America after the End of World War II - Essay Example

1 America 1945 – 1960 1945 heralded the end of World War II, and the celebration oa worldwide victory for sustaining and furtherperpetuation of democratic ideals and laissez faire. At home there were ticker-tape parades to welcome back all of the brave men who had placed their lives in harms way in foreign theatres of was, to enable everyone back home to enjoy the constitutional precepts of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It was a time of victorious jubilation for everyone, except those who came back “home” to segregation and discrimination. The returning African American soldier returned home to find that his most dreaded unwanted guest “Jim Crow”, had not packed up and moved to other shores. With the non-extinguishing of Jim Crow, they were still mandated to separate facilities for travel, lodging, eating, and drinking, schooling, worship, housing, and in all other aspects of social and economic life .Moreover, though they had fought and many died, the armed forces was not anymore accommodating of the African American civil rights, as was society-at-large. African American veterans returning to the south after military service in World War II were often unwilling to be subjected to the humiliation and degradation of segregation and discrimination in the land which they served to shed their blood. Some white, especially in the south, felt that these veterans needed to be terrorized into submission, whether they were wore the nation’s uniform or not. The issue of prejudice and discrimination in the armed forces was a mirror of similar conditions in American society-at-large. While resistance to segregation was 2 undoubtly growing in the African American community, there was yet no widespread concern for the problem in mainstream society, and there was certainly no concerted public effort to end it. The gap between the armed forces stated goal of integration and its continuing practices had grown so noticeable by 1948, a presidential election year, that most civil rights spokesmen and their allies in the press had become disillusioned with armed forces reform. Benjamin O. Davis, still the Army’s senior black officer and still after eight years a brigadier general, called the army’s senior staff attention to the shift in attitude. Davis grew restless and impatient. He wanted the army staff to give definite expression of the desire of the Department of National Defense for the elimination of all forms of discrimination – segregation from the armed forces(BOD) In February 1948 the Chief of Information tried to couner criticism by asking personnel and administrative officials to collect favorable opinions from prominent civilians “particularly negroes and sociologists”. But this attitude to public criticism failed because as the deputy personnel director had to admit “the division does not have knowledge of any expressed favorable opinion wither of individuals or organizations, in reference to our Negro policy”(CINFO) This was a constant concern because it marred the armed forces public image, segregation also had a profound effect on the African American civilian population. The effect was difficult to measure but nevertheless real and has been the subject of considerable study by social scientists(Ginzberg). Their opinions are obviously open to debate, and in fact most of them were not fully formulated during the period under 3 discussion. Yet their conclusions, based on modern sociological techniques, clearly reveal the pain and turmoil suffered by the African American soldiers because of racial separation. Rarely did the Army staff bother to delve into these matters in the yrats before Korea, although the facts on which the scientists based their conclusions were collected by the war department itself. This indifference is the more curious because the Army had always been aware of what the war department policies and program review board called in 1947 ‘that intangible aspect of military life called prestige and spirit(WD) On 26 July 1948 President Harry S. Truman signed Executive Order 9981, calling on the armed forces to provide equal protection and opportunity for African American servicemen. Integration in the Armed forces loomed large on the international scene, but if the problem of race seemed insignificant to military planners, the sheer number of African Americans in the armed forces gave them a new prominence in national defense. Because of post-war racial quotas, particularly in the Army and Air force, African American service men now constituted a significant segment of the service population, and consequently their abilities and well-being had a direct bearing on the nation’s cold war defense. The African American community represented 10 per cent of the country’s manpower, and this also influenced defense spending. African American threats to boycott the segregated armed forces could not be ignored, and civil rights demands had to be considered in developing laws relating to selective service and universal training. Nor could the administration overlook the fact that the United States had become a leading protagonist on a cold war in which sympathies of the undeveloped and mostly colored 4 world would soon assume a special importance. In as much as integration of the armed forces had become an almost universal demand of the African American community, integration became, will-nilly, an important defense issue. Segregation officially ended in the active armed forces with the announcement of the secretary of defense in 1954 that the last all black unit had been disbanded. These changes ushered in an era of good feeling during which the services and the civil rights activists tended to overlook some firms of discrimination that persisted within the services. This tendency became even stronger in the early 1960’s when the discrimination suffered by African American servicemen in local communities dramatized the relative effectiveness of the equal treatment and opportunity policies in military installations. The Defense Department was, for instance, under constant pressure from African American officers and men who were not only reporting inequalities in the newly integrated services and complaining of the remaining racial discrimination within the military community but were also demanding the department’s assistance in securing their constitutional rights from the communities outside the military bases. This was particularly true in the fields of public education, housing, and places of entertainment. Works Cited DF’s (INFO to D/P & A, 9 February 48, and Dep D/P&A to (INFO, 12 February 48, both in WSGPA 291.2 ( 9 February 1948) For a detailed discussion of this point, see Mandelbaum, Soldier Groups and Negro Soldiers, Stouffer et al., The American Soldier: Adjustment during Army Life, ch XII; Eli Ginzberg, The Negro Potential ( New York Columbia University Press 1956), Ginzberg et al., the ineffective soldier, vol III, Patterns of Performance ( New York Columbia University Press, 1959): To Secure these Rights (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1947) Dollard and Young, In the Armed Forces. Memo, Brig. Gen. B. O. Davis, Sp Asst to SA, for under SA, 7 Jan 1948, Sub: Negro Utilization in the Post War Army, WSGPA 291.2; ibid, 24 November 24, 1947 both in SA files. The quotations are from the latter document. Read More