Don’ t Buy Where You Can’ t Work
– Jesse Owens, unable to cash in at home on his victories in Berlin, ran a 100-yard race against a horse in Havana, Cuba. As 3,000 spectators looked on, Owens won the race and was paid $ 2,000.
Unfair treatment of Black people in various areas led to protests across the United States.
In 1939, Harlem Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr. created the“ Don’ t Buy Where You Can’ t Work” campaign in protest of the discriminatory hiring practices of New York City merchants. He organized a picket line on 125th Street in Harlem with the objective of getting more Blacks hired in businesses. One result was the hiring of more than 500 Blacks in the 1939-1940 New York World’ s Fair.
On March 31, 1941, Powell launched a bus boycott in New York City that led to the hiring of Black bus drivers and mechanics in the city’ s transportation system.
But the fight against racial discrimination would soon take a different turn after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor dragged the United States into World War II.
As this nation went to war, 2.5 million Black men registered for the military draft and 1.2 million of them served in the U. S. Armed Forces during that great conflict. Many were motivated by the Pittsburgh Courier’ s reaction to a letter from James Thompson, a Black cafeteria worker in Wichita, Kansas. Thompson, citing workplace racism, urged the paper and nation to strive for two victories from the war.
“ Most of our leaders are suggesting that we sacrifice every other ambition to the paramount one, victory. With this I agree; but I also wonder if another victory could not be achieved at the same time … The V for victory sign is being displayed prominently in all so-called democratic countries which are fighting for victory over aggression, slavery and tyranny. If this V sign means that to those now engaged in this great conflict, then we let colored Americans adopt the double VV for a double victory. The first V for victory over our enemies from without, the second V for victory over our enemies from within.”
Thompson’ s appeal for a“ Double V Campaign” caught on quickly. From The California Eagle, in Los Angeles, to New York City’ s Amsterdam News, Black newspapers across the country took up the call. Seizing on this, the NAACP and the National Urban League, the nation’ s leading civil rights organizations, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Black labor union, made the“ Double V Campaign” a major part of their push for Black advancement.
But while the“ Double V Campaign” excited many Blacks, it incited some Whites. One of them was FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who viewed the support Black newspapers gave the“ Double V Campaign” campaign as seditious and treasonous.
With Roosevelt’ s backing, Hoover tried to get Attorney General Francis Biddle to indict a group of Black newspaper publishers. But after meeting with Chicago Defender publisher, John Sengstacke, who defended the papers’ actions, Biddle refused to do so.
While Blacks won that fight, they would soon lose a far more important one.
In June 1944, Congress passed the Servicemen’ s Readjustment Act, which quickly became known as the GI Bill.“ GI” stands for“ government issue,” a term assigned to military personnel at the beginning of World War II.
The legislation was meant to ease the return to civilian life of the millions of men and women who served in the U. S. military during the war. It provided these veterans with college tuition, a home purchase loan guarantee, and a federal unemployment benefit of $ 20 a week for up to 52 weeks.
However, Rep. John Rankin, a Mississippi Democrat, delayed passage of the bill for several months. As the influential chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rankin wanted the distribution of GI Bill benefits to be managed by individual states rather than by the federal government. With the adoption of this change, Southern states were able to keep many Black veterans from gaining access to the benefits they had earned.
The short-term effect of this change was to perpetuate the racial hierarchy that the South’ s Jim Crow practices imposed on Black people, 75 percent of whom lived below the Mason- Dixon line at the end of World War II.
The long-term effect was even more chilling.
White veterans used the GI Bill’ s college tuition and home loan
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