-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Feb. 3, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------Part 2 ('Don't ask, don't tell')
Lessons from the struggle to desegregate the military
By Leslie Feinberg
Part 1, in the Jan. 20, 2000, issue of Workers World, analyzed the waffling and weaseling by Democratic politicians on the question of gays in the military.
Who will lead the battle to overturn the bigoted ban on gays in the military? Perhaps some in the lesbian, gay, bi and trans movement may be searching the horizon for a Franklin Roosevelt or a Harry Truman to sign an executive order overturning the discriminatory policy. Roosevelt signed an order banning racist discrimination in the defense industries; Truman issued an executive order officially ending segregation in the military.
But neither president penned these orders out of the goodness of his heart or because he suddenly awoke to anti-racist consciousness. They signed on the dotted line because of the pressure of a powerful and militant mass movement by African Americans during the 1940s.
In 1940, Black civil-rights leaders began their grass-roots campaign to overturn Jim Crow in the armed forces and racist discrimination in the munitions industries. African Americans were still reeling from the Depression. Black workers suffered far more as a result of the capitalist crash than white workers.
An estimated 19.4 percent of Black men were jobless in 1940 compared to 12.4 percent of whites. And 35.9 percent of Black women were unemployed compared to 23.8 percent of white women. In big cities in the South, two-thirds of Black men were employed, compared to three-quarters of white men.
In the Northern urban areas with the biggest Black populations only 45 to 56 percent of Black males were employed, compared to 63 to 73 percent of white males. Those cities were New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Indianapolis.
And apartheid-like segregation was not limited to the military. In Chicago, New York, Detroit and Philadelphia, African Americans were virtually excluded from living in 80 to 95 percent of the neighborhoods. Most lived in areas that had over 90 percent Black residency.
Where people live is also largely determined by where they can find jobs. The so-called defense industries and their surrounding neighborhoods were literally all-white enclaves.
In 1940 only 5.4 percent of workers in the 20 major U.S. wartime industries were African Americans. The federal government was absolutely complicit in this racist discrimination because these industries were dependent on federal contracts.
Airplane manufacturers flat-out refused to hire African Americans in their plants. In 1940 there were only 240 African Americans among the 100,000 workers in the aircraft industry--and most of them were janitors.
Ten New York war production plants employed 29,215 workers--only 142 of whom were African American.
That same year, half the defense manufacturers polled by the U.S. Employment Service said they would not hire Black workers.
Segregation and racist discrimination were entrenched policies within the War Department, as well.
In September 1940, Congress passed the country's first peacetime draft bill. The maximum number of draftees called to active duty was set at 900,000. More than 16 million men were compelled to register for the draft in October.
"With so many men available," notes gay historian Alan Bérubé, "the armed forces decided to exclude certain groups of Americans, including women, Blacks in the Marines and Army Air Corps, and--following the advice of psychiatrists--homosexuals."
The Navy only allowed African American men to serve as stewards and mess-hall attendants. Fewer than 5,000 of the 230,000 men in the Army were Black.
There were only two Black combat officers in the Regular Army and none in the Navy. Five hundred out of 100,000 Army reservists were Black.
Asa Philip Randolph (1889-1979) was one of the most influential leaders of the movement to desegregate the military and end racist discrimination in hiring by the defense industry. Randolph helped found the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925.
In his early years, Randolph was a socialist. He said that that his discovery of socialism as a young man was "like finally running into an idea which gives you your whole outlook on life."
That outlook had made Randolph take a stand against U.S. involvement in WW I. In 1918, socialists like Randolph and Hubert H. Harrison attacked that war as imperialist in nature. Randolph and other civil-rights leaders had been denouncing racism in the armed forces and the defense industry since WW I.
In September 1940, at a Sleeping Car Porters convention, Randolph issued a resolution calling for an end to racist segregation in the armed forces.
Eleanor Roosevelt, attending the convention, set up a conference at the White House for Randolph and other civil-rights leaders. On Sept. 27, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and leading officials of his administration met with Randolph, Walter White from the NAACP, and T. Arnold Hill from the National Urban League.
The Black leaders reportedly put forward their demand: the immediate desegregation of the military. But the Democrats betrayed them.
Randolph biographer Sally Hanley wrote, "The Roosevelt administration was afraid that an order barring racial discrimination would upset southern congressmen and their constituents, and it was unwilling to make changes."
Instead, Hanley explained, the White House issued a news release about the meeting stating that Randolph, White, and Hill had approved the military's segregation policy. "The three men were outraged by the false statement, and it was only with difficulty that they were able to clear their names before the black community."
In January 1941 Randolph issued a call for a "thundering march on Washington" powerful enough to "shake up white America." The stated goal of the march, set for July 1, 1941, was to end segregation in the military and to win jobs for African Americans in the defense industry.
Randolph said the "leaders in Washington will never give the Negro justice until they see masses--10, 20, 50 thousand Negroes on the White House lawn!"
The response was electrifying. People from around the country wrote to the Sleeping Car Porters' headquarters in New York asking for information about how to take part in the march. A big group of prominent individuals--community and union leaders--joined Randolph to form a March on Washington Committee.
In March 1941, Randolph issued a statement about the need for this march. He wrote, "In this period of power politics, nothing counts but pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure."
Randolph was criticized by some for insisting that only Black people march. But he answered that there are some things that Black people must do alone. He called on white supporters to line the route of march and cheer on their African American sisters and brothers.
With enthusiastic support from the Black press and communities, the March on Washington Committee took its call to action to the masses. Randolph visited barbershops and beauty parlors, restaurants and bars, pools halls and street corners to talk to people in their own neighborhoods about the need to rally for this march. The crowds that listened grew.
As July 1 grew nearer, the Roosevelt administration began to waver. Federal officials sent a letter to defense industry executives asking them to make more of an effort to hire African Americans. Randolph replied that the president must issue an executive order "with teeth in it."
At the request of the Oval Office, Eleanor Roosevelt and New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia tried to persuade Randolph to call off the march. Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to Randolph, "I am afraid it will set back the progress which is being made, in the Army at least, towards better opportunities and less segregation."
In a matronizing tone she admonished Randolph, "one must face situations as they are and not as one wishes them to be."
Joanne Grant, editor of Black Protest, wrote that it was similar to President Abraham Lincoln telling Frederick Douglass and other Black leaders petitioning the federal government for equal pay for Black soldiers in the Civil War that "the country was not ready."
On June 18, President Roosevelt again met with Randolph at the White House to pressure the civil-rights leader to halt the mass mobilization. Then, on June 25, Roosevelt finally issued Executive Order 8802 formally ending employment discrimination in government and defense industries.
The order also set up the Fair Employment Practices Committee to investigate complaints about discrimination and set up grievance procedures.
Three days later, Randolph announced he was canceling the march.
Next: How the battle to desegregate
the military was won.Sources: Allen, Robert L. "The Port Chicago Mutiny" (Warner Books, Inc.: New York, 1989); Berman, Peter M. and Mort N. Bergman. "The Chronological History of the Negro in America" (New American Library: New York, 1969); Bérubé, Alan. "Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two" (Plume: 1991); Grant, Joanne, ed. "Black Protest: History, Documents, and Analyses 1619 to the Present" (Fawcett Publications, Inc.: Greenwich, Conn., 1969); Hanley, Sally. Introduction by Coretta Scott King. "A. Philip Randolph" (Chelsea House Publishers: New York, 1986); Hutchinson, Earl Ofari.. "Blacks and Reds: Race and Class in Conflict 1919-1990" (Michigan State University Press: East Lansing, 1995); Jacoby, Tamar. "someone else's house: america's unfinished struggle for integration" (Basic Books: 1998); Marable, Manning and Leith Mullings, eds. "Let Nobody Turn Us Around" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.: New York, 2000); Rose, Arnold. "The Negro in America" (The Beacon Press: Boston, 1957).
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