Racist During Ww2
Essay Preview: Racist During Ww2
Report this essay
World War Two was a time of mixed signals coming from the American society concerning racial issues with African Americans. The government was trying to unite the black and white communities to help with the war effort, while the people had different opinions on what should happen. The government also created an agency that would help relieve some of the racial tension between whites and blacks. Riots were started and took the lives of many inocent individuals. Not only was the government and society trying to figure everything out, Hollywood got involved and tried to make blacks more prevalent in movies. Overall, during the time of the war, very little was accomplished to help ease any racial tension between the two majority groups in the United States.
Prior to the war, blacks were predominantly a poor race. The colored society held most of the jobs that involved field labor, maids, and low level food preparation. Blacks were also only earning $0.40 to every $1.00 that the whites were earning. Most African-Americans also couldn’t afford to vote because of the voting tax that was established by most of the southern states. The North was also segregated. The southern states went as far as having laws that made authorities and citizens segregate blacks away from the whites. Unlike the South, the North didn’t have any laws that made it manditory to segregate whites and blacks.
The United States was at war with the Axis powers abroad and also had a race war going on in their backyard. The “Double V” campaign was the name given to the multi front war taking place. The majority of the white society wanted a victory abroad while atleast half of the black society wanted a victory over racism at home. The government created an agency known as The Office of War Information(OWI). The OWI was established as a mediator between the information going on in the war, and what they released to the public. It was basically a race inspired propaganda agency that tried to sway the black community into wanted a victory abroad so that they could have a chance to fight for the victory at home. They tried throughout the war to rally the population together. One of the OWI’s biggest challenges was to solve the issue of the blacks siding with the Japanese. The blacks saw the Japanese as a people of color that have had a similar life of oppression caused by the whites. Nearly half of the black community that was surveyed at the time believed that they would be atleast as well off under Japanese rule as they were under the United States.(Blacks, Loyalty, and Motion-Picture Propaganda) The OWI took a couple main approaches to try and pursuade the blacks to side with the war effort. They tried everything from the failed information bearing pamphlets on black history and contributions, to modifying the movie “Tennesse Johnson” which was about President Andrew Johnson who was for slavery and oppression. The original movie script was to make Johnson a hero and make Thaddeus Stevens, who was a congressman who wanted racial equality and rights for all the freed slaves, a villian. The movie