How Did Ww2 Affect African Americans

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In this book, we can see the chronological stories of a big family, having to live in poor wooden barracks, facing potential splitting up of family, an enforcement of either joining the army or leaving the country. For example, “Each barracks was divided up...about the size of a living room...were were assigned two of these for the twelve people in our family group... The first task was to divide up what space we had for sleeping.” The big family had not enough spaces to sleep in the new location they were assigned. Besides, they had to make decisions through Loyalty Oath, “the No Nos back to Japan, the Yes Yess into an American society full of wartime hostility and racial hate”. Even though the father in the story did not want to show his …show more content…
On one hand, they could fight in a social context in which racial tension gradually became a global issue, and U.S., as a participant in WWII, had to deal with it in a different attitude and approach. For example, Nazi Germany’s holocaust towards the European Jews and U.S. confrontational position with Germany required U.S. to deal with its own racial and ethnic problems more correctly. Just as Anthropologist Ruth Benedict put in her 1943 book The races of Mankind, required U.S. to clean its own house and stand unashamed against Nazis. On the other hand, African American civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, President of the black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, pressured President Roosevelt to ban discrimination in defense industries. He planned to organize a massive march on Washington for July of 1941, with 50,000 to 100,000 African Americans coming to the march and demanding their rights. In fear of propagandists talking about American racial policy outside of U.S. Border, President Roosevelt finally agreed to issue Executive Order 8802, creating the Fail Employment Practices Commission(FEPC). This action guaranteed the same payment for both African American and women as men in doing the same jobs. What’s more, African Americans responded enthusiastically to the war effort,. The numbers of blacks in U.S. army soared from