World War II

MOOD OF THE BLACK MAN of the early forties was bitter and brooding. He had fought bravely for America in World War I only to return home to find that the democracy he had defended did not exist for him.

He had thought of going back to Africa with Garvey, he had joined in A. Philip Randolph's fight for the black man's rights in labor, and he had lived through an impressive black cultural renaissance that had given him a new sense of identity. Moreover, he had been severely victimized by the Depression of the thirties, and he had suffered an increase in lynchings, beatings, jailings, and other forms of violence.

Both North and South America were still largely segregated and economically the black man defined himself as the "last hired, first fired." It was not surprising, then, that when war efforts were stepped up in the early forties, blacks broke into protest at all levels. The black press played a significant role in the pro-