AfricanAmerican History Chapter 20 Flashcards
March on Washington Movement
A. Philip Randolph, who was president of the Brotherhood Roosevelt’s attention. In January 1941 he called on black people to unify their protests and direct them at the national government.
He sug-gested that ten thousand African Americans march on Washington under the slogan “We loyal Negro-American citizens demand the right to work and tight for our country, in the coming months Randolph helped create the March on Washington Movement (MOWM), which soon became the largest mass movement of black Americans since the activities of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1920s.
The MOWM’s demands included a presidential order for- discrimination, eliminating race-based exclusion from defense training courses, and requiring the USES to supply workers on a nonracial basis.
Randolph also wanted an order to abolish segregation in the armed forces and the president’s support for a law withdrawing the benefits to membership to black Americans. Departing from the leadership tactics memoership to black Americans.
Executive Order #8802
Executive Order #8802 instructed all agencies that trained workers to eration with these guidelines, Roosevelt created the Fair Employment eration with these guidelines, Roosevelt created the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) with the power to investigate complaints of discrimination.
- Executive Order #8802 was the first major presidential action countering discrimination since Reconstruction, but it was no new Emancipation Proclamation.
- Black excitement with the order soon soured as many industries, particularly in the South, evaded its clear intent and engaged in only token hirings.
Fair Employment: Practices Committee
the threat of the march, the issuance of the executive order, and the creation of the FEPC marked the formal acknowledgment by the federal government that it bore some responsibility for protecting black and minority rights in employment.
Tuskegee Airmen
The most visible group of black soldiers served in the Army Air Force.
January 1941 the War Department announced the formation of an all- black Pursuit Squadron and the creation of a training program at I Tuskegee Army Air Field, Alabama, for black pilots.
The 99th went to North Africa in April 1943 and flew its first combat mission against the island of Pantelleria on June 2.
squadron participated in the air battle over Sicily, operating from its base in North Africa, and supported the invasion of Italy.
The Tuskegee Airmen amassed an impressive record. They flew over 15,500 sorties and completed 1,578 missions. During the two hundred missions in which they escorted heavy bombers deep into Germany’s Rhineland, not one of the “heavies” was lost to enemy fighter opposition. They destroyed 409 enemy aircraft, sank an enemy destroyer, and knocked out numerous ground installations.
They accumulated 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses, a Legion of Merit, a Silver Star, 14 Bronze Stars, and 744 Air Medals.
Dixiecrat Party
- Henry Wallace and the 1948 Presidential Election
- Henry Wallace, who had been Roosevelt’s vice president from 1941 to 1945. Wallace ran on the ticket of the communist-backed Progressive Party, which sought to take the votes of liberals, leftists, and civil rights advocates disappointed by Truman’s moderation. Wallace also supported a peaceful accommodation with the Soviet Union.
- Black votes in key northern states were central to Truman’s strategy for victory. African Americans in these tightly contested areas could make the difference between victory and defeat. To retain their alle- giance, Truman sought to demonstrate his administration’s support of civil rights. In January 1948 he embraced the findings of his biracial Committee on Civil Rights and called for their enactment into law.
- The reaction of white southern politicians was swift and threatening, causing Truman to pause. t as the election neared, fear of black aban donment at the polls became so great that the Democratic convention passed a strong pro-civil rights plank.
- Many white Southerners, led by South Carolina’s governor Strom Thurmond, bolted the convention and formed their own States’ Rights, or Dixiecrat, party. The Dixiecrats carried South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana in the election. Wallace carried no state. The failure of the bulwark of white supremacy to prevent the Democratic Party from advocating African-American rights, and Truman’s ultimate victory despite the defection of hard-line racists, represented a profound turning point in American politics.
Executive Order #9981
Desegregating the Armed Forces
When President Truman reinstated the draft in March 1948, A. Philip Randolph, who had formed the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience against Military Segregation in 1947, warned the nation and would not take a Jim Crow draft lying down. New York congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. would also supported this stance. He declared there weren’t enough jails in America to hold the black men who would refuse to bear arms in a Jim Crow army.
On June 24, 1948, the Soviet Union heightened tensions even further when it imposed a blockade on West Berlin.
On July 26 Truman, anticipating war between the superpowers approaching and hoping to shore up his support among black voters for the dally desegregating the armed forces. tiany ucMrgi egaung the armed forces.
