Answer: MOST African Americans served in segregated units and were generally assigned noncombat jobs. On texas military bases African Americans troops had separate training grounds and were housed in separate barracks.
Before World War II (1939–1945) began, many African-Americans lived in the South. They eked out a living as tenant farmers or sharecroppers. As the nation prepared for war, better paying factory and manufacturing jobs became available in the North and on the coasts. Those opportunities encouraged many African-American men and women to relocate. Black Americans also moved to southern cities, such as Birmingham and Mobile, which grew into important military manufacturing centers. Those shifts from one part of the country to other parts led to other changes. People from different backgrounds came in contact with and worked with one another. Those experiences made black Americans determined to resist racial discrimination. Although the U.S. government denounced Nazi racism overseas, white Americans maintained their own racist system of inequality and violence against black citizens. In many parts of the country, African-Americans were denied the right to vote. They attended segregated and inferior This article is available at 5 reading levels at https://newsela.com.
schools. They faced discrimination or exclusion from branches of the military and certain jobs. And for some black workers, high unemployment and low wages remained. The contradiction angered African-Americans. They demanded that the nation live up to its highest ideals. The Pittsburgh Courier, a black weekly newspaper, launched a "Double V" campaign in 1942. It called for "victory over our enemies from without" — the Germans and the Japanese — and "victory over our enemies from within" — American racism. Black Americans took those words seriously. They strongly supported the war effort and they also engaged in protests against racial injustice at home. A. Philip Randolph led the way. He was the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a black labor organization. For decades, Randolph had challenged racial inequality. In September 1940, Randolph was part of a delegation that met with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and demanded that the president end segregation in the armed forces. Roosevelt did not act. In January 1941, Randolph decided to take a more forceful approach. He proposed a m
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a law that was passed by the Congress in order to authorize the President to regulate industry. The main focus of such legislation was stimulating economic recovery during the Great Depression. One of the most controversial parts of this law was that which concerned unions. The law protected the collective bargaining rights for unions. It also encouraged union organizing and guaranteed trade union rights.
