill end up becoming involved in the civil rights movement because they were able to use it to start a business or go to college. they weren't as relieutenant on a white -- reliant on a white employer as they might have been in the past. >> thank you. that's really fascinating about how these bills, on the one hand, like the soldiers vote

bill really exemplifies how tenacious session redivisionists are -- segregationists are about trying to realize this war is going to empower african-americans, it's going to open doors for them. and fearful of that and trying to keep that at bay even as this war is being fought in the name of protecting democracy, crushing fascism. and then in the case of even the g.i. bill has this sort of two-sided, you know, aspect. but it does offer real opportunities for african-americans. look at our time here, william. we are kind of getting into the q and a part of our presentation, so there's obviously so much more to say here, and questions are already coming in. and one that's already come in is following up on your commence about medgar evers which is that could you say something more about the role that

african-american world war ii event irans -- veterans like evers plays in the early, in this case in the immediate postwar years of what we're going to come to understand as the modern civil rights movement? >> yeah. there's a bunch of different ways to think of this. one with of the more famous is -- [inaudible] a swedish author publishes an dilemma noting the very obvious differences. and then, of course, there's a lot of people who observe this contradiction. and i think that's a little bit overblown. black people certainly knew that there was already a contradiction way before world war ii. they didn't need a fight against can the nazis to show them that. but a lot of people, i think, were just essentially fed up. there were people who, you know, if you go through the process of going to boot camp, of getting

on a ship and going and risking your life and fighting overseas and you come back and they tell you that you can't vote, a lot of people just simply had had it, you know? medgar evers, moore, many people involved in the civil rights movement come back, and what they almost exclusively focus on -- i realize it's a lot of marches and sit-ins and things like that, these people want to vote. that's what they're most worried about. they want to vote. they want to participate in the democracy. and so that's one of the things that the black events in particular, you know, really focus on. and a lot of them, again, you know, they had just had enough, right? they just weren't going to live like that anymore after what they had been through. >> yeah. that's so important. in fact, one of our other audience members wanted to follow up on that very point,

how african-american veterans coming back resolved to not take this anymore, that, you know, after everything that's been fought for to come back and be denied basic civil rights that other americans enjoyed, this is from jay, and his question is do you see a similar result among black workers? those who had been on the home front, had been part of the, you know, contributing to the arsenal of democracy, that when the war ends -- we've already talked about a figure like a. phillip randolph. you see in terms of black workers a similar kind of determined, resolute attitude? >> yeah, absolutely. and the thing that is a little bit tricky though is that it largely, it's best seen in the north. that's what i a really want to say. i wish i could say that you saw

this groundswell of people all across the south who had been working in these factuallies. -- factories. but because so many people haved moved to the north, that's where you really get that groundswell. people had started to join the naacp, membership begins to skyrocket n. 1940 the naacp had about 50,000 members, in 1946 they have about 500,000 members. that's one of the ways black workers begin to get involved. many of them begin to join civil rights organizations like the naacp. they also begin to vote. they're very active politically. they're putting pressure if on different people in places like detroit and new york and california where black people can vote. they're putting pressure onty leaders to desegregate, to do something about the south. what happens in the comes a little bit slower, but you start

to see some real resolve coming out of the north. truman desegregates the military in 1948, okay? that's one of the things that happens as a result of the pressure instituted by a. phil inrandolph but also black -- a. phil lip randolph, but all sorts of different levels of she desegregation begin to occur in the 1950s. jackie robinson, there's no coincidence that happened right after the war as the black community grows and increases in not just its awareness, but pressuring local leaders to say let's desegregate the brooklyn dodgers, you know? that's where you start to see this initial groundswell, it's outside of the south. in 1948 the first presidential election after world war ii, both the democratic and the

republican parties have is civil rights as part of their platform here, okay? we often think of sort of white southerners leaving the democratic party, but white southerners needed a place to go if they were session redivisionists. and in 1948 they couldn't go to the republican or democratic parties. they formed their own dixiecrat party and left the democratic part. and that's also a result of these black workers who had moved out of the south and were becoming more influential in politics by the late 1940s. >> that's right. and that actually leads to your comment about the two-party system. this next question, william, is really about the democratic party. in particular, do you think that one of the reasons why segregation was not challenged any more than it was during the war itself was the influence of

southern democrats still had within the party and on fdr himself which you attribute to that and you see other factors playing a role in the unwillingness to more directly contest jim crow? >> yeah. you know, the southern democrats' influence on fdr, it shapes american life in so many different ways. largely through his new deal program, segregating things like social security, pluck housing, things like -- public housing, things like that. i think largely during the war. you know, there is sort of a more silent fight going on, for example, about who gets to live in public housing in places like detroit or places like hatties burg, mississippi even. and even though there is some advancement, there are people who come back and have the exact opposite view as

african-americans, okay? the man that killed medgar evers was also a world war ii veteran, and many people thought that, okay, this is the war to protect our way of life. and for them, that way of life was directly related to white supremacy. so these fights continue. so what happens in the late 1940s is that truman is being pushed on one hand from the black voters to have a permanent fetc to say that if the federal government does business with any of these places, they need to dedesegregate. and the white south loses their mind over this. it's one of the things that's really underappreciated, i think, in modern u.s. history. but the fetc was always there during world war ii, but after world war ii when african-americans were like let's make this permanent, that never actually happened. and that's because of the enormous backlash, and the dixiecrats were part of that backlash as well.

it wasn't this gradual march towards progress, there were many people who wanted to fight the oncoming racial desession redivision that people were starting to talk about especially in the north in the late 1940s. >> great, thank you. that leads to the next question then the which is obviously for african-americans there is a focus with the double v campaign on winning victory at home and victory abroad. at this point how international is african-american sense about racism being an issue not only for them, but for peoples in africa, for peoples in asia, that white supremacy as a category -- we know people -- when does that really become such an important category for people opposing ray snitch and did people -- racism? and did people in the black

freedom struggle, when did they start seeing themselves as participant of this international problem -- part of this international problem? racism has to be defeated really across the world? and i think you've already pointed to a little bit of that too, william. obviously, black veterans are in the pacific, they're in europe. they're seeing very different places, encountering very different social and cultural institutions and situations there. this is really a question about a sense of internationalism coming into the civil rights movement. >> yeah. i think especially on the far left, if you will, of, you know, black activists especially in the 19340s has always -- 1930s has always viewed this as an international struggle. and there were some elements of african-american life that go back to booker t. washington, frederick douglas. they viewed it as international

struggles. but where most people, where this really gipses to enter their consciousness is especially in the 1950s. and the conversation's going both ways. the thank you charter was key. before -- atlantic chanterrer was key. before the united states gets into world war ii, it sign on to the atlantic charter about what the world is going to look like after the united states and itsal lieus have won this peace. and, you know, one of those visions was for sovereignty, sovereign nations, the end of colonialism, basically, you know? a system that had existed for 78 years across the globe, and all these countries, many of whom had non-white people in them. india, the whole continent of africa, vietnam, these folks are like, great, once the war's over, let's get it going. so 1945, 1947 to, like, 1963 this enormous wave of creations of new countries overthrowing

colonial governments starting with india, right, moving on to french indochina, right? thailand, laos, vietnam, the whole continent of africa. and as that's happening, black americans are paying attention especially in africa, right? so martin luther king jr., when he becomes famous in the mid '50s, he goes to ghana, okay? many black leaders also spent time in india connecting with this international issue. and the black press, especially in the 1950s, the black press is all over what's happening in africa, right? saying these folks in africa who are overthrowing the yoke of colonization, those are our brothers, right in those are our allies. and if they can do it there, we want to do it here too. and, of course, this is all happening in the united states. you know, we're creating the u.n., international governing bodies, and black americans are very much tied into these

conversations saying, o.k., let's do it here next, right in we feel very connected to what's happening in west africa. let's do it here too. >> you're reminding us too about the ties that african-americans had to pan-africanism going back to at least the 1920s, that they were playing a role in those conversations well before world war ii. and that may be kind of a place to conclude. you know, the issue of the links, right, between world war ii and the civil rights era, i think people wanting to see, you know, what do we do with these or how do we think about, you know, these links. as you point out, it was civil rights, the struggle for freedom and equality was hardly new in 1941. that had been develop going for decades. but is there something you'd like to say by way of summary for us to think about it? what exactly do we do with these

links, you know? how does the civil rights movement -- there were other issues that would have helped it come ab without world war ii, but certainly the war, as you pointed out, does have a real effect on how it came about, about opening up opportunities, etc., for african-americans. >> yeah. not everybody would say this. many people focus on this terror ca direction -- contradiction that we've been talking about between the realities of jim crow and the problems of democracy that the u.s. is engaged in this fight for democracy across the globe. but for me, and this is the thing that not many people would say, it's about the economy. many people can obviously make the observation that black folks are like, wait a minute, we should have democracy too. and i argue that black people already knew that was a contradiction. it's about the economy. it's about the economic conditions. it's about moving to california and new jersey, etc., it's about

getting better jobs. the american economy becomes a lot better during world war ii and after world war ii, and although black people cannot tap into that equally, they do tap into that, absolutely. a lot of people use the g.i. bill, people get better jobs, they have more political influence. and because of that we get the 1950s which we all know that the 1950 happened. we have that hindsight. but the 1950s as they were happening was the most rapid every rah of desegregation in the history of american life. until the 1960s, of course. but the 1950s were a lot more progressive racially than anything that had had come before that. and that's a direct outgrowth of world war ii. there's many ways you can look at. one's the political influence, another is the war chest that the naacp gets when its membership skyrockets by a fact or of -- factor of ten. guess what you can do with that

money? you can fight court cases like brown v. board of education, okay? 1954. so i think to me at the end of the day it's about the economy. even though we get this message and idea about double v, that's all important, but the resources that go into african-americans' communities, their churches, their colleges, you know, like the number of african-americans attending college doubles in the 1950s. largely because of the economy. and so i think that is the most crucial factor for what then led up, of course, to the civil rights movement. >> well, william, you've given us a lot to consider there, and so i want to thank you very much for a terrific exchange about african-americans, the home front. obviously, this deserves, you know, so many more webinars and public programs, but this is really pushing the discussion forward here. so it's much appreciated. i'd like to thank our online

audience for joining us today and to make your aware of -- you aware of the fact that the museum will be hosting its international conference on friday and saturday, march 5th and 6th. it is entirely virtual and entirely free. free is a good thing. and you can find out more information about the conference at www -- ww2 conference.com. and we hope you will join us for that. let me thank everybody again, and is we hope that you will join us for future events here at the national world war ii museum. >> here's a look at some publishing industry news. sky force publishing has picked up blake bailey's biography of phil inroth -- phillip roth. the book, first published in april, made several bestseller lists before norton pulled it.

they plan to release a papeback edition next month. new york governor andrew quo poe's -- cuomo's office, currently under investigation for using state resources to aid him in the writing of the book. in march his publisher, crown, canceled the book's promotion and a future paperback edition. book scan reports that print book sale were up just over 10% for the week ending may 8th. and supreme court justice stephen breyer is releasing a book in the fall that offers his thoughts on the dangerrings of infusing partisan politics into the makeup of the high court. the book entitled the authority of the court and the peril of politics will be available on september 7th. booktv will continue to bring you new programs and publishing news, and you can also watch all of our past programs anytime at booktv.org.

>> booktv is television for serious readers, all weekend, every weekend. join us again next saturday beginning at 8 a.m. eastern for the best in nonfiction books. >> this week in congress the senate is in session, but there are no votes expected in the house until mid june. the senate returns today and continues work on authorizing funding for science and technology research that could help the u.s. compete with china. and votes are planned for more of president biden's nominees including the head of the centers for medicare and medicaid services and the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the justice department. watch live senate coverage today at 3 p.m. eastern on c-span2. ..

charter communications support c-span as a public service along with these other television providers giving you a front row seat to democracy. >> host: this week on "the communicators" is a discussion of the so-called cancel culture and free speech. joining us are two telecommunications experts, randy may is a founder and president of the free state foundation, previous general counsel assistant at the fcc. and will rinehart is with utah state universities center for growth and opportunity. randy may, how would you define the term cancel culture, and what is its impact, in your