“Double V” for Victory: Black Americans, World War II, and the Civil Rights Movement

A month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, James Thompson, a cafeteria worker at an aircraft plant, wrote a letter to the Pittsburgh Courier calling on Black Americans to launch a Double V campaign linking victory over fascism abroad to victory over segregation and racism at home. This call for using the United States’ entry into the Second World War to propel change on the home front proved galvanizing, and the war years ushered in both tremendous gains for civil rights and dangerous backlash from the forces of white supremacy. Moving from army bases and defense plants to courtrooms, buses, and ballot boxes, this talk will explore the impact of the war years, and the important role played by veterans, in shaping the postwar Black Freedom Struggle. It will also examine the powerful forces of resistance to wartime change (real or perceived), surveying both the gains of the decade and the limitations of 1940s reform.