Lift Every Voice by Patricia Sullivan

Author:Patricia Sullivan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The New Press
Published: 2011-09-08T00:00:00+00:00

The buildup for war extended the reach of racial exclusion and discrimination in industrial centers across the country and magnified the War Department’s acceptance “lock, stock, and barrel, of the philosophies and procedures of the South.” The integration of black Americans into the national defense effort on an equal basis took on an urgency that quickly eclipsed other areas of activity and thrust jobs and wartime issues to the top of the association’s agenda. At the same time, the changes unleashed by the war touched blacks across the nation, fueling expectations, resentments, and demands that the NAACP struggled to give voice and direction to. All of this occurred at a time when the association’s annual income had risen to barely more than $70,000 and all felt the pressure to “do a mammoth job on a shoestring.”31

During a monthlong tour of the West Coast in the fall of 1940, Walter White observed firsthand the widespread discrimination in the aircraft and shipyard industries and found NAACP branches energized around the fight for jobs. Reports from field organizers underscored the urgency of the issue around the country. The Committee for Participation of Negroes in the National Defense, a group of black World War I officers organized by Rayford Logan and the Pittsburgh Courier, had been pressing the federal government since 1938 for full inclusion of blacks in defense work and all branches of the armed services. The NAACP’s national office quickly moved to coordinate a targeted effort to meet this problem, instructing branches to forward information on job bias to the national office while each branch continued to organize locally to fight for access to jobs in federally funded defense plants. Protective of the NAACP’s role as the leading advocate for civil rights, White ignored the efforts of Logan’s group and lobbied allies in the Senate for a full investigation of discrimination in defense industries. He also worked with labor leader A. Philip Randolph and Arnold T. Hill of the National Urban League to secure action by the president and officials involved in war production. Plans for the Senate hearing stalled. The tepid response on the part of the administration, attuned to the interests of industrialists and southern leaders whose support was considered essential to Roosevelt’s defense program, compelled White and his allies to consider other tactics.32

In January 1941, as White and the NAACP worked to orchestrate mass protest through the branches, Randolph announced that he would lead a march on Washington to protest discrimination in the defense industry and the armed services. The founder and president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Randolph was the nation’s foremost black labor leader and a major voice for civil rights. His idea offered the kind of bold strike that appealed to White’s imagination, and the two joined forces in planning the most famous demonstration that never happened. Randolph envisioned bringing ten thousand people to Washington, explaining to White that “something dramatic has got to be done to shake official Washington and the white industrialists

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