Winning the war for democracy: the March on Washington Movement, 1941-1946 9780252038624, 9780252096556, 1856118142, 0252038622, 025209655X

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 10
Introduction......Page 16
1 What Happens When Negroes Don't March?......Page 38
2 "We Are Americans, Too": MOWM's Institutionalization......Page 63
3 Wartime St. Louis and the Genesis of MOWM in the Gateway City, 1942......Page 89
4 Pickets, Protests, and Prayers: St. Louis MOWM's Campaign to Integrat the Defense Workforce......Page 116
5 "These Women Really Did the Work":Marching on More than Defense Plants......Page 144
6 "An Economic D-Day for Negro Americans": MOWM's Transition and Dissolution, 1944–46......Page 165
Conclusion......Page 190
Appendix A: MOWM Chapters and Local Chairpersons......Page 208
Appendix B: Approximate Racial Composition of Major St. Louis Defense Contractors during World War I......Page 210
Appendix C: March on Washington Movement Documents......Page 212
Notes......Page 218
Bibliography......Page 290
Index......Page 324

Citation preview

Winning the War for Democracy

Winning the War for Democracy The March on Washington Movement, 1941–1946 David Lucander

University of Illinois Press Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield

© 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America c 5 4 3 2 1 ∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lucander, David, 1980– Winning the war for democracy : the March on Washington Movement, 1941–1946 / David Lucander. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-252-03862-4 (hardback : acid-free paper) — isbn 978-0-252-09655-6 (e-book) 1. African Americans—Civil rights—History—20th century. 2. March on Washington Movement (Organization) 3. Randolph, A. Philip (Asa Philip), 1889–1979. 4. United States. Committee on Fair Employment Practice. 5. Civil rights movements— United States—History—20th century. 6. African Americans— Employment—History—20th century. 7. African Americans— Economic conditions—20th century. 8. United States—Race relations—History—20th century. I. Title. e185.61.l814  2014 3232.1196'073—dc23  2014007759

For Ursula, because you’ve been there while every word of this book was written.

Contents

Acknowledgments  ix Introduction  1

1 What Happens When Negroes Don’t March?  23



2 “We Are Americans, Too”: MOWM’s Institutionalization  48



3 Wartime St. Louis and the Genesis of MOWM in the Gateway City, 1942  74



4 Pickets, Protests, and Prayers: St. Louis MOWM’s Campaign to Integrate the Defense Workforce  101



5 “These Women Really Did the Work”: Marching on More than Defense Plants  129



6 “An Economic D-Day for Negro Americans”: MOWM’s Transition and Dissolution, 1944–46  150

Conclusion  175 Appendix A: MOWM Chapters and Local Chairpersons 193 Appendix B: Approximate Racial Composition of Major St. Louis Defense Contractors during World War II  195

Appendix C: March on Washington Movement Documents  197 Notes  203 Bibliography  275 Index  309

Acknowledgments

A

s any author quickly learns, writing is both a solitary pursuit and a collective effort. No matter the conditions, it is sometimes tedious and always timeconsuming. I am grateful for the support that institutions, colleagues, friends, and family have given this project. This list is far from comprehensive, and I apologize to anyone who was unintentionally left off or forgotten. I am blessed that so many have helped along the way that it is inevitable someone has been overlooked. This book began as a seminar paper written while a graduate student in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. My six years in the program were rewarding and inspiring thanks largely to John Bracey, James Smethurst, Ernest Allen, Bill Strickland, Amilcar Shabazz, Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Esther Terry, Manisha Sinha, Steven Tracy, and Trisha Loveland. The New Africa House was an amazing place to learn, and I am just now beginning to appreciate how extraordinary it was to work with so many smart people who would freely share their time. I am especially thankful to John and Jim for coaxing me to keep researching and writing even though I’d rather be in the classroom with students. Larin McLaughlin looked at my unwieldy dissertation and somehow saw a readable book fit for publication with the University of Illinois Press. I became more impressed with her faith in this project every time I composed a new draft and looked back at what was previously on the page. Tad Ringo and Dawn Durante handled all the little questions about manuscript preparation and production, and neither of them has taken more than an hour to write back. Annette Wenda’s sharp editorial eye made this a better written book, Susan Cohen lent her expert eye to

x  •  Acknowledgments  the index, Gale Latkovic helped with digitizing photos, and Javvon Johnson saved the manuscript when I nearly lost it during a computer meltdown. I am extremely fortunate to have landed at a place like Rockland Community College so early in my career. Lynn Aaron, Joan Asch, Maureen Brown, Bruce Delfini, Collette Fournier, Jeanne Howell, Andrew Jacobs, Reamy Jansen, Sarah Levy, Diane Mena, Elaine Padilla, Nancy Pietroforte, Joseph M. Pirone, Martha Rottman, Deborah Vinecour, Kim Weston, and Nathaniel Williams have shared their enthusiasm for the profession, found scarce resources, and helped me evolve as a teacher. As my office mate and steadfast colleague, Christina Roukis-Stern has read several drafts of this manuscript and listened to innumerable rants about obscure historical topics in African American history that would seem arcane to most other medievalists. She certainly deserves special commendation. President Cliff Wood and the Rockland Community College Foundation provided a generous subvention to defray the costs of permissions and photographic reproductions. Many scholars have given formal remarks on sections of this book, shared insights at conferences, freely answered correspondence, and kept me motivated to complete this work. Andrew Kersten and Clarence Lang must be mentioned first because they read many drafts along the way and spent hours on the phone talking at length about historiography and the process of writing. I’ve also been helped along the way by Shawn Leigh Alexander, Eric Arnesen, Alfred Brophy, Cornelius Bynum, Bettye Collier-Thomas, John Kyle Day, Thomas Edge, Rosemary Fuerer, Erik S. Gellman, David Goldberg, Dayo Gore, Debra Foster Greene, Richard Grupenhoff, Christopher P. Lehman, Sheila Lloyd, Charles Lumpkins, Waldo Martin, Allia Abdullah Matta, Gregory Mixon, Earnest L. Perry Jr., Kimberley Phillips, Carlos Rodriguez, Patricia Sullivan, Jeanne Theoharis, Chris Tinson, and John White. A number of archivists and librarians lent their talents simply by doing their jobs so expertly. The late Andre Elizee at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture pointed me toward underutilized manuscript sources in the cool way that only he could do, Virginia Lewick helped me navigate the voluminous holdings at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, Lewis Wyman at the Library of Congress secured many files and expertly handled queries, Nancy McIlvaney at the State Historical Society of Missouri was instrumental in getting permissions for many of the photos in this book, and Isabel Espinal at the University of Massachusetts located countless reels of microfilm. Laura Garfinkel graciously shared her father’s files, and a portion of the proceeds from this publication will be donated in his memory to the Herbert Garfinkel Memorial Endowment for Citizenship and Democracy at James Madison College. I owe a special debt to Kamal Ali, Joan E. Fuller, John Benvenuto, and Mara Dodge at Westfield State University. The Urban Education Program gave me a

Acknowledgments  • xi

chance to be a student, and I’d probably be working on my eighth major if I never took Mara’s class and discovered the joy of history. Institutional support for this project came from the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Rockland Community College, a grant from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History allowed time to research at the Schomburg, and the McNair Graduate Opportunity Program at the University of New Hampshire gave vital support early on. The Textbook Author’s Association was a generous underwriter of the index. A National Endowment for the Humanities seminar hosted by the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University was immensely rewarding. Many friends and family have made life as pleasant as it could be while spending nights and weekends researching and writing. My parents, Joyce and Nils, have encouraged me throughout, and my in-laws, the Wieczoreks, provided good company. Teresa Pfeifer taught me the joy of literacy. Burt (Debra) Ames welcomed me into her house, the Leverett Writer’s Retreat, and had an intuitive sense as to whether I needed a strong coffee or a stronger drink. Fellow academics Larry Hamilton and Brad Parry amused me with their ability to discuss pedantic faculty senate machinations and esoteric journal articles while rock climbing. My fellow rangers at Mohonk Preserve always had such great stories about life and adventure, I hope that I write history the way that you guys tell it. Bob Hastings, Andrew Marshall, Criss Steiner, Edson Stewart, and Dave Weatherwax have given me good reasons to take respite from work—you fellas are great. My wife, Ursula, must be recognized. Despite having little interest in the subject, she read this manuscript more times than anyone should and has been supportive of this project through every step of the way; writing this book would have been unimaginable without her. Despite their many contributions to this project, all of the individuals listed above should not be associated with any flaws associated with this study. My name is on the cover, and I claim sole responsibility for any typos, factual mistakes, or interpretive shortcomings.

Winning the War for Democracy

Introduction We, of the Black Labor Movement and long in the struggle of support for Mr. Randolph do not boast of Ph.D.’s but we know what we know!!!!! We know that the co-opting of Mr. Randolph’s contribution, creativity and concern for the Black masses by “younguns” on the scene with Ph.D.’s and similar degrees must be combated with all the energy working Black people can generate. —John M. Thornton to Marvin E. Wolfgang, March 15, 1974

A.

Philip Randolph’s call for somewhere between ten and one hundred thousand African Americans to arrive at the Lincoln Memorial to protest on July 1, 1941, is well known as a landmark in African American history. 1 Indeed, this nonevent has even gained a reputation as “the most famous demonstration that never happened.” Ironically, the march that never occurred established a precedent for successful protests that used coalitions, mass mobilization, and explicit confrontation in order to press for moderate reform through aggressive tactics. At the time, Randolph’s plans to march on Washington were a novel idea that had been done only a few times—and never with much success. Unemployed workers led by Jacob Coxey came to Washington in 1894, cash-strapped World War I veterans did it in 1932, and the “Free the Scottsboro Boys” march brought five thousand to the capital in 1933. None of these incidents, however, prompted progressive federal action that addressed the demands of the marchers.2 The March on Washington Movement’s (MOWM) aborted protest is legendary in the history of twentieth-century social movements because it was the first of its kind to yield tangible results. Surprisingly, little research is dedicated to the organization that Randolph created for implementing his visionary idea of assembling thousands in the District of Columbia.3 “Preparations had been made for the march of 100,000 people,” Randolph recalled in a 1970 interview. “I had gone around the country and held meetings, developed committees, and told the people the whole story. . . . Negroes were so aroused about being turned away from defense plants where they applied for jobs that there was no doubt about their responding to the call for

2  •  Introduction  the march.”4 The various campaigns waged under MOWM’s banner did not stop there. MOWM was at its most effective when local organizations coalesced to gain equitable access to defense jobs, but activists also marched to protest poll taxes, spoke out against the death penalty, and held a series of sit-ins at department-store lunch counters. In Randolph’s words, the impulse to contest these issues through mass action “was the last resort of a desperate people who had failed to get decisive results in the form of jobs in national defense through conference, petitions, and appeals to leaders of government and private industry.”5 Just as there was more to the 1963 March on Washington than Martin Luther King and the celebrities who joined him at the Lincoln Memorial, the 1940s March on Washington Movement was larger than its leader, A. Philip Randolph, and boosters from the entertainment world such as Langston Hughes, W. C. Handy, Canada Lee, and Josh White.6 Numerous scholars have expanded the cast of characters in the historical canon of the sixties, and this book aims to contribute toward the development of a similar corpus of knowledge about African American activists in the World War II era. Local labor activists, women, and disaffected radicals who were not considered leaders within other existing organizations often found themselves at the forefront of MOWM’s campaigns. Frustrated by “the handicap of color and sex in their efforts to find a place,” commented Anna Arnold Hedgeman in 1946, “women were ready to March-on-Washington.”7 At times African American women in MOWM functioned as bridge leaders and grassroots organizers, but, as seen by the examples of college-educated women such as E. Pauline Myers and Layle Lane, they also made key strategy decisions and were among the organization’s most important intellectual architects.8 This history of MOWM accentuates the indispensable work of women in the organization’s national affairs and highlights the campaigns of grassroots leaders in its local chapters. MOWM’s story is, therefore, much more than the relatively brief collision between a popular African American protest leader and the president of the United States.9 My findings suggest that instead of a March on Washington Movement, there was a multiplicity of movements—each of which “marched” on targets that were closer to home than the national capital. Although most of the people associated with MOWM will never be household names to those outside of certain historical specialties, their presence in the annals of U.S. history attests to the Second World War’s stature as a watershed moment in the tragically long struggle for civil rights. MOWM was arguably the most effective African American protest organization during the Second World War, and in some ways this period represented the zenith of A. Philip Randolph’s power. By creating MOWM, Randolph gave local activists and organizers a platform on which they could fight against Jim Crow in innovative and sometimes powerful ways. This organization stands at a critical junction between the Roosevelt era and the years traditionally associated with the Civil Rights Move-

Introduction  • 3

ment, a chronological crossroads that makes it something of a generational interstice.10 Some of MOWM’s grassroots activists, such as T. D. McNeal and Layle Lane, were schooled in labor and union struggles during the 1930s. Others, such as Pauli Murray and Bayard Rustin, used MOWM as an early stepping-stone in a lifetime of activism that lasted throughout the tumultuous 1960s. Occupying this unique place in the chronology of twentieth-century campaigns by African Americans to attack Jim Crow segregation makes MOWM something of an anomaly. Its roots were firmly planted in Depression-era activism, but its branches—the people who were involved in the organization—spread through the next three decades and reached into the Civil Rights Movement. Although MOWM might not have sounded the clarion call for mass protests the way that the sit-ins and Freedom Rides did in the early 1960s, many of its members remained involved in struggles for civil rights, and they made significant contributions to various movements in the decades that followed. MOWM’s spokespeople talked the language of unyielding protest, but Randolph made significant concessions to MOWM’s platform when he backed down from the original march in 1941. Speeches by MOWM’s members and the organization’s own press releases often used the terms militant and militancy to describe an aggressive stance against the myriad of racism’s permutations.11 The people in MOWM saw themselves as reformers seeking to make the United States a more egalitarian society, not as revolutionaries advocating to overthrow the state. The American flag flew proudly at MOWM’s demonstrations and rallies, an indicator that patriotic protest was a hallmark of this organization’s character. Despite the persistence of poll taxes, literacy tests, segregation, and economic marginalization, MOWM members expressed allegiance to the United States in print, word, and deed. Henry Wheeler, a St. Louis MOWM member and St. Louis American columnist, wrote, “We are 100 per cent back of our President in all of his efforts to defeat the Axis Nations. We will follow the stars and stripes to Hades, if it is necessary to preserve our liberty.”12 MOWM’s explicit patriotism, confrontational rhetoric, and threat of disrupting public life tapped into a century-long tradition of African American protest that compensated for having a politically weak power base by taking a loud and uncompromising position.13 This unflinching patriotism appealed to the vast majority of African Americans, who preferred a flawed United States with the capacity for improvement rather than living in a Nazi racial order under German rule. In the words of Frank Crosswaith, an associate of Randolph and a MOWM strategist, it was best to be in “a land where, through the use of the democratic instruments of organization, education and agitation . . . a land far more desirable to live in and die in defense of than a land where human values count for as little as is the case of all Nazi lands.”14 To Randolph, the glacial pace of change during Roosevelt’s presidency necessitated an escalation of tactics aimed at pressuring the federal government

4  •  Introduction  into making strides toward racial equality. “The regular, normal and respectable method of conferences and petitions,” Randolph wrote, “while proper and ought to be continued as conditions warrant, certainly don’t work.”15 MOWM’s bestknown success came early, with the wresting of Executive Order (EO) 8802 as a concession for canceling the 1941 march.16 Under threat of having a contract revoked, this presidential edict forbade companies that held federal defense contracts from practicing racial discrimination in hiring and promotion. To implement this policy, the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) was created.17 The fact that Roosevelt needed to be forced to make even small gestures toward confronting racial exclusion reinforces the truth behind Frederick Douglass’s poignant insight that “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”18 Speaking at a national MOWM conference in 1942, A. Philip Randolph echoed Douglass’s remarks from nearly a century before: “Rights will not be given. They must be taken.”19 The Second World War transformed the world and reshaped much of American society. “There is bound to be a redefinition of the Negro’s status in America as a result of this war,” wrote Gunnar Myrdal in 1944, but the Swedish sociologist was not alone in detecting a change.20 The war presented a unique opportunity for reformers to compare unfavorable American race relations with those of Nazi Germany.21 St. Louis MOWM member David Grant saw fascism’s rise and the enormity of this war as a historical moment comparable to that of “the collapse

As MOWM’s national figurehead, A. Philip Randolph received credit for much of the organization’s early success, including the signing of Executive Order 8802. His vision for a march on Washington galvanized support from African American communities throughout the country and tapped a growing awareness that the Second World War was an opportune time to eradicate racism. (836.265, Arthur Witman Photo, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

Introduction  • 5

of the Holy Roman Empire, the rise of Charlemagne, the Crusades, and the French Revolution.”22 At the 1938 Southern Conference for Human Welfare meeting in Birmingham—an event made famous for Eleanor Roosevelt’s defiance of Eugene Connor’s attempts to enforce the color line during the proceedings—University of North Carolina president Frank Porter Graham argued, “In this day when democracy and freedom are in retreat everywhere in the face of totalitarian powers, let us raise the flag of freedom and democracy where it counts most. . . . The black man is the primary test of American democracy and Christianity.”23 During the Second World War, African Americans used MOWM to counter the “tides” of intolerance, and their efforts reveal the growing recognition that it was possible to overthrow Jim Crow.24 “In barrooms and grills, in beauty parlors, in churches, in meetings of professional societies,” remarked Anna Arnold Hedgeman, “there was discussion of the relationship of the Negro to the war effort.”25 “During periods of national crisis,” wrote Ralph Ellison in one of his many incisive essays, “moral awareness surges in the white American’s conscience like a raging river revealed at his feet by a lightning flash.”26 Columnist Joseph Bibb remarked, “War may be hell for some, but it bids fair to open up the portals of heaven for us.”27 Indeed, wars have often coincided with periods of American history during which legal definitions and prevailing cultural opinions of who is eligible for full citizenship have fluctuated.28 “Wars can,” argued Daniel Kryder, “help to liberate oppressed groups, even if in an indirect and piecemeal fashion.”29 War, in and of itself, does not act as an agent of progressive reform or as a cataclysmic event that expands the concept of freedom, but in the United States it has presented opportunities for minority groups to use international conflict as a way to accelerate their drive for full acceptance as citizens of the United States.30 MOWM member Lawrence Ervin described the period as “a time of great racial tension and stress . . . when the tides of democracy are running very low for the Negro people.”31 Like many of his generation, Ervin thought that Jim Crow would be even more entrenched in American society if it proved resilient enough to survive the war against fascism. As early as 1946, historian Brailsford Brazeal pointed out that MOWM had “many phases” worthy of “critical study and appraisal,” yet much of our understanding of MOWM remains limited to an appreciation of A. Philip Randolph’s appeal to working-class African Americans and his ability to negotiate with the president.32 Randolph was instrumental in securing Executive Order 8802, but the activities of MOWM’s national office and its twenty-six local branches have generally been overlooked in the more than fifty years since Herbert Garfinkel’s landmark history of the organization, When Negroes March.33 Focusing so intently on Randolph has caused historians to overlook the enthusiasm and accomplishments of MOWM’s grassroots activists, many of which could not have made it to

6  •  Introduction  Washington because of the impracticality of traveling to the capital in 1941. Even Albert Parker, in a 1942 Trotskyist pamphlet written to criticize Randolph, conceded that MOWM “was the most significant mass movement of Negroes in many years.”34 “A New Negro has arisen in America,” exclaimed Mary McLeod Bethune at a MOWM rally. “Militant in spirit” and committed to advancing the cause of democracy, they would “save America from itself.”35 There is a fair consensus among historians that forcing Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign Executive Order 8802 was nothing short of momentous. As Adam Clayton Powell Jr. said, securing the antidiscrimination clause was “the most significant gain ever made by Negroes under their own power.”36 Surprisingly few have investigated the inner workings of the organization whose activism wrought this edict or the many ways that African Americans mobilized grassroots protest to encourage this law’s implementation. Studying MOWM’s evolution at the local level shows how patriotism and protest were combined to nudge the United States closer toward a racially egalitarian ideal. MOWM was more than a mere paper organization created and unilaterally helmed by Randolph, and he designed it that way. The contributions of ordinary people made MOWM credible in the years following the early threat to march. Investigating MOWM from this “bottom-up” perspective taps underutilized source material and archival holdings that were not available to previous generations of historians. In the interim, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files detailing MOWM’s activities have been made public, as have the personal papers of local and national MOWM organizers such as T. D. McNeal, David Grant, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, and Layle Lane. These primary sources allow the story of the 1940s March on Washington Movement to be told from the perspective of the people who were directly involved in it, thus making them what Nathan Huggins called “essential witnesses” in recounting the narrative of their activities.37 Randolph’s magnetic personality and his vision of a march on Washington captured the imaginations of black activists during the Second World War. He was renowned for his peerless oratory, a skill that was honed by practicing Shakespeare as a young adult.38 Although his charisma is legendary and it moved African Americans to get involved in mass action, the real story of MOWM is of the grassroots protests inspired by Randolph’s threat to march. It was these very activists, not Randolph, that were MOWM’s lifeblood. “Local people drove the Black Freedom movement,” wrote one team of scholars. “They organized it, imagined it, mobilized and cultivated it, they did the daily work that made the struggle possible and endured the drudgery and retaliation, fear and anticipation, joy and comradeship that building a movement entails.”39 MOWM served as a conduit for these activities, channeling the angst of a population “seething with interest and activity” into a wave of agitation that presented “a new method for lobbying the

Introduction  • 7

federal government” through mass-based demonstrations.40 “Randolph’s march plans,” remarked one of his many biographers, “became a vital lightning rod for the deepening disillusionment that engulfed African Americans” during the Second World War.41 Randolph advanced the idea that “race prejudice is obstructing the nation’s effort to win the war and plan a real peace,” and he hoped that MOWM was an avenue that could bring America closer to a revolution in race relations.42 George Schuyler’s editorial commentary that “the March-on-Washington movement is A. Philip Randolph” encapsulates the way MOWM has been misunderstood for decades.43 Schuyler’s ability to shape public opinion on MOWM was owed to the Pittsburgh Courier’s weekly circulation of 250,000—the largest of all black newspapers during the war years.44 Schuyler recognized that Randolph had a genuine ability “to appeal to the emotions of the people,” but criticized Randolph’s “leadership capacity and executive ability” as “simply not there.” The “Sage of Sugar Hill” attacked MOWM for having “no organizational set-up” to keep the upstart civil rights group “alive and functioning.” He assailed MOWM for relying on a leader who depended on “ballyhoo and oratory” and lacked the “guts” of anticolonial crusaders such as Nehru and Gandhi. Almost as if to salve anxious officials of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People who were wary of being displaced by Randolph’s ascendancy, Schuyler wryly commented, “The March-On-Washington movement is no threat to the NAACP.”45 Schuyler was not the only Courier writer critical of MOWM for being “openly antagonistic” in its protests. Robert Vann’s paper also ran an editorial by Herman Moore, a federal judge in the Virgin Islands, criticizing MOWM’s leadership for merely “staging a few giant Mass meetings and stirring indignation and unrest.”46 Randolph had his defenders, of course, and they were irked by the depiction of him in papers such as the Courier. Benjamin McLaurin, Randolph’s right-hand man in the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), sent a ten-page rebuttal to the Courier. McLaurin’s unpublished defense of Randolph against Schuyler’s unflattering editorial charged the iconoclastic writer with spreading misinformation that was as “erroneous as it is malicious.” In a war of words marked by vociferous namecalling, McLaurin argued that MOWM rallies in New York and Chicago proved that the organization was “essentially and fundamentally a mass movement,” to which Randolph was only a figurehead.47 Pauli Murray, then a student leader in the NAACP at Howard University, also responded to Schuyler’s editorial. Murray’s essay was less confrontational than McLaurin’s, but she still defended MOWM as an organization that had the capacity to galvanize widespread discontent among African Americans and shape it into a movement that could effectively confront inequality and injustice. Murray acknowledged some of Randolph’s shortcomings as a leader, but she also cited the activities of chapters such as New York MOWM as proof that the organization had more grassroots support than its critics recognized.48

8  •  Introduction  Randolph’s June 1941 meeting at the White House is commonly understood as the apex of his influence within the federal government, but MOWM stuck around long after the namesake march was canceled. Randolph’s background as a union leader with the BSCP taught him that gains had to be defended, and he suspected that the federal government would need prodding to get Roosevelt’s antidiscrimination policy enforced. Randolph wanted MOWM to attack racism on all fronts, but more than a decade of work in the labor movement shaped his opinion that integrating African American workers into the booming defense industry was of primary importance.49 “Negroes are the victims of discrimination in National Defense,” Randolph wrote Eleanor Roosevelt one month before the threatened march on Washington was scheduled to occur. “We are denied jobs, not because of lack of merit, but on account of race and color.”50 MOWM’s focus on expanding employment opportunities grew out of the persistent underemployment and inequitable wage scale that plagued African Americans through the Depression.51 As the Lend-Lease program brought America closer to war in 1941, black high school graduates were earning just sixty cents for every dollar garnered by similarly qualified white workers.52 Writing in the Saturday Evening Post, Walter White lamented that African Americans had been “left out in the cold” while a spike in defense employment was lifting thousands out of joblessness.53 By September 1941, barely two months after the abortive march was to occur, less than half of the country’s lucrative defense jobs were open to African American workers.54 The situation reflected the persistent underemployment facing African American workers, a factor that undoubtedly contributed to the traditional characterization of MOWM’s decline beginning sometime in 1942.55 By then it was clear that topdown intervention by the state was far from a panacea for alleviating the plight of marginalized or excluded workers.56 MOWM may have faded from the headlines in 1942, but the organization’s local chapters were just starting to see success at precisely the point when nationally recognized leaders of other organizations such as Roy Wilkins and Lester Granger were cautiously distancing themselves from MOWM. While MOWM was losing prestige in widely circulated African American newspapers such as the Pittsburgh Courier, grassroots activists operating under its banner were escalating their efforts in local campaigns. For example, St. Louis MOWM staged large marches at Carter Carburetor and U.S. Cartridge, organized a prayer meeting at Memorial Plaza, led successful pickets at Southwestern Bell Telephone, and sponsored a summer of sit-ins that challenged lunch-counter exclusion. Four thousand members strong at its peak, St. Louis MOWM did not collapse after the 1942 Kiel Auditorium rally or disintegrate without Randolph’s watchful eye in close proximity. MOWM might have been a long way from actualizing Randolph’s threat to picket the White House “until the country and the world recognize the Negro has become of age,” but local

Introduction  • 9

MOWM chapters such as this one took strides to prove that “black America is on the march for its rights and means business.”57 MOWM’s local and national leaders had a symbiotic relationship. They influenced each other’s perspectives about the kinds of goals that were attainable, and they shaped the tactics that were used to agitate in this revitalized form of protest politics. The happenings in MOWM’s national office are very different from those in its local chapters, and St. Louis provides a unique opportunity to investigate the interaction of grassroots and national organizers as they worked together to achieve reforms. With A. Philip Randolph as the union’s president, the BSCP played a large role in MOWM’s affairs. The obvious connection of Randolph’s leadership in both organizations is easily cited, as are anecdotes from union members whose support for MOWM grew out of their affiliation with the BSCP.58 The union had a tradition of maintaining a civil rights agenda that dated back to its earliest fights for company recognition.59 Supporting causes such as MOWM, which were well beyond the purview of traditional shop-floor labor issues, enhanced the union’s reputation in African American communities. In these neighborhoods, which were segregated by a combination of law and custom, seemingly everybody was connected to a porter by only a degree or two of separation.60 The contributions of widely respected BSCP field organizers such as T. D. McNeal and Benjamin McLaurin to MOWM’s campaigns are difficult to overstate. Peers in the BSCP praised McNeal and McLaurin as “indefatigable and able workers. . . . They have stood the test. They have shown that they can measure up to a most exacting ordeal. They were with us when we were penniless and beaten down to the ground, but they always stood firm for their cause.”61 With more than a decade of work alongside the porters to their credit, organizers such as McNeal and McLaurin were highly regarded union officials who directed their time and talents toward supporting MOWM’s efforts. As the senior organization in America fighting for civil rights, the NAACP “played a crucial role” in both MOWM’s success and its demise.62 The NAACP was initially enthusiastic about the march, urging all of its branches to help “organizing marchers, distributing March buttons . . . and disseminating publicity.”63 The NAACP subsidized MOWM’s activities in the young organization’s first year, contributing as much, and sometimes more, to MOWM’s coffers as the BSCP.64 Individually, Walter White made some of the largest private donations that MOWM obtained. Even though White was cautious not to throw the NAACP completely in with MOWM until he and Randolph “met to decide and discuss the present status of the MOWM,” the elder organization’s president publicly praised Randolph’s efforts.65 In a 1941 speech at Hampton Institute, White voiced his “approval of the work of the March on Washington Committee . . . with the express purpose of securing from the President of the United States a statement with respect to Negroes in the armed forces of our country.”66 Beyond the financial ledger, cooperation

10  •  Introduction  between the NAACP and MOWM was symbolically cemented when Randolph received the NAACP’s highest honor, the Spingarn Award.67 After this, however, the elder organization’s backing for MOWM waned as the young group made steps toward becoming a permanent star in the constellation of African American protest and uplift organizations. Although the NAACP never officially rebuked MOWM, perceptive observers such as Horace Cayton noticed the developing rift. Hedging his comments as “pure speculation,” Cayton remarked that “a parting of the way” seemed obvious when the NAACP did not send an official delegate to MOWM’s 1942 conference in Detroit.68 Concerned that Randolph’s move to permanently institutionalize MOWM made the upstart organization a competitor, NAACP officials quickly and quietly distanced themselves from MOWM. Private correspondence between NAACP insiders shows their concern that Randolph’s new organization duplicated much of the NAACP’s existing program.69 NAACP spokespeople never publicly railed against Randolph or attacked MOWM. Instead, they chose to silently separate from their new rival. Walter White admitted “a very strong personal aversion, which I know is shared by my associates, that we should not attempt any form of political maneuvering in the affairs of other organizations.”70 Roy Wilkins, however, tried to disrupt MOWM’s operations. He wanted the NAACP to develop “some scheme . . . whereby we can work with them, absorb them” and harness MOWM’s energy to eliminate it as a competitor within the ranks of black institutions.71 Unlike national officers in the NAACP and MOWM, local activists such as T. D. McNeal and David Grant remained affiliated with both organizations. These two key players in St. Louis MOWM saw no contradiction working with both organizations. By 1942, the year that the NAACP honored Randolph with the Spingarn Award, MOWM executive secretary Anna Arnold Hedgeman regretfully informed Randolph that the NAACP was “not sending an official delegate to the policy conference because they believe MOWM has gotten away from its original plan” and was encroaching on jealously guarded organizational turf.72 This pattern of conflict and tension between MOWM and the NAACP characterized what one team of historians called “the ambivalent and complex relations that have historically existed among black leadership and organizations.”73 Instead of capitalizing on the “Double V” moment by launching a mutually advantageous collaboration, White maneuvered to ensure that Randolph could not threaten his status as the unquestionable leader of African American agitation for civil rights and racial equality. “No organization can do everything,” Randolph said in his keynote address at MOWM’s 1942 policy conference in Detroit, but “every organization can do something.”74 Randolph tried to craft an identity for MOWM that differentiated it from existing groups such as the NAACP, Urban League, and National Negro Congress (NNC). Doing so necessitated a delicate balancing act, as Randolph had to interact with difficult personalities, egos, and reputations within more established organi-

Introduction  • 11 Portrait of Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters organizer and St. Louis MOWM leader T. D. McNeal. His deep roots in St. Louis were cultivated through decades of public service as a leader in groups such as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and March on Washington Movement. These ties propelled him into Missouri politics. As a freshman in the state senate, McNeal made an immediate splash by sponsoring successful legislation mandating the desegregation of all public accommodations. (540.399, Ernest Calloway Addenda, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

zations. Steeped in a democratic socialist tradition, Randolph believed that racial equality hinged on generating economic reforms to integrate African American workers into the United States’ powerful economy.75 Ideologically and politically committed to anticommunism, Randolph envisioned MOWM as something of an anticommunist wartime alternative to the NNC, a membership organization that complemented the NAACP, and an employment clearinghouse such as the Urban League—all with a distinctly protest-oriented personality. He hoped that MOWM’s embrace of mass protest and Gandhian direct action would differentiate it from more established groups that relied on traditional methods of encouraging political and social reform through lawsuits and lobbying. At its best, Randolph saw MOWM as an umbrella organization through which the Double V campaign could be more efficiently coordinated—and gaining equitable access to jobs was at the core of this struggle.76 Randolph knew it would be perilous if MOWM’s program too closely replicated that of older and better-established organizations. Randolph was savvy enough to avoid duplicating the NAACP’s program, and he frequently played up things that differentiated MOWM from the elder organization. “The March on Washington Movement is not intended to be a rival Organization to any established agency already functioning to advance the interests of the Negro,” an official MOWM pronouncement declared, continuing, “It seeks only to demonstrate the technique of militant mass pressure in the field of minority problems where other techniques have broken down.”77 Randolph shot down a proposal from one MOWM member “to publish a 42-page monthly magazine,” which would have undoubtedly been seen as an attempt to nudge aside the Crisis, the NAACP’s long-standing official organ.78 MOWM policy underscored Randolph’s awareness that the organization needed to approach “established recognized agencies” such as the NAACP and the Urban League with deference, collaborating on campaigns only when invited.

12  •  Introduction  MOWM carefully emphasized that cooperation was its “fundamental policy” for coordinating “a multiple attack on the problem” of Jim Crow segregation.79 Although MOWM’s life span was brief, its organizational trajectory passed through a series of phases. Initially, Randolph used the press to inspire African Americans to stage a massive demonstration in the capital. This early period of MOWM’s history occurred during 1941 and is traditionally seen as the apex of its influence.80 Examining MOWM through the activities of its local branches reveals that the organization passed through two more stages before its dissolution at the end of the war. Randolph and others celebrated Roosevelt’s signing of Executive Order 8802, but grassroots activists knew that implementing the antidiscrimination policy would be difficult. Seeing this executive order as “the second emancipation declaration,” David Grant thought that, like the Reconstruction amendments, the presidential edict might be undermined by “avoidance, subterfuge, and emasculation,” another tragic case of “history repeating itself.”81 The comparison was apt, as Executive Order 8802 was the first executive order to address civil rights since the Emancipation Proclamation.82 MOWM’s members agitated locally to make the fair employment policy more than a dead letter. MOWM fully institutionalized in 1943. By then it established a national office and a paid staff charged with coordinating the activities of local chapters “in every city, county, township, ward, legislative district or political sub-division” that can gather “ten to twenty members.”83 In its second phase, MOWM developed a comprehensive and cohesive strategy centered on empowering working-class African Americans through local meetings and participation in marches at defense plants or government buildings. Disintegration marks the organization’s final phase. One of MOWM’s chief problems was that it never did what its name implied—that is, stage a massive demonstration in the capital. Randolph periodically threatened to reinstitute the original call for a march on Washington, but by late 1944 it was obvious the march would not happen and MOWM’s influence had declined. By the time of Roosevelt’s death, Randolph was drifting away from MOWM and reorienting toward other struggles, such as the push for a permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee and desegregating the armed forces. By nature, local studies are never fully representative of the scope of the long struggle for freedom and equality that marks much of African American history.84 MOWM tacticians knew that Jim Crow’s personality was different in the staunchly segregated Deep South than it was in the forested hillsides of the North. Likewise, segregation and race relations were different in the expanding cities along California’s Pacific Coast than in the older ports along the Atlantic Seaboard.85 Border cities such as St. Louis, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Louisville are unique venues for local studies of campaigns for civil rights because they often present microcosms of the issues, strategies, and conflicts facing activists and residents in urban areas

Introduction  • 13

throughout the country. By the onset of World War II, such locations had a mixed sectional identity, a growing industrial working class, a politically engaged African American community, and a rich fabric of institutional and church life that black residents created and cherished during the Jim Crow years.86 St. Louis stands out among these locations as the only border city with a significant MOWM chapter. The impressive record of agitation launched under MOWM’s banner in that city makes it an opportune site for a detailed study of the ways that local activists used MOWM to fight for civil rights and economic opportunities. St. Louis was the busiest metropolis along the Mississippi River, and its population experienced the growing pains associated with urban industrial production during World War II that were typified in other cities such as Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Cleveland, and Norfolk.87 Most of the wartime migrants settling there were southern in custom and culture, and residents clashed along racial lines. St. Louis was, in the words of one historian, “particularly wedded” to housing segregation—a racial arrangement that it was committed to since becoming the first major city to support a popular referendum segregating residential neighborhoods.88 Housing stock was scarce, and the city’s infrastructure had difficulty keeping up with the influx of newcomers. Restrictive covenants in St. Louis dated back to 1911, and there were 378 of them in place by 1942. “There is no city in America,” wrote Ernest Calloway in 1979, “where this primary tool of racial bigotry and ghetto formation was used more successfully than in the city of St. Louis.”89 Yet this was also a city in which early black Democrats in the 1930s heralded a shift in partisan loyalty. Although they were forbidden from residing in many of the city’s neighborhoods, “boss” figures such as Jordan Chambers wielded considerable power within the city’s African American communities.90 In St. Louis, as elsewhere, African Americans saw the war as an opportunity to establish a toehold in the industrial labor force. More than two hundred companies in the city held federal defense contracts, including U.S. Cartridge, which boasted of being the largest ammunition manufacturer in the world. St. Louis MOWM’s campaigns there suggest that militant activism sometimes coincided with an increase in employment opportunities. In 1943, one year after St. Louis MOWM’s inception, the number of African American workers in the city’s defense industries swelled to more than eighteen thousand, an increase of more than 225 percent. The expanding number of black workers came about through some combination of racial protest, a critical labor shortage, and a stronger federal presence as seen in the FEPC. It is impossible to delineate the exact proportion of new jobs that can be credited to each of these factors, but it is clear that the pragmatic desire of employers to comply with federal policy as stated in EO 8802 was negligible. The FEPC’s reliance on moral suasion makes its ability to accomplish anything at all amazing, especially considering that this beleaguered agency was perennially

14  •  Introduction  understaffed. Local economic, political, and social conditions were variables that impacted the FEPC’s overall effectiveness, but the contributions of activists associated with groups such as MOWM, the NAACP, and the Urban League should not be overlooked.91 Private citizens functioned as the field staff that the FEPC’s skeletal budget did not have the money to pay for. They performed unpaid labor to assist the FEPC in surveying employment conditions and documenting the extent of discriminatory patterns in hiring and promotion.92 Clarence Lang’s longitudinal study of civil rights activism in St. Louis, Grassroots at the Gateway, adds to a small but growing body of historiography that recognizes MOWM’s presence in the Gateway City.93 By placing MOWM’s activities within a narrative spanning several decades, Lang demonstrates that Depression-era political schooling in organizing was vital training that enabled the city’s most committed MOWM members to operate more effectively. An important lesson in Lang’s findings is that social and political movements often encounter a generation gap. St. Louis MOWM was a leading force for agitation during the Second World War, a time when well-established leaders such as John T. Clark of the St. Louis Urban League and Sidney Redmond of the local NAACP were in their waning years of service in public life.94 Even though MOWM activists such as T. D. McNeal and David Grant were, in the words of one historian, “a catalyst and model for African American agitation and liberation efforts in the decades following the war,” the next generation of African Americans involved in civil rights either ignored or discounted these senior activists.95 My own research builds upon this body of work by providing more details about the backgrounds and personal or ideological motivations of MOWM’s major players and by looking at the local MOWM chapter’s relationship with the national office. From this perspective, St. Louis MOWM is a window through which to observe how the themes of conflict and cooperation between competing African American protest organizations transpired at the local level. National leaders of MOWM and the NAACP had an equivocal relationship, but local people involved in grassroots activism simultaneously aligned with numerous organizations in their city. More than fifty years ago, in the first book-length study of MOWM, Herbert Garfinkel noted, “There can be little doubt that this was a thriving movement.”96 “In such people’s movements,” Mary McLeod Bethune wrote in 1944, “the real leadership comes up out of the people themselves.”97 Following Bethune’s directive necessitates appreciating what MOWM members other than A. Philip Randolph accomplished. Winning the War for Democracy shows how MOWM thrived by focusing on the individuals who contributed to its ascendancy. Instead of crediting Randolph for single-handedly drawing tens of thousands to MOWM rallies in New York, St. Louis, and Chicago, this study attempts to rediscover who went to

Introduction  • 15

events such as these and to shed light on the kinds of people whose contributions made such events occur. One of this volume’s tasks is to investigate ways that MOWM’s leaders and followers, at the national and local levels, contested racism during the Second World War. With great openness, African Americans from a broad progressive spectrum collaborated with each other in what one scholar of twentieth-century Black Left organizing dubbed a “pragmatic coalitional approach for political organizing.”98 In MOWM Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, pacifists, and patriots came together with a solidarity that characterized the Double V campaign. With tremendous synergy at the local level, individuals from a variety of organizations freely cooperated without being hampered by the turf wars that marked MOWM’s relationship at the national level with groups such as the NAACP and the Urban League.99 This book seeks to be a true people’s history—an account of the March on Washington Movement from the perspective of grassroots leaders and local people whose imaginations were briefly captivated by the promise of a march on Washington. As a work of historical recovery, this study accounts for how activists used MOWM and, whenever possible, also attempts to explain why this organization flourished. Some of MOWM’s members such as T. D. McNeal, Pauli Murray, and Layle Lane devoted more than four decades of their lives to racially progressive activism. Others, including Nita Blackwell, Sallie Parham, and the women of the St. Louis sit-ins, volunteered their time and energy to MOWM and then seemingly vanished from the historical record.100 Their contributions are revealed only through articles clipped from African American newspapers and from the reminiscences of male chroniclers who preserved correspondence, participated in oral history projects, and saved paraphernalia. It might be impossible to fully describe their personal motivations and reasons for aligning with MOWM, but something can still be learned about these heretofore overlooked activists by “researching around” them and placing their lives within the context of the currents that they navigated.101 In this regard, chronicling St. Louis MOWM is, by nature, within the tradition of what historians Kenneth Goings and Gerald Smith call “new African American urban history.”102 Winning the War for Democracy apprises ways that working-class grassroots activists seized the Double V moment and used it to agitate for change in their community. MOWM’s platform gave activists such as McNeal and Grant a vehicle through which they could carry on the crusade for racial equality during and after the Second World War. Writing of a different era, Aldon Morris calls a group that functioned like St. Louis MOWM a “local movement center” because it was able to energize community members and coordinate their efforts as “a social

16  •  Introduction  organization within the community of a subordinate group.”103 Judging by the kinds of campaigns and issues that galvanized the most zealous support, African Americans in St. Louis MOWM were particularly inspired to fight for greater opportunities in growing industries and equal access to consumer spaces where these new earnings could be spent. Thus, St. Louis MOWM is a prime example of an urban community that actively struggled for its own empowerment and betterment. Illuminating the agency of St. Louis MOWM’s individual members demonstrates many of the ways that African Americans actively tried to shape their own fortunes under the aegis of the Jim Crow caste system. This book probes the dynamics of a fledgling organization that briefly promised to become a leader in the struggle for black equality. The interplay between grassroots activists and national officials is central to this story of how local people understood the Second World War as a period in which they had greater flexibility to act in their own interests. In turn, they shaped—and were shaped by—MOWM’s philosophy and programs. Because a verb, marching, was at the foundation of this organization, it is important to recapture what MOWM’s members did. Examining MOWM from the perspective of its members challenges the image of African Americans “marching” in lockstep to A. Philip Randolph’s proclamations. Redirecting the spotlight away from MOWM’s charismatic national leader allows us to instead focus on the organization’s local supporters. “The work of the National Office is one thing,” Ella Baker remarked about the NAACP, “but the work of the branches is in the final analysis the life blood of the Association.”104 Similarly, Randolph roused grassroots activists and mobilized the BSCP’s resources for the March on Washington effort, but community-based protests were what Baker would call MOWM’s “life blood.” The activists who affiliated themselves with MOWM did so because the organization allowed them to have a say in their own fate. Randolph inspired, but did not dictate. It was this symbiosis that gave the upstart organization authority. MOWM’s continued existence beyond 1941 indicates that many African Americans thought that Roosevelt’s executive order was just the beginning. Grassroots organizers such as McNeal knew that sustained pressure on the federal government was necessary to give the antidiscrimination policy life. MOWM’s limited success underscores both the enormity of the task that it faced and the difficulty of maintaining a protracted campaign to fundamentally change a society. MOWM’s rapid ascendancy and equally fast collapse show some of the internal and external conflicts that undermined the organization’s mass appeal. Unlike other organizations that enjoyed unprecedented success later in the Civil Rights Movement, MOWM did not transform black activism during World War II into a widespread movement of social change. Particularly active branches such as that of St. Louis were exceptional, and further research is needed to uncover precisely why MOWM

Introduction  • 17

chapters in places such as Denver, Colorado, and Montgomery, Alabama, failed to flourish. Civil Rights Movement historiography is trending toward locating the movement’s “roots and branches” in the popular struggles of the 1930s and 1940s, and this is challenging the way that historians understand the periodization of agitation for civil rights during the mid–twentieth century. It is safe to say that the struggle for equal treatment under the law was very long and never neatly linear, but the Civil Rights Movement itself was comparatively short.105 Semantics are important here, as there is a difference between the Civil Rights Movement and a prolonged struggle for freedom and equality composed of individual and local campaigns—what Darlene Clark Hine calls “the proto–civil rights movements” or Clayborne Carson labels the “black freedom struggle.”106 As early as 1926, A. Philip Randolph commented on “the unfinished task of emancipation,” and he remained invested in the fight for civil rights and economic opportunity long after MOWM disbanded in 1946.107 The Civil Rights Movement occupies a special place in the history of African American strivings for equality, but this era was not the only vibrant period of agitation against racism. Those who were involved in the years prior to 1954 defined the struggle as something more than obtaining voting rights, equal access to public accommodations, and the end of segregation. For many, economic opportunity, social mobility, and the ability to live with dignity were just as important. These themes were central to a variety of other organizations in the decades between the New Deal and the Great Society that Nikhil Pal Singh has dubbed “the long civil rights era,” and these issues were at the core of MOWM’s platform.108 “Long movement” historians have challenged the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision as the movement’s opening salvo, and many scholars now see the Roosevelt years as “not merely a dress rehearsal but a crucial birthplace and battleground for the mass movement that flowered in the 1960s.”109 This perspective has provided a clarion call to reinterpret the geographical scope, ideological tensions, and chronological bookends of the Civil Rights Movement.110 The chronological extension of the movement into the 1940s is the ground that Winning the War for Democracy directly engages. It is undeniable that the Second World War saw a nascent national movement begin germinating and that there was a bona fide movement for civil rights in some locales prior to 1954, but MOWM activism in the 1940s does not appear to be one of them.111 Tellingly, A. Philip Randolph himself never mentioned MOWM in his 1964 speech “The Civil Rights Revolution.”112 Even in St. Louis, where MOWM was most successful, the very long movement for equal citizenship and economic opportunity was bifurcated as a multigenerational struggle that spanned most of the twentieth century.113 By locating MOWM outside the realm of the Civil Rights Movement, Winning the War for Democracy reaffirms

18  •  Introduction  the vital importance of African American agitation in periods other than that hallmark era of protest. These struggles might not have culminated in the passage of a historic civil rights act, but they were no less important to the people who were involved in campaigns to remediate the injustices facing their community and their generation. The reason for seeing MOWM as the fulfillment of New Deal domestic policy is simple: that is how members of this organization understood themselves. The people who made history were not cognizant of their role as genealogical forebears to an epoch in the black liberation struggle that remained two decades away. MOWM’s members were optimistic about the future, but they could not have had any idea that they were establishing a vital antecedent to the Civil Rights Movement or creating key strategic precedents. These individuals were, however, intimately familiar with the recent past. During the 1930s, the possibility of African Americans being included in the nation’s body politic was revived in a way that it had not been since the previous century—and this rejuvenation led to a surge in agitation during World War II.114 The New Deal reshaped the relationship between American citizens and the federal government, and the war reinforced this new conception of citizenship. “The government became the guarantor of the people’s security,” writes political historian James Wolfinger, “making sure they had decent incomes and a roof over their heads.”115 MOWM adopted this increasingly popular formulation of the federal government’s proper role and tried to extend its influence into rectifying the economic marginalization that plagued working-class African Americans as they clawed their way out of the Depression.116 MOWM’s participants and other commentators during the early 1940s interpreted EO 8802 as a capstone to the New Deal—not as progenitors to the start of a new phase in the struggle for black liberation in the United States. MOWM member Henry Wheeler opined in the St. Louis American, “Everyone knows that the committee on Fair Employment Practice is a creature of the New Deal.”117 Such scholars as Robert C. Weaver and Horace Cayton share this perspective, as both believe that New Deal policies demonstrated the federal government’s enormous capacity to create racial equality through far-reaching federal policies such as the Wagner Act, Social Security, and Fair Labor Standards Act.118 In 1960 former MOWM staffer Anna Arnold Hedgeman described the organization in similar terms. To Hedgeman, MOWM grew out of a perceived need to redress “discrimination in job opportunities” that dated back to the Depression.119 Writing in Phylon, W. E. B. Du Bois interpreted the FEPC to be an effort by Roosevelt “to apply the New Deal to Negroes.”120 In typical Du Bois fashion, his analysis was upheld by later generations of historians, including Andrew Kersten, who described the FEPC as “a quintessential New Deal agency,” and Kenneth Janken, who argued that MOWM’s

Introduction  • 19

activism and the creation of the FEPC were among “the most tangible accomplishments of the New Deal era.”121 In terms of the agenda that MOWM advanced and the tactics that it utilized, August Meier and Elliot Rudwick correctly posit, “The March on Washington Movement was actually the culmination of developments that occurred during the Depression years.”122 In 1974 Baltimore MOWM member John M. Thornton, a self-proclaimed “lifelong friend” to Randolph, repudiated the idea that the organization was part of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Though not bolstered by academic credentials, Thornton’s opinion was based on a lifetime of volunteer work as a foot soldier in progressive groups such as MOWM and in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) union that represented him for twenty years as a steelworker. Thornton’s decades of activism convinced him that the “history of the Black struggle cannot be permitted to reflect a continuity of movement . . . [of] 1941 through the 1963 March-on-Washington.”123 For Thornton, MOWM’s program was innovative and sometimes its following substantial, but the organization did not transform the piecemeal struggle during World War II into a strong or lasting national movement. MOWM’s legacy was forgotten by the next generation of activists, who failed to appreciate the ways that organizations such as MOWM affected the later Civil Rights Movement.124 In a 1959 speech at the NAACP national convention, A. Philip Randolph argued that “the Civil Rights Revolution” was “the outgrowth of the fact that the Civil War . . . was never fully completed.” From Randolph’s perspective, the struggle against “second-class citizenship” was long and hard. “Sweeping into the ashcan of history the remnants, vestiges and survivals of the old slave order” consisted of many phases and involved confronting racism’s cultural, psychological, and political manifestations.125 This could not be done in the short span of five years that MOWM existed. Although MOWM did not attain many of its goals, it did enrich the cache of protest tactics available to African American activists during the mid–twentieth century. MOWM functioned as a conduit, introducing and refining techniques that, a generation later, contributed to the overthrow of de jure racial segregation in the United States. In this regard, MOWM represents a bridge between African American protest politics through Depression-era “New Negro” activism and the more celebrated campaigns in the Civil Rights Movement’s “golden age.” Although MOWM was short-lived, its history is important to unearth because the organization is positioned at several intersections that are vital to developing a more complete understanding of twentieth-century African American protest politics. This book provides detailed accounts about MOWM’s national office and the activities of its St. Louis chapter. The organizing in this city was richly documented, and, more important, it was recognized by contemporaries as “one

20  •  Introduction  of the most active March on Washington towns in the nation.”126 It is important to develop a narrative of how African Americans used MOWM as a platform to carry out a campaign for employment opportunity in the city’s booming defense industries, and an investigation of the culture, politics, and community of an overwhelmingly working-class population is a part of this story. Emerging working-class leadership, women’s activism, and the interaction between local organizers and national leaders are themes that arise in this study. This is one of the few book-length discussions of MOWM in more than a half century, and there is ample room for further scholarship.127 Winning the War for Democracy recounts MOWM’s organizational history at the national level and chronicles the activities of the particularly vibrant chapter in St. Louis. MOWM locals in New York and Chicago are also mentioned in these pages, but future research is needed to shed light on the activities of MOWM members in other cities. One can only hope that many local activists followed the advice of Layle Lane, a New York MOWM member, and took steps to “preserve all information about the organization and activities of local units.”128 The first and second chapters focus on the relationship between MOWM’s national office and the federal government, telling the well-known story of a protest that never took place in greater detail than any other existing account. By incorporating documentary sources from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, chapter 1 offers an insider’s view of how the Roosevelt administration responded to Randolph’s audacious threat to march on Washington. This chapter includes a sampling of commentary about MOWM from members of the African American radical Left, much of which was critical of Randolph’s decision to cancel the march. Where Randolph saw expedient pragmatism, they viewed EO 8802 as a fatally limited and short-term concession from an inherently antagonistic federal government. Chapter 2 traces the contours of interorganizational cooperation between MOWM and other protest organizations during the period when MOWM transitioned into a permanent institution. Randolph tried to carve a niche for MOWM, and its organizational identity as an all-black vehicle for a form of protest that it called “nonviolent goodwill direct action” galvanized around the slogan “We Are Americans, Too.” The demonstrations and rallies occurring in this period suggest that numerous grassroots activists and indigenous institutions such as churches and labor unions were involved in making Randolph’s threat to march matter locally. Unfortunately, important local chapters, including the one in Washington, D.C., were sometimes wracked with disorganization, rendering them functionally useless. MOWM’s failure to develop logistically crucial branches such as the one in Washington was a major reason this organization faded from the national limelight so quickly. Chapters 3–6 chronicle the activities of St. Louis MOWM, which was one of the organization’s most aggressive and robust local branches. Chapter 3 provides

Introduction  • 21

a historical background to the outpouring of African American protest in wartime St. Louis. T. D. McNeal, David Grant, Sallie Parham, Nita Blackwell, and Jordan Chambers are introduced as pioneers of protest in this upstart organization. When available, biographical information of key MOWM supporters illustrates how participating in wartime protests fitted within the arc of an individual’s life. There was no singular path toward MOWM, but the people who associated with this organization shared an optimism that the war presented an opportune moment to effectively challenge Jim Crow’s insidious multiplicity of forms. Chapter 4 shows how St. Louis MOWM used a major rally to launch a sustained campaign for the integration of African American workers into St. Louis’s burgeoning wartime economy. A public prayer demonstration, pickets, and marches helped advance the position of black workers in a number of businesses with defense contracts, including U.S. Cartridge, the world’s largest bullet manufacturer. By necessity, St. Louis MOWM stepped in as an arbiter of workplace dissension at job sites when greater numbers of African American workers were met by an increase of animosity. Chapter 5 describes a series of sit-ins during 1944. Led by largely forgotten African American women, this interracial direct-action campaign sought to challenge the color line at department-store lunch counters. Integrating, or at least improving, access to food service at major downtown retailers was an important step in the process of breaking down elements of Jim Crow segregation in St. Louis. That same year, MOWM shifted its attention toward obtaining and retaining jobs for black workers in publicly funded workplaces. Gaining access to jobs operating switchboards and in the local administration of Southwestern Bell Telephone offices was presented as a stride toward securing sustainable employment for a largely female contingent of working-class African Americans who wanted longterm white- and pink-collar employment. This sort of local women’s activism, juxtaposed against national men’s leadership, is consistent with a gendered pattern of activism in civil rights campaigns that persisted through the 1960s.129 Prior to its dissolution, St. Louis MOWM played a pivotal role in petitioning the FEPC to open a branch in the city. Chapter 6 describes this campaign and discusses the ways that St. Louis MOWM interacted with the local FEPC office. The impact of a greater FEPC presence on the employment prospects of African American workers and job seekers is difficult to quantify, but once this office opened, MOWM redirected its energies toward helping that agency remediate racist employment patterns. The book concludes with an assessment of MOWM’s place in the annals of American history and a summary of the organization’s accomplishments and its shortcomings. This section includes an appraisal of MOWM’s local and national activities and presents an analysis of its impact in light of the fact that segregation and racial inequality remained long after MOWM ceased to exist. MOWM’s local

22  •  Introduction  leaders stayed involved in civil rights activism long after the war ended. Without MOWM as a vehicle for pressure politics, individuals such as T. D. McNeal and David Grant brought their leadership skills to the NAACP. This more established organization offered a stable base for agitation, and the local chapter was receptive to absorbing activists who honed their skills through MOWM’s campaigns. For some who participated in MOWM, wartime campaigns introduced them to other activists who would become trusted friends and lifelong allies.

1

What Happens When Negroes Don’t March? The thing that did it was the March on Washington. That scared these people like no other thing. Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, H. Rap Brown, all wrapped together, never had the power, the real power, and threat that that first March had.

A.

—Richard Parrish, MOWM member, interview, May 1, 1975

Philip Randolph claimed that he originally thought of sponsoring a march on Washington while traveling through the Deep South on an organizing and speaking tour for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.1 According to Milton Webster, one of Randolph’s companions on that trip, the ambitious plan for a massive demonstration in the capital on July 1, 1941, was first articulated in Savannah, Georgia. Another BSCP member and close associate of Randolph, Benjamin McLaurin, remembers that it initially “scared some of them to death . . . including myself,” and he was surprised that in less than a month “it had caught fire. . . . [E]verybody was talking March on Washington.”2 The Deep South was an unlikely place for the birth of an organization relying on militant rhetoric, dramatic protest, and controversially seizing public space through demonstrations. MOWM’s support in that region, however limited, is attributable to the BSCP, an African American labor union headed by Randolph that had local chapters in dozens of railroad towns throughout Dixie. Some of his audiences thought the idea so audacious as to be preposterous. T. D. McNeal swayed them. The St. Louis–based BSCP organizer stayed in each city after Randolph moved on. His job was to “work up negroes to come to Washington for this demonstration.”3 The Arkansas native and former porter knew how to present the unconventional threat in a way that made Randolph’s plan seem not only realistic, but also like something that could reap tangible results.

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Randolph built MOWM to have a national presence by structuring the organization’s National Executive Committee in a way that geographically represented the entire United States. This committee had three members at large, as well as three members each from the North Atlantic Region, South Atlantic Region, Southern Region, Midwestern Region, and Pacific Region. Layle Lane, Senora Lawson, David Grant, Charles Wesley Burton, Bennie Smith, C. L. Dellums, Lawrence Ervin, and Leyton Weston were among the committee’s eighteen representatives, and they were also some of MOWM’s most committed grassroots activists.4 The most energetic MOWM chapters were in urban centers of the North and Midwest. During the 1940s, the population of these regions swelled with an influx of 1.6 million African American migrants who left the countryside and the South.5 Nationwide, that decade saw the percentage of African Americans living in cities rise from less than 50 percent to almost 60 percent.6 By 1944 the number of African Americans on voting rolls in northern states swelled to 2.5 million, creating an electoral bloc that potentially held the balance of power in seventeen states.7 These relocated black southerners found greater freedom in cities, and many of them chose to agitate for a fair share of jobs in a defense industry that offered “nice work . . . if you can get it.”8 That kind of work, of course, was difficult for racial minorities to obtain, and MOWM arose in roughly two dozen cities to address this unfairness. The presence of MOWM branches in Tampa, Birmingham, Denver, and Los Angeles attests to the national character of mid-twentieth-century racism and indicates that the organization appealed to at least a small number of people in various regions of the United States.9 MOWM flourished best in cities where industrial production was already high before the war and in places that African American communities had wellestablished social and political networks. Specifically, New York, Chicago, and St. Louis were the sites of MOWM’s busiest local chapters. MOWM caught on quickly in Harlem, then home to a young James Baldwin. “Racial tensions,” remarked the eminent writer, “were exacerbated during the early years of the war, partly because the labor market brought together thousands of ill-prepared people.”10 African American longshoremen responsible for handling explosives bristled at being refused service at restaurants along the docks.11 Family members of soldiers were concerned that their relatives stationed in the South would be “beaten up or killed by some of those white folk down there,” and they wondered why their sons and husbands were “fighting big Hitler over yonder even with all the little Hitlers over here.”12 A 1942 study by the Office of Facts and Figures interviewed more than one thousand black New Yorkers. The findings showed that nearly two-thirds of respondents believed that they did not have a fair chance to get defense work.13 As Shirley Graham dramatized in her 1945 short story “Tar,” those who did get defense jobs often wound up disillusioned, dirty, and in dead-end positions without a chance of promotion.14

What Happens When Negroes Don’t March?   • 25

In this environment, Milton Webster rejoiced that “young ladies on street corners and public spots” distributed fifteen thousand MOWM buttons throughout the New York metro area, and African Americans were proudly “wearing them up and down the streets.” One of New York’s more enthusiastic MOWM members, T. T. Patterson, reported that his organization “is making steady progress [and] is spreading quite definitely.” “This is the Movement,” Patterson wrote Randolph, “that will mean more to the Negro of this country, and, for that matter, of any other country, than any movement of this century.”15 Fervor for MOWM was not as high in the South. There was, of course, a branch in the BSCP hotbed of Jacksonville, Florida, and a young porter named E. D. Nixon organized a MOWM chapter in Montgomery, Alabama.16 In Norfolk, Virginia, MOWM leader Senora Lawson helped formulate its nonviolent goodwill direct-action campaign in 1943. Southerners made contributions to MOWM, but cities in this region weren’t the sites of significant protests under the organization’s auspices.17 MOWM’s uneven geographic dispersion is partially attributable to the well-known prevalence of racial violence and atmosphere of intimidation that seemed to be synonymous with the Deep South. BSCP organizer Benjamin McLaurin’s wife, Margaret, privately and confidentially wrote Randolph, asking him to keep her husband out of the region. “Please do not send Mac into any part of Alabama now,” she wrote in the early 1940s. “The tension is just too great and his life is not worth a nickel.”18 “The Negro masses awakened in 1941,” Randolph reflected at his eightieth birthday gala, and the prospect of a war against totalitarian regimes created an environment conducive to activism opposing Jim Crow.19 MOWM was Randolph’s “brainchild,” but it was grassroots activists who energized the organization and used it to tackle issues in their hometowns. Randolph’s speeches struck a chord because they emphasized cooperative self-reliance and racial solidarity, while MOWM’s message of civic engagement and political organizing gave substance to a program of confrontational protest. Randolph was certainly not the first to espouse these ideas, but his conclusion that “the future of the Negro depends entirely upon his own action, and the individual cannot act alone” resonated with audiences convinced that this was a “clarion call” for striking down racism.20 “African Americans made two important discoveries in World War II,” writes historian Robert A. Hill, “namely, that the system of white supremacy was not impregnable and that mass militancy, such as the March on Washington Movement . . . could effectively challenge the system and produce results.”21 The general mood of black America during the years of MOWM’s zenith was, according to another historian, marked by a “sense of hope and pessimism . . . that dominated a good deal of daily conversation.”22 The Black Worker, a monthly magazine edited by Randolph, credited MOWM with successfully channeling this “wave of bitter resentment, disillusionment and desperation” into constructive protest politics.23

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Just as the Chicago Defender was synonymous with the Great Migration, the Pittsburgh Courier was a leading voice in the fight for civil rights and racial equality during World War II.24 Launched in 1942, the Courier’s wildly popular Double V campaign linked the fight against international fascism with the need to topple racism on America’s home front. As originally expressed in its pages by James Thompson, “The first V for victory over our enemies from without, the second V for victory over our enemies from within.”25 Under newspaperman Percival Prattis’s leadership, the campaign took off, and subsequent issues featured the “VV” symbol more prominently.26 The Courier office was inundated with “hundreds of telegrams and letters of congratulations,” as well as requests for Double V buttons and bumper stickers. In a few short weeks, the slogan became “the true battle cry of colored America,” and Double V rhetoric percolated into the writings in most of the 150 African American newspapers reaching more than 2 million subscribers throughout the nation.27 In short, the Double V campaign was both a critique of American race relations and an outpouring of black patriotism.28 To exemplify this, the Chicago Defender took on the Atlantic Charter’s Four Freedoms in a cartoon attacking racial injustice within the United States. “The Four Freedoms: Dixie Style” featured a poll tax collection box, a ball and chain labeled “peonage,” and a lynch noose—images that were clearly incongruent with platitudes such as “freedom from fear” and “freedom from want.”29 African American newspapers already had a reputation as “a fighting press,” and they rose to the occasion in World War II by exploiting the obvious contradiction of a racially segregated nation waging war against fascism.30 Journalist Roi Ottley noted that the Double V campaign had the support of “nearly every newspaper and pulpit,” and the themes of defeating racism and fascism popped up in a handful of blues songs.31 Even before the term Double V was coined, a 1940 cover of the NAACP’s journal, the Crisis, presented a visually powerful example of the impulse that the phrase represented. It featured a photograph of two warplanes flying over an airfield with the caption “warplanes—Negro Americans may not build them, repair them, or fly them, but they must help pay for them.”32 The image spoke to the fact that the entire aircraft industry employed only about 240 African Americans in a workforce of approximately 107,000.33 Thrilled with this kind of coverage and eager for news of the war, circulation of African American newspapers rose nationwide by an estimated 40 percent, and government polls found that 72 percent of African Americans throughout the country read black newspapers.34 The support of African American newspapers for Randolph’s efforts was varied and uneven, but the Chicago Defender encapsulated the period’s ethos best with the phrase “These are Marching days, America.”35 African Americans saw the Second World War as an external force that could help make reform movements be fruitful, and the looming international crisis coin-

What Happens When Negroes Don’t March?   • 27

cided with their increasingly aggressive rhetoric deployed against Jim Crow. Future MOWM member Pauli Murray wrote President Roosevelt in 1938, “We are as much political refugees from the South as any of the Jews in Germany.”36 The NAACP dubbed racial inequality and segregation “the acid test of democracy.”37 Caroline Singer of the National Association of Colored Women neatly connected Nazism and racism with her statement that “anti-Negroism is based upon the concept of a master race . . . that is irreconcilable with democracy.”38 Drawing a similar connection between white supremacy and Nazism, the St. Louis Argus remarked, “Isn’t the world today paying and paying dearly for the sins of the so-called superior race, whom we call the Nazis? . . . In times such as these when there is so much being said about Democracy, we naturally feel racial discrimination more keenly.”39 During an “inter-faith, inter-denominational, inter-racial prayer service” at Chicago’s Soldier Field, MOWM asked, “Shall we have democracy for all of the people or some of the people?” Randolph later answered, “Justice is not qualified. Freedom is not limited. Citizenship cannot exist in degrees. It must be full and complete. All or none.”40 To Walter White, World War II was an international contest of race relations, “a war to save the world from the military aggression and racial bigotry of Germany and Japan.”41 More confrontationally, the Black Worker thundered, “Let us tear the mask of hypocrisy from America’s Democracy!”42 Randolph described the moment of war as a time when “Negroes are fighting on two fronts. This is as it should be. They are fighting for democracy in Europe. They are fighting for democracy in America. They are trying to stop Hitler over there, and they are determined to stop Hitlerism over here.”43 “To save democracy at home,” argued Randolph at People’s Church in Chicago, “we must make democracy work at home for the total population.”44 Randolph characterized the early 1940s as “an hour when the sinister shadows of war are lengthening and becoming more threatening,” and his threat to march on Washington inspired African Americans to fight their own localized battles that contributed to a broader national struggle.45 This struggle, as seen in the pages of African American newspapers and in countless speeches, was one that linked fascism in Germany with racism in the United States. Hitler and Jim Crow were citizens of different countries, but both needed to be eradicated.46 The confrontation with Nazism spawned new liberal sensibilities that elevated race relations and civil rights as issues of national import, making the 1940s seem ripe for change.47 In his 1945 book, A Rising Wind, Walter White noted, “White nations and peoples had vigorously proclaimed to the world that this war is being fought for freedom, and colored people were taking them at face value.”48 Like many of her generation, Louise Elizabeth Grant thought that “older forms of social control have been lost almost entirely . . . and society is in a state of flux, if not revolution. The common man and the underprivileged are struggling for economic, political, and social emancipation.” Global instability, thought Grant, incited an upsurge

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in “class conflict, minority problems, nationalistic movements . . . and other expressions of social unrest.”49 In this milieu, Randolph’s “plan caught on like fire” among a people who were certain that the war presented a crisis for the system of segregation and inequality bitterly referred to as Jim Crow.50 Randolph believed the Second World War had the capacity to finish “an uncompleted liberal bourgeoisie democratic revolution—commonly known as the Civil War.” The struggle against slavery left “the slave power broken, but the slave masters were not eliminated,” and Randolph construed this latest conflict as the climactic battle over a global color line.51 Unlike in World War I, when leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois advised African Americans to mute their protests against racism and to “close our ranks” until after the war, Randolph demanded that America rectify racism immediately.52 Instead of waiting to “return fighting,” African Americans in World War II were poised to never stop agitating.53 “When the battle is won,” wrote Kelly Miller, “the black patriot does not expect to be robbed of the fruition of his victory as he was in the First World War.”54 “The Negro was only on the sidelines of American industrial life. He seemed to be losing ground daily,” noted Robert C. Weaver of the Office of Production Management. Weaver attributed the pitifully low morale among African Americans to their lingering exclusion from desirable defense-industry jobs, reporting that “disillusionment of Negroes in New York and elsewhere” was on the rise at precisely the moment when national unity was needed to carry out the war. Surveying the African American workforce, Weaver found that in April 1940, white unemployment was at 17.7 percent, whereas 22 percent of African Americans were in the same predicament. Six months later, a bustling defense industry caused white unemployment to drop to 13 percent, but the percentage of unemployed African Americans changed by only a fraction of a percent.55 In ten New York war plants employing a total of 29,215 workers, only 142 were African American.56 Statistics from the United States Employment Service were equally discouraging. In October 1940, the total of nonwhite job placements in twenty different defense plants was a paltry 5.4 percent. Six months later, by April 1941, this figure actually decreased to just 2.5 percent.57 It looked as if African Americans were going to be among the last hired, if they were hired at all. In an essay written several years after the war, James Baldwin powerfully described the emotional reaction of living in the frustrating racial economy that these numbers portrayed. “The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War,” Baldwin wrote, “marks for me, a turning point in the Negro’s relation to America. To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded.”58 Apathy for the war effort and the possibility that low morale could provoke racial conflagrations were not confined to Harlem.59 James E. Shepard, president of the North Carolina College for Negroes,

What Happens When Negroes Don’t March?   • 29

wrote Franklin Roosevelt, reporting on his recent travels through “many of the large cities on the Atlantic coast.” Whether north or south of the Mason-Dixon line, Shepard found “very little enthusiasm among the people of my group concerning the present war.”60 Stephen Early, Roosevelt’s press secretary, feared that a city full of people who were economically desperate and politically marginalized presented a threat to national security. Early forewarned that recalcitrant racism in America’s defense industries would inevitably result in “frustration, destruction of morale, and the opening of the doors for subversive agitators opposed to the American way of life.”61

Collaboration: Making the March Happen A. Philip Randolph and Walter White “talked almost daily” in the days leading up to the proposed march on Washington.62 The two were already close because they had a history of collaboration before getting together for this cause. Shortly after the Selective Service Act mandated one year of military training for all males between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-six, Randolph, White, and the Urban League’s T. Arnold Hill met with Roosevelt in 1940 to discuss options for securing access to job opportunities in the country’s national defense. 63 They advocated complete desegregation of the U.S. military, with special attention given to increasing the number of African American officers and to opening the Red Cross for more African American nurses. Roosevelt asked Frank Knox “to look into the possibilities,” but the secretary of the navy insisted that close living quarters aboard sailing vessels made integration impractical. Unconvinced by the argument that racial integration created a more efficient fighting force, Knox was receptive to Roosevelt’s suggestion that African American enlisted men serving as musicians be used as “an opening . . . since it would accustom white sailors to the presence of Negroes on ships.” To Randolph’s disappointment, these conversations provoked no changes in the military’s racial order.64 The fruitless meeting sparked outrage from the NAACP and the black press after the White House presented the story in a manner that suggested African American leadership supported the military’s segregation policies.65 Disdainful of the atmosphere of distrust in government dealings, the incident served as a lesson that Randolph would not forget during the campaign to march at the capital the following year. Never again would he meet with a president and walk away without something to show for it.66 Randolph went to the White House in the summer of 1941 to meet with Roosevelt about MOWM’s demands, but not even Randolph seemed sure about how many people would actually come out to support the call to march. His earlier experience in dealing with the president convinced him that the power of assembled masses was necessary for pressuring Roosevelt to act. Knowing this, and emboldened by

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NAACP support, Randolph upped his estimates from ten thousand to one hundred thousand marchers. The scale of Randolph’s threat is astonishing considering that other Roosevelt-era protests against Scottsboro, lynching, and the poll tax never attained crowds measuring in the tens of thousands.67 Randolph waffled and made a case that the numbers did not really matter. Even two thousand demonstrators, he argued, would “startle the country and win the respect of the American people.”68 The St. Louis Argus, however, took a different view: “The success of such a parade will be judged by the numbers,” and failure to generate large enough attendance would be a crushing blow for racial activism and to Randolph’s credibility.69 “If the March on Washington does nothing else,” the Defender hedged, “it will convince white America that the American black man has decided henceforth and forever to abandon the timid role of Uncle-Tomism in his struggle for social justice.”70 As always, Randolph was busy with his full-time work for the BSCP. These duties removed him from the day-to-day logistics of carrying out a protest in a city that he denounced as one where “no Negro can exercise his Constitutional and civil rights.”71 The responsibility for coordinating the event fell on MOWM member and District of Columbia resident Thurman Dodson. Operating out of local headquarters at Seventh and S Streets, he worked with Ralph Bunche, Rayford Logan, Rosina Tucker, Mary Church Terrell, and Jeanetta Welch to prepare for the impending march. Their plan involved placing a “key person” in charge of each of the city’s quadrants. In every quadrant, there were ten block captains who, in turn, recruited ten members. Each of these marchers would also get ten new supporters. With simple math, this plan should net at least five thousand local demonstrators. Maximizing hometown support imposed less strain on the city’s segregated infrastructure, thus reducing the potential for friction between marchers and oppositional whites. Besides, they reasoned, locals should be easier to get to come out because they did not have to travel a great distance in order to show their support for the march.72 MOWM assumed authority to control “all slogans, banners, statement of purpose, selection of battalion chiefs, [and] deputy inspectors at the point of assembly.”73 Randolph warned local march coordinators that “no disorder will be tolerated.” After all, the capital was a segregated city, and this was a racially charged demonstration. Randolph perceived a need to manage the demonstration’s public face so that the group would appear orderly, unified, and within the boundaries of propriety for a public political protest.74 Anything that could reflect poorly on the image of African Americans was strictly forbidden, and Randolph advised marchers of subsequent demonstrations that they had better “not possess offensive deadly weapons such as knives, razors or guns of any kind.”75 Randolph did not want to give segregationists any reason to lampoon his efforts or, worse, spark a race riot that could get out of control and become a massacre. Eleanor Roosevelt reminded Randolph of the tenuous advances African Americans made during

What Happens When Negroes Don’t March?   • 31

the New Deal, and she warned that a violent outburst endangered everything.76 To keep the message of this demonstration unified, “March deputies” consisting of World War I veterans, teenage cadets, and Boy Scouts would lead groups of marchers throughout the city to assemble on the Mall.77 They were responsible for inspecting and approving all signs and banners and for plucking out anyone who arrived with “liquor on their breath.”78 MOWM emphasized the decorum and propriety of marchers, but many of the African Americans living in Washington, D.C., were anything but models of bourgeois respectability. Malcolm Little passed through the city when he was working on the railroads during World War II, and he was “astounded to find in the nation’s capital, just a few blocks from Capitol Hill, thousands of Negroes living worse than any I’d ever seen in the poorest sections of Roxbury; in dirt-floor shacks along unspeakably filthy lanes with names like Pig Alley and Goat Alley. I had seen a lot, but never such a dense concentration of stumble-bums, pushers, hookers, [and] public crap-shooters.” Some of the senior workers who labored alongside Little warned him “to be very careful, because muggings, knifings and robberies went on every night among these Negroes.”79 New York MOWM member Eardlie John foresaw many of the logistical obstacles associated with staging the demonstration. Most of these issues were the result of Washington, D.C.’s character as a segregated city, a place that Randolph quipped was “the capitol [sic] of Dixie” and where “crackerocracy is in the saddle.”80 John pointed out that wartime travel restrictions made getting to the city difficult for most of MOWM’s supporters. As for lodging and food service, were there enough rooms and restaurants to shelter and feed the demonstrators? Should African American residents be expected to open their homes to strangers who could not find their own lodging in the limited and already overbooked hotels that accepted black patronage? As for basic sanitation, could African Americans expect white proprietors to allow them use of toilet facilities? John went so far as to calculate that the already crowded rails could handle only twenty thousand additional passengers over a three-day period—a number he feared was far too small for MOWM to save face when Randolph called for one hundred thousand demonstrators. These problems aside, Eardlie John’s “absolute faith in the rank and file” and vehement disdain for everything that Jim Crow stood for convinced him of the necessity to march on Washington. In John’s words, failing to do so would cause the organization to be perceived as another bunch of “docile, begging, cringing, handkerchiefhead uncle Toms of yesterday.”81 The unpredictability of these variables had to be on Randolph’s mind as he thought about following through with staging the demonstration.82 There was uncertainty about whether a sufficient amount of attendees would bother, or be able, to come on the appointed day, and if they did arrive, there was no guarantee that their presence could actually reap concessions. Would First Amendment

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guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly be honored, or would the demonstration provoke a hostile physical backlash from a police force that had a reputation for questionably using excessive force?83 If an assault occurred, were the marchers disciplined enough to react in a manner that would not escalate the incident into a race riot? The sad wartime record of violence targeting African American soldiers stationed in the South had yet to be established, but African Americans knew all too well that the United States was sometimes a dangerous place. The possibility that the situation could go awry made the St. Louis Argus, a newspaper that zealously supported the call to march, cheer the demonstration’s cancellation as a “logical and sensible . . . armistice.”84 Some critics of Randolph hint that the march might not have been as widely supported as he publicly presented. Writing in the Trotskyist Fourth International just before the march’s cancellation, Albert Parker alleged that as late as June 1941, “there is no evidence that the masses, even on the eastern seaboard, have yet been reached and aroused by the organizers of the march. Most workers haven’t even heard about it.”85 The Socialist Workers Party supported the proposed march because “we support a militant action,” regardless of who orchestrated it. “Our support of a march on Washington,” Parker wrote, “does not depend on any of Randolph’s ideas at all.”86 Likewise, John P. Davis of the NNC called Randolph “bankrupt” and faulted MOWM because it would “barter away our lives for promises of empty work.” Despite these criticisms, the federal government, informed by a hastily compiled FBI report, responded to the march plan as if it was a credible threat.87 According to Walter White, “at least three sources in Washington” indicated that “this proposed march is disturbing the administration more than anything that has happened among Negroes in recent months.” The pressure brought on by the upstart March on Washington Committee was such that White reported, “We suspect that an effort will be made shortly to persuade the leaders of this movement to call it off.”88

Crisis Control: The Roosevelt Administration Responds to the March The Roosevelt administration knew of MOWM’s threatened protest since early 1941, but waited until June to address the organization’s demands. In the interim, the government monitored MOWM’s activities and kept a pulse on the general morale of African Americans.89 As an executive shepherding the nation through prolonged economic distress and into a global conflict, Roosevelt emphasized in his leadership style what one prominent historian described as balancing the “shared interests and purposes and needs of all Americans.”90 Thus, he carefully placated MOWM with relatively small concessions that were designed to not be overly offensive to the Democratic Party’s segregationist wing. The White House planned to stay “just a step

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ahead of radical organizations” such as MOWM by bringing them in “cooperative coordination with the Government’s defense program.”91 Roosevelt’s advisers hoped that creating an investigative body similar to the one outlined in Senate Resolution 75, a defeated proposal that called for assigning senators to investigate “the participation of Negro citizens in all industrial and other phases of the national-defense program,” could be enough to fend off MOWM, bolster defense production, and keep African Americans enthusiastic for the impending war.92 The threatened demonstration capitalized on a moment when a scarcity of laborers, changing intellectual currents, and important foreign policy implications combined to join the ever-present struggle for black liberation. MOWM’s challenge to Roosevelt was particularly gutsy, especially considering that it was pressing the popular president of a nation that was on the brink of war to aggressively assert his executive power.93 In April 1941, while Hitler invaded Denmark and Norway, Randolph asserted the need to march because “in this period of power politics, nothing counts but pressure, more pressure, and still more pressure.”94 As momentum for the march mounted, a circular was distributed throughout the defense industry warning that “the Office of Production Management expects defense contractors to use all available local labor sources.” Grounding the circular in pragmatism and framing it in race-neutral language, Sidney Hillman urged employers to desist “practices” that were “extremely wasteful,” calling upon them to fully utilize “every available source of labor” in the war effort.95 Wayne Coy hoped that this, plus a laudatory letter from the White House to be read at the NAACP annual convention, would do “a good deal to eliminate the urgency behind the proposed march.”96 It took more than these letters, of course, to alter the problem of African Americans being excluded from jobs in the defense industry. Wary that the march threatened public safety and could be used as Axis propaganda, not to mention upset the fragile stability of his regionally divided political party, Franklin Roosevelt strongly opposed the march.97 There is no corroborating evidence to support Harry Belafonte’s apocryphal claim that Randolph joined the Roosevelts at the White House for a dinner at which the president all but asked Randolph to set the march into motion. “Don’t hold back,” Roosevelt was reported to say over brandy and cigars. “I’ve heard everything you have to say, Mr. Randolph, and I don’t disagree. I do have the bully pulpit. I could do a lot more to change what’s wrong with this country, and it’s my intention to do that. But I have to ask you for one big favor that will ensure I can get on with this job expeditiously. . . . Go out and make me do it.”98 The scenario seems particularly unlikely, especially considering that Joseph Rauh, author of Executive Order 8802, remembered that the threat of a march “had scared the government half to death.”99 Randolph, White, and other MOWM supporters kept agitating throughout the summer. Eventually, Aubrey Williams and Wayne Coy invited “a group of us” to confer

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in the capital for discussions about “the very serious situation with respect to employment of Negroes . . . for the national defense program.”100 Layle Lane and Frank Crosswaith accompanied Randolph and White when they went to the White House for an afternoon meeting with the president on June 18, 1941, but neither of these two New York–based radicals were in the room when Randolph and White actually met with the president and top-ranking military officials.101 Lane and Crosswaith were among Randolph’s closest confidants in MOWM’s early days. Known throughout Harlem as the “Negro Debs,” a reference to socialist leader Eugene Debs, and often introduced as a “West Indian radical,” Crosswaith’s connection to Randolph dates back to his service as a BSCP organizer from 1925 to 1928. During the 1940s, Crosswaith worked alongside Maida Springer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), a powerful CIO affiliate.102 Lane and Randolph shared much in common. Both were union stalwarts and the children of ministers, and they were neighbors at the fashionable Dunbar Apartments on 150th Street in Harlem. During the 1930s, Randolph, Adam Clayton Powell, and other members of the black New York intelligentsia regularly attended biweekly study sessions hosted by Lane. As the first woman, and the first African American, to serve as vice president of the American Federation of Teachers, Lane was a fixture in the network of progressive educators centered around Harlem’s Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA).103 Lane, a lifelong socialist, thought it necessary to maintain racial protest during wartime “to make life uncomfortable for all those who have to be reminded of the meaning of our fundamental principles.”104 Lane and Crosswaith were instrumental in helping Randolph prod Roosevelt “to open the employment rolls of an already booming war industry to Negro workers,” and they remained influential in crafting a federal

A member of MOWM’s executive board, Layle Lane was key to formulating the organization’s platform and tactics. As an officer in the American Federation of Teachers, Lane, like many MOWM members, had a strong background in the labor movement. (Herbert Garfinkel Collection, author’s possession)

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antidiscrimination policy.105 They, along with White, Randolph, Fiorello La Guardia, and Aubrey Williams, met together in the Cabinet Room to compose the first draft of what became Executive Order 8802.106 On Roosevelt’s side for the June 18 meeting were Secretary of War Henry Stimson, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, William Knudsen and Sidney Hillman of the Office of Production Management, Aubrey Williams from the National Youth Administration, and Anna Rosenberg from the Social Security Board—and all of them joined the president in urging Randolph to cancel the march.107 This came as no surprise to Randolph, who, in a telephone conversation with Williams prior to the meeting, was also asked to do so. Randolph wrote President Roosevelt two days after this conversation, defying Williams’s “suggestion that I stop . . . mobilization for the march, pending conference with you.” Certain that the president could be swayed, Randolph hoped that a personal discussion would allow him to cut through the federal officials that stood in his way.108 “It is exceedingly difficult to get an accurate and precise record of what goes on in the White House,” notes one presidential historian, and there is no existing transcript of the historic forty-five-minute meeting at which the executive order was hashed out, nor is there any account of what was discussed in a meeting earlier that day between Fiorello La Guardia and Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt was the first president to utilize secret recording devices in the White House, but he suddenly and without explanation stopped doing this in November 1940—long before Randolph and White brought MOWM’s demands to the Oval Office.109 Most likely, New York’s mayor and the U.S. president deliberated about Randolph’s ability to actually stage the threatened rally. The urgency of getting the march canceled makes it probable that they also considered what kind of concessions Randolph might demand. La Guardia was a friend of Randolph’s, and the Roosevelt administration knew that the liberal New York mayor had “great influence with New York Negroes.”110 Earlier that month, the president’s secretary Stephen Early sought Wayne Coy, Office of Emergency Management, to get La Guardia “to exercise his persuasive powers to stop it [the proposed march].” Early hoped Coy could enlist La Guardia to “convince them that there is a better means of presenting their case . . . than the proposed march on Washington.”111 Coy “kept closely in touch with the negro problem since . . . they became troublesome in connection with the Army and Selective Service,” and he wanted the demonstration canceled with minimal concessions.112 Coy would prove successful. With only two weeks until the march was slated to occur, he reported back to Early that La Guardia was “at work in an effort to prevent the march.”113 La Guardia originated the idea that Randolph and his associates should personally meet with the Roosevelt administration “to thresh it out right then and there,” and he told the president that action from the executive branch was the surest way to get the potentially dangerous march canceled.114 La Guardia also came up with the plan to have Roosevelt issue an executive order against racial bias in the defense industry and to enforce this mandate

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with a “Grievance Committee” that handled complaints.115 Warning that “I may be overly optimistic,” Coy speculated, “If we could give assurances that this resolution could be passed and the committee set up, we might be able to prevent the march on Washington scheduled for July 1.”116 Unfortunately, historians have long relied on partial reminiscences from Randolph and White to piece together a narrative of the White House meeting, resulting in an account that is so melodramatic as to be almost unbelievable.117 Walter White’s memoir, A Man Called White, provides the most comprehensive firsthand account of the dialogue: The president turned to me and asked “Walter, how many people will really march?” I told him no less than one hundred thousand. The President looked me in the eye for a long time in an obvious effort to find out if I were bluffing or exaggerating. Eventually he appeared to believe that I meant what I said. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. Philip Randolph told the President that we wanted him to issue an unequivocal executive order to effectuate the speediest possible abolition of discrimination in war industries and the armed services.118

The lack of corresponding documentary evidence from anyone in the Roosevelt administration about what occurred in the Oval Office on June 18, 1941, lends itself to speculation. It will never be known if Randolph had the capacity to assemble one hundred thousand demonstrators, but even a fraction of that amount could have been an international embarrassment or become an explosive situation.119 Roosevelt desperately wanted the march to be canceled, and it appears that La Guardia brokered a deal to accomplish this goal. The meeting might have been held in order to portray Roosevelt as offering concessions, limited as they were, only after being forced to do so by a powerful African American lobby. This allowed Roosevelt to save face with the Democratic Party’s southern wing, a faction that dominated the party during the 1940s, and it also presented Roosevelt as appearing responsive to African American grievances.120 Joseph Rauh, a young New Dealer who was recently hired to work under Wayne Coy in the Lend-Lease program, was assigned the task of writing Executive Order 8802. Rauh remembered that Coy frantically called, ordering him to “get your ass over here, we got a problem. . . . Some guy named Randolph is going to march on Washington unless we put out a fair employment practices order.” Over the next eighteen hours, Rauh composed draft after draft of the law that satisfied Coy’s order: “you gotta stop Randolph from marching.” From Rauh’s perspective, Roosevelt issued the order out of “pragmatic concerns . . . for social stability, rather than concern for black workers.”121 Whether planned beforehand or the product of hectic negotiations just before the controversial demonstration, it is clear that

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EO 8802 was crafted by political calculations, not idealistic impulses. The terse tone of a one-sentence memo from Aubrey Williams to Eleanor Roosevelt at the president’s retreat on Campobello Island suggests that this federal official saw MOWM as the primary force pushing for EO 8802. “Executive order concerning the Randolph situation was signed today” is the telegram’s entire text. Referring to the crisis as “the Randolph situation” indicates that the White House perceived MOWM’s threatened protest as the reason Roosevelt had to intervene and sign an antidiscrimination law.122 The combination of mass-pressure politics, insider maneuvering, and top-down federal manipulation makes it difficult to say what forces were most responsible for shaping EO 8802’s antidiscrimination clause, but Randolph knew that “[EO 8802] never happened until the March on Washington movement was launched,” and it is doubtful that the executive order would have been made at any time during the war without pressure from African American organizations.123 The War Department shaped the extent of EO 8802’s authority over defense contractors as much as, if not more than, Randolph. “While . . . in sympathy with the policy” of equal opportunity, Undersecretary of War Robert Patterson and Undersecretary of the Navy James Forrestal opposed the antidiscrimination clause on grounds that it could not be enforced in the South. In a joint memorandum written just after MOWM’s White House meeting, Patterson and Forrestal concluded that labor unions and company management presented too formidable a tandem of barriers for any law to try to breach, especially during a war of this magnitude. “It would be most unwise to cancel contracts for munitions urgently needed because of a breach of this clause,” warned the pair of military advisers. The War Department used its considerable influence to shape the FEPC’s limitations, advising the president that “any board set up to hear grievances should not have the power of direct cancellation of any defense contract.” From the military’s perspective, supplying the war effort was far more important than challenging racial exclusion or creating fair opportunities for all workers.124 After meeting with MOWM representatives, a committee led by Knox and La Guardia recommended that, at most, Roosevelt issue an executive order attaching a “no discrimination clause . . . in all future contracts or extensions, renewals, or modifications of existing contracts.” The committee advised Roosevelt against integrating the armed forces, arguing that it was impractical because “little, if anything could be done . . . to change existing conditions.”125 Black Dispatch editor Roscoe Dunjee chided Randolph for canceling the march in exchange for an executive order that delineated no graduated financial penalties to punish companies with racist hiring practices and gave contractors with existing orders an exemption from the equal opportunity policy.126 On August 20, 1941, Mark Ethridge wrote Stephen Early about the newly formed FEPC’s purpose and limitations. Ethridge used the opportunity to slight Randolph’s

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exertion of mass pressure through MOWM: “As you know the Negroes wanted the executive order as a sort of second Emancipation Proclamation. . . . I think the agitators had got themselves into such a position with a threatened march that they wanted to make the abandonment of the march to come as the result of a great victory.”127 After securing EO 8802, Ethridge rejoiced, “We have accomplished what the President wanted. . . . [W]e paralyzed any idea of a march on Washington and we have worked honestly for a better measure of justice for the negroes.”128 Limited as it was, and with loopholes that allowed discrimination in the armed forces to persist, the FEPC embodied the very idea that the government had a right to interfere with employment practices. As such, this small federal agency represented a break from the federal government’s well-established patterns of segregation and exclusion.129 Despite these shortcomings, FEPC opponents such as Georgia senator Richard Russell called the agency “the most dangerous force in existence in the United States today.” Designed with little authority to enforce federal policy and continuously hamstrung by a paltry operations budget, the FEPC still represented something that made segregationists such as Russell fear that “it is a greater threat to victory than 50 fresh divisions enrolled beneath Hitler’s swastika or the setting sun of Japan.”130 The executive order deeply offended white southerners, explains Glenda Gilmore, and they opposed the FEPC so vigorously because “it struck at the heart of white supremacy” by attacking the southern labor system.131 There were reasons Mary McLeod Bethune wrote Roosevelt praising EO 8802 as “a refreshing shower in a thirsty land” and that Pittsburgh Courier president Ira Lewis thanked Roosevelt for signing “an Economic Emancipation Proclamation.”132 Roosevelt went as far as he was politically prepared to go when he presented Randolph with an antidiscrimination employment clause attached to all defense contracts. It was clear that Roosevelt and his military leaders were not going to capitulate on MOWM’s demand to integrate the armed forces. This did not stop Randolph from lashing out against the hypocrisy of fighting fascism with a segregated military, but progress on this campaign remained in the distant future.133 Roosevelt ignored Walter White’s hounding to prevent “further lowering of the already tragically low morale” of African Americans, who were disillusioned because “sincere and strenuous efforts” by the FEPC were not translating into an immediate increase of employment opportunities.134 Roosevelt also dismissed a request for another meeting with Randolph and White, along with Channing Tobias of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) and J. Finley Wilson of the Elks. To Roosevelt, an unproductive meeting was worse than no meeting at all, and he had little reason to spend time with race leaders if he had nothing else to offer. “The Bukra in the big house,” wrote a Defender columnist after the snubbing, “have decided the darklings were bluffing all along about that March-on-Washington.”135 In little more than a year, MOWM’s national political capital plummeted so much

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that Randolph was unable to solicit a sympathetic ear from federal officials. This incident illustrates a limitation inherent in Randolph’s tactics. Direct action and pressure politics might generate small reforms, but concessions happen only when it is politically viable to do so and when powerful forces such as the military establishment back it. Some federal officials supported MOWM’s overarching goals, but most disagreed with the organization’s aggressive tactics. New Dealers in the federal government did not want the embarrassment of racial discrimination being pointed out to an international audience, and they resisted MOWM at every step.136 In 1942, for instance, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes rejected MOWM’s application to use grounds surrounding the Lincoln Memorial for a follow-up rally to the canceled demonstration from the previous year. Ickes had secured federal appointments for African Americans, and he was once president of Chicago’s NAACP branch, but in Randolph’s eyes, he hesitated to allow the monument to be a site of protest because it “has never been used for a controversial question.”137 Fearing that the Lincoln Memorial could become a political soapbox and that MOWM’s use of the space might detract from the legacy of Marian Anderson’s 1939 concert, Ickes refused to let MOWM assemble anywhere near the National Mall or Pennsylvania Avenue.138 “If we allow one controversial subject to be discussed,” Ickes wrote in his diary, “it would be difficult for us to deny its use on other similar occasions.”139 Ickes’s divergent responses to a symbolically important concert and a proposed mass protest during the heightened sensitivity of World War II demonstrate that officials gave favorable treatment to causes that improved the United States’ image abroad. A 1970s retrospective on Randolph’s life remarked that “he remained strong and steadfast” while “influential people” such as Eleanor Roosevelt tried to dissuade him from following through with the protest.140 As the New Deal’s conscience and the president’s “ambassador to black America,” her progressive credentials were unquestionable.141 Eleanor’s long-standing criticism of segregation and her record of supporting antilynching legislation earned her the respect of African Americans and made her one of the most hated figures in the conservative South.142 Her 1940 keynote address at the BSCP’s national convention in New York, which the Courier called the “most successful convention in its fifteen years of existence,” cemented her reputation as a leading white voice calling for racial equality.143 Milton Webster credited Eleanor Roosevelt as one of the BSCP’s “old friends,” but recalled that she, “as all good white people, told us that the March on Washington was too drastic.” 144 As first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt represented the political establishment’s interests, and she warned Randolph that carrying out the demonstration could instigate a reactionary rollback from the civil rights gains achieved during her husband’s administration or, worse, incite violence.145 “I feel very strongly that your group is

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making a very grave mistake at the present time to allow this march to take place,” she warned Randolph. “It will set back the progress which is being made, in the Army at least, towards better opportunities and less segregation.”146 Conscious of Mrs. Roosevelt’s politically delicate place as the liberal spouse of a comparatively centrist president, Randolph assured the first lady that “the Negro people have the utmost faith in your great spirit and purity of heart on their question.” Although she wanted to thwart the march, Eleanor displayed “a fine spirit of cooperation and help,” and Randolph recognized her for playing an important role in securing EO 8802.147

Fallout from a Sure Bet: Canceling the March and Attacks from the Left Roosevelt was never much of an activist in race relations or minority affairs and civil rights were not high on his agenda, but African American newspapers canonized him as a symbol of racial progress for signing EO 8802. The Amsterdam News, for example, called the executive order “epochal.”148 In one of the first histories of the Fair Employment Practice Committee, Louis Ruchames credited Roosevelt for giving African Americans “cause to believe in democracy in America.”149 Most African Americans at the time saw the executive order as symbolizing Roosevelt’s willingness to act on issues affecting the race, and to his credit, Roosevelt did more to address racial inequality than any American president since the Civil War.150 Roosevelt’s image as a progressive on racial issues was reinforced in 1944 when he used federal troops to quell a hate strike at the Philadelphia Transit Company. Lashing out at the prospect of African Americans integrating the company’s ranks as drivers and operators, white workers all but shut down the city for days. Philadelphia was the country’s third-largest site for defense production, and the strike threatened to close its shipyards and factories. Declaring martial law, Roosevelt ordered the strikers back to work. Roosevelt was chiefly concerned with quelling the unrest that impeded America’s ability to wage a total war, but his resolute handling of the situation in Philadelphia gestured toward an affirmation of the right of African Americans to work in public transit.151 Roosevelt saw the racial divisions within America’s working classes as something to be managed, not resolved. Thus, he viewed MOWM as a crisis, not an opportunity, and he handled Randolph like a statesman.152 One writer characterized Randolph’s management of the BSCP as one of “brave words and cautious behavior,” a phrase that could just as aptly describe his leadership of MOWM.153 Seeing the antidiscrimination clause articulated in EO 8802 as an important concrete gain, Randolph canceled the march with what were argu-

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ably the most important demands left unaddressed. How would potential African American war workers qualify for more desirable positions without the promise of equal access to industrial training courses? What of eliminating racial segregation in all aspects of civil service and, more significantly, in the armed forces? Was it possible, given the long legacy of racism in America’s labor unions, to modify the National Labor Relations Act and make it illegal for unions to exclude African Americans? What happened to MOWM’s plan for implementing the nondiscrimination clause through a selective service program that would require employers to hire workers by order of their draft registration number? If adopted, this final demand would have undermined the autonomy of individual employers, thus mitigating the element of personal bias in job placement.154 Even though the executive order placated only one of the six demands that MOWM brought to Roosevelt, the march was abruptly canceled upon securing an executive order that prohibited racial exclusion from the workforce that was making the arsenal of democracy. Randolph’s years as an organizer with the BSCP influenced his decision to abort the march with what some critics thought was little to show for it. The union’s battles with the Pullman Company schooled Randolph in negotiations and taught him how to capitulate while saving face when victory seemed impossible. He had done a similar thing in handling a 1928 strike threat for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. In that incident, Randolph was hopeful that federal mediation would be activated once Pullman was forced to the bargaining table. When it became apparent that intervention would not occur, the strike threat dissolved. Originally “postponed,” the porter strike never happened. This did not stop Randolph from claiming a small amount of success. After all, Randolph noted, taking this aggressive stance generated “a million dollars of publicity” for the upstart union.155 The lesson was clear: operating from a limited base of power against a massive company such as Pullman put Randolph in the difficult position of maneuvering to get the federal government to intervene on behalf of African American workers.156 Randolph handled Roosevelt’s offer like a labor negotiator. Soliciting favorable federal intervention, however, would prove as tricky in 1941 with MOWM as it did in 1928 with the BSCP. Knowing that he had little chance of successfully lobbying hundreds of individual companies, Randolph tried using the federal government as a lever to pry open the doors of defense work. Randolph and others wanted to see a completely desegregated fighting force waging war against the Axis, but he understood that it was ineffective to keep pressing this issue against the open opposition of top military brass. By taking the sure bet of securing only an executive order banning racial discrimination in the defense industry, he found a way to make MOWM’s mobilization claim a degree of success without having to confront the looming difficulties that would come if the march actually occurred.

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What if everything went as planned, but MOWM walked away without obtaining any tangible benefits? Perhaps even worse, what if attendance was so paltry that it undercut Randolph’s rising credibility as a national leader to be reckoned with? Or, as J. A. Rogers speculated, would canceling the protest set a dangerous precedent that made African Americans less inclined toward joining a similar movement the next time one was needed?157 Randolph caused some controversy by canceling the protest, but having something to show for it, no matter how small, allowed him to save face for himself as the leader of a promising upstart organization. The National Negro Congress attacked Randolph for calling off the march, and it constituted the most vocal dissent to Randolph’s top-heavy steering of MOWM during the young organization’s formative days. Whereas mainline African American organizations cheered EO 8802, the NNC derided it as “weasel words” amounting to a “meaningless gesture that will not result in getting a single skilled Negro worker a job . . . in Jim Crow defense industries.”158 Furious with Randolph’s “dictatorial action” in unilaterally canceling the march, St. Paul NNC chairperson Reginald Harris charged that the MOWM leader had “sold out the race.”159 Randolph drew special ire from the NNC because he burned bridges when resigning from that organization in 1940, calling it “not a true Negro Congress” in front of more than a thousand delegates.160 It is difficult to imagine the NNC supporting anything that Randolph did after the very public way that he left the organization, but another factor is that Randolph’s support for the war was antithetical to the NNC’s. Ideological discrepancies added to the animosity, and Randolph’s hard-line anticommunism placed him in opposition to anyone aligned with Communists. He denounced Communists as “a definite menace, pestilence and nuisance,” and he promised that any who tried to join MOWM “will be promptly marched out.”161 Randolph’s opinion of the American Communist Party shifted dramatically between the Depression and the Second World War, with a pivotal change occurring as the Popular Front collapsed. “Communists are not criminals,” Randolph said in 1936. “The Communist Party is a legitimate political party and has city, state, and national tickets like Republicans and Democrats.”162 Just a few short years later, Randolph argued that “Negroes as Socialists or Communists are helpless. . . . It is silly and suicidal for Negroes to add to the handicap of being Black, another handicap of being Red,” a point that he made repeatedly during the war years when trying to distance MOWM from communist-front organizations.163 “We cannot sup with the Communists,” Randolph thundered at MOWM’s 1942 convention, “for they rule or ruin any movement.”164 Randolph elaborated on this position in an undated essay that one of his biographers attributes to the 1930s, “Are Communists a Threat to Democratic Organizations?” In this piece, Randolph charged that Communists “bore from within and capture and control democratic movements. . . . [T]hey are a definite menace to democracy.”165 Randolph’s staunch anticommunism shaped

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MOWM’s official policy, but other MOWM members shared his aversion. In a planning session for the initial demonstration, fellow Harlemite Frank Crosswaith expressed concern that highly visible “left wing groups” would cause the march to “lose its force and be smeared as communist.”166 Layle Lane, one of MOWM’s principal strategists, shared Randolph’s disdain for Communists. “I very much regretted to see Mr. [Max] Yergan,” Lane wrote Randolph. “He is committed to a party which is antagonistic to our organization and will knife it any time.”167 Referring to inconsistency within the party’s stance on U.S. involvement in the war before and after the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 1939, MOWM passed a resolution charging that “Communists have no idea what they believe or do from day to day because of the control by Soviet Russia.”168 Randolph’s vehement anticommunism convinced the FBI to cease probing his daily minutia, as “he has been outspoken in his anti-Communist opinions.” 169 Likewise, Walter White also pushed the FBI to stop investigating MOWM. He sent J. Edgar Hoover a packet of clippings from radical newspapers that attacked MOWM as evidence that this organization was not tied to the Communist Party. If radicals don’t like Randolph, White reasoned to Hoover, how bad could Randolph be? From this the FBI concluded that because “the Left attacked Randolph,” he was not a threat to America’s internal security.170 The Daily Worker led the charge, disparaging MOWM as a group of “Negro Social Democrats and reformists” that directed African Americans to do “the bidding of the very wealthy jimcrow interests . . . responsible for the whole system of national oppression.” Another Daily Worker writer, William L. Patterson, called Randolph someone “who supports the war of the men who oppress his people.”171 Leaders in the NNC and Southern Negro Youth Congress took a more tempered angle that found fault with Randolph’s leadership but still supported the call to march.172 In a pamphlet-length opprobrium of MOWM, Albert Parker questioned whether Randolph squandered the enormous energy generated by the threat to march on Washington. Not only did Randolph fail by not following through on the march, Parker concluded, but he was woefully out of touch with the general mood of black America.173 Another pamphlet, Henry Pelham’s On to Washington for Negro Rights, offered a modulated criticism of Randolph’s leadership of MOWM. In prose peppered with quotes from Marx and recurring demands for an interracial class struggle, Pelham praised MOWM’s militancy. Although Pelham aligned himself with MOWM, he qualified his support as something that should not be seen as indicative of “love and admiration for the New Deal.” Pelham advised readers to “watch A. Philip Randolph” and make sure that he did not steer the new protest organization toward partisan loyalty with the Democratic Party. Pelham was also concerned that Randolph’s patriotism could be erroneously interpreted as “loyalty of Negroes . . . anxious to die for Jim-Crow democracy.” Pelham said that he supported any assault on Jim Crow, but he did

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not want to see pressure applied toward desegregating the military to be confused with a desire to “want to go to war to pull Britain’s chestnuts out of the fire.”174 From its inception, MOWM’s membership was restricted to only African Americans. Randolph’s bitterness with communism’s impact on the NNC, an organization that unequivocally stated “no desire to exclude any group,” contributed to his decision to press the issue of making MOWM racially exclusive. “It seems to be that the Negro and the other darker races must look to themselves for freedom,” Randolph jabbed in his 1940 NNC resignation speech—a statement suggesting that something such as MOWM was already germinating in his imagination.175 “We do not want Communists in the organization,” Randolph told the New York Times, “for the reason that they penetrate such movements for the sole purpose of dominating them in the interests of Soviet Russia.”176 Keeping it a “strictly Negro march” was explained as necessary to mitigate the threat of Communist co-option and to foster greater awareness of self-reliance, something that “helps break down the slavery psychology and inferiority complex in Negroes.”177 MOWM recognized that maintaining an alliance with white collaborators was “advisable and desirable to advance the cause of the Negro and Democracy,” but it saw value in the psychological significance of maintaining an all-black membership body.178 This position affirmed the value of self-determination and, by encouraging African Americans to “lead in fighting their own battle,” prevented “whites [from] dominating it in an unhealthy way.”179 Just as important for an upstart group searching for its own niche, MOWM’s all-black membership policy was something that differentiated it from the NAACP and gave the new organization its own distinct personality.180 Many progressives and radicals were especially troubled by MOWM’s all-black membership policy. Adam Clayton Powell’s newspaper, People’s Voice, called it “obviously disunifying,” and Langston Hughes, a dues-paying MOWM member, used his Chicago Defender column to register his variance with Randolph on the issue.181 Charles Hamilton Houston wrote Randolph to challenge MOWM’s racial qualifiers, calling it “the color bar in reverse.”182 Bayard Rustin fretted that Randolph was trending toward a dangerous and unsustainable “black nationalism” that reflected “the average Negro’s [loss of] faith in middle-class whites” and disillusion with frustratingly slow gradual reforms.183 Some journalists called Randolph “a Negro isolationist” and labeled MOWM’s membership policy “Ku Kluxism in reverse,” but as one labor historian has pointed out, “rhetoric is not always an accurate gauge of reality.”184 Lost on Randolph’s critics were his warnings that African Americans “must avoid at all costs the idea of a black solution” and that “separatism will only aggravate the problems from which blacks suffer because it will isolate them from the mainstream of the economy where the best jobs are found.”185 Randolph saw racial solidarity as a way to mobilize for change, but he also thought that it was necessary to collaborate as equals across racial lines. Randolph

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defended MOWM’s position as “pro-Negro but not anti-white.” It was absurd, Randolph argued, to charge “that a society of Filipinos is undemocratic because it does not take in Japanese members, or that Catholics are anti-Jewish because the Jesuits won’t accept Jews as members.” MOWM’s status as “an all Negro Movement” was something akin to Zionism being led by Jews and the labor movement being composed of workers, but this “does not imply that there should not be movements of mixed groups” as well. To Randolph, the racial qualifier was about empowering African Americans and striving to “break down the slave psychology and inferiority complex in Negroes,” not about marginalizing whites. Moreover, argued Randolph, “all oppressed people must assume the responsibility and take the initiative to free themselves.”186 “White liberals and labor may sympathize with the Negro’s fight against Jim Crow,” Randolph stated, but “they are not going to lead that fight. They never have and they never will.”187 For Randolph, activism was as much about creating change as it was about ordinary people recognizing “faith in their inner power to achieve their own liberation. Salvation for the Negro must come from within. Our friends may help us. They cannot save us.”188 Whites were prohibited from joining MOWM, but they were invited to cooperate “on specific projects or on programs relative to the general welfare of the community.”189 The intellectual debate about the role of whites and radicals in the struggle for black equality played out in microcosm in MOWM’s Washington, D.C., chapter. Logistically crucial because local residents would be key in any march on Washington, this branch was wracked by racial and ideological fissures that were rooted in discussions about communism dating back to the 1930s.190 The city’s NAACP chapter, which had several white members, including Gertrude Stone, “refused to endorse the march.”191 Thurman Dodson did not want them around, alleging, “The NAACP has become infiltrated with outright Communists and fellow travelers.” Defensive of his standing as a local MOWM leader, Dodson charged, “The NAACP has always used the camel-in-the-tent technique—they first stick their heads in—then inch by inch they force the Arab out.”192 The local rupture between the NAACP and MOWM persisted through a change of the guard in the local NAACP and dogged MOWM’s efforts to organize in that city.193 Consequentially, this MOWM branch, which was strategically vital because of its location in the capital, was among the organization’s most dysfunctional. Membership statistics from 1943 FBI reports reveal the pedestrian level at which D.C. MOWM operated. Whereas Chicago had between twenty-five hundred and seven thousand members and St. Louis claimed approximately four thousand members, D.C. MOWM clocked in with a paltry twenty.194 MOWM’s emphasis on patriotism and anticommunism might have enhanced Randolph’s credibility nationally, but holding fast to uncompromising ideological positions crippled grassroots activism in a city where it simply had to flourish.

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Dissent developed within MOWM because some members, particularly young activists, took exception to Randolph’s heavy-handed leadership in MOWM’s early days.195 In St. Louis, a group of young people was so disappointed by Randolph’s canceling of the march that they demanded, and received, a refund for the March on Washington buttons that they had purchased and enthusiastically worn during the summer of 1941.196 Everett Thomas, Hope Williams, and Richard Parrish were all affiliated with the New York chapter of the NAACP and MOWM. They represented a faction of youth activists who were let down because “the March heightened the ambitions and pent-up emotions of the Negro masses as never before,” only to be aborted by Randolph. The trio of young activists thought that somebody from MOWM’s national committee should consult “the Negro masses through their local committees as to whether or not the March should have been postponed.”197 Parrish personally warned Randolph that maintaining communication with grassroots activists like him was “essential to prevent the Negro Masses from thinking that they have been sold out.”198 In his reply, Randolph accused the trio of being more committed to theoretical and academic questions about protest than facilitating an effective demonstration.199 Randolph knew that “many of [his] followers were disappointed at the postponement” of the march, and he understood that some felt slighted for not getting to participate in the demonstration that they had worked so hard to help make happen.200 As a racial leader with strong grassroots connections built by his work with the BSCP, Randolph was in tune with the ideological crosscurrents of politically engaged African Americans. Randolph addressed many of their concerns through a series of essays in the Chicago Defender called “A Reply to My Critics.” Urged on by Defender editor Metz Lochard, who personally hoped that the essays “would arouse considerable readership interest,” this six-installment series gave Randolph an opportunity to justify his decisions and elaborate on his proposal for a massive civil disobedience campaign.201 Other papers such as the Pittsburgh Courier opposed MOWM since Randolph’s initial call to march, calling the effort “foolish and inopportune,” but it was not alone in opposing or questioning Randolph’s plans.202 Black Dispatch editor Roscoe Dunjee editorialized, “Honestly, we were not very much in favor of the March on Washington.” After carefully reading Executive Order 8802, Dunjee stated that “we do not doubt the good intentions of the President,” but he saw flaws in its enforcement: “No law, after all, is much better than the individuals who administer it.”203 The Chicago Sun, a white-owned daily newspaper, questioned MOWM’s assumption that public protest could check wartime racism, calling its program of nonviolent goodwill direct action something that “would invite disaster.”204 Others were afraid that MOWM would provoke riots such as those that broke out in Detroit and Harlem, and a Defender columnist criticized Randolph as an embittered, aging man who found “joy in just plain mischief making.”205

What Happens When Negroes Don’t March?   • 47

In the face of these attacks, Randolph defended MOWM’s philosophy and described his program of self-help, mass mobilization, and nonpartisan political pressure. Not above name-calling either, Randolph ridiculed the Pittsburgh Courier as an outlet of the “petty black bourgeoisie.” If that paper’s writers had any organizing experience, Randolph argued, they would not have overlooked the significance of mass meetings as a necessary first step toward inspiring action. Leveraging reform with protest politics and public demonstrations was at the core of MOWM’s program, but Randolph also saw the benefit of important but intangible gains that happened when ordinary people aligned themselves with MOWM. By attending meetings and rallies, Randolph argued, MOWM fostered an existential change in the people who were inspired by his call to “shake up Official Washington.”206 Randolph thought MOWM’s record of empowering “the voiceless and helpless” was also valuable, and to him the presence of “the forgotten black man” who came to “meeting after meeting” to tell “an earnest and eager crowd about jobs he sought but never got . . . how he had gone to the gates of defense plants only to be kept out while white workers walked in” was symbolic of the latent organizing potential that existed in African American communities. Instead of taking credit for helping birth the FEPC, an agency that Randolph’s critics thought was virtually useless, he redirected the spotlight onto ways that MOWM created a forum where “little men can tell their story their own way.”207 Randolph’s message of psychological empowerment through participation in activism was just as much a part of MOWM’s program as actually marching. “Not only must the chasm between the uneducated and the educated Negro be abolished,” the call to march argued, “but the ‘little Negro’ must be drawn into the fight by actual participation and given a sense of his importance.” From its inception, MOWM’s organizational philosophy rested on cross-class racial solidarity, as “the Negroes’ cause cannot win without the masses [and] Negro America has never yet spoken as an organized mass.”208 What remained to be seen was how effectively MOWM could galvanize African Americans into a unified mass primed for action in the theater of protest politics.

2

“We Are Americans, Too” MOWM’s Institutionalization If present conditions continue, we will have to march on Washington whether we like it or not.

A

—T. D. McNeal, Militant, July 10, 1943

frican Americans mobilized in the first half of 1941 to support Randolph’s call to march, and many of them remained affiliated with MOWM for the war’s duration. “Once the FEPC order was issued,” Bayard Rustin recalled some thirty years after MOWM’s heyday, “the real activity began.”1 Randolph’s threat to “stun the government, shock business and astonish organized labor” inspired many, and MOWM shifted its focus toward local organizing.2 In the message canceling the march, Randolph advised MOWM’s local branches to “remain intact in order to watch and check how industries are observing the executive order.”3 MOWM encouraged grassroots activists to be flexible and employ whatever strategies were most appropriate to each “local situation” and prompted them to stage “simultaneous marches on local city halls, on state capitols, [and] on defense plants” whenever necessary.4 In early 1942, local organizers such as Chicago’s Charles Wesley Burton and Neva Ryan began putting together “a series of giant public mass meetings . . . in the largest available places.”5 A series of three rallies staged in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis attracted upwards of thirty thousand people.6 Anna Arnold Hedgeman planned the first of these rallies, which took place in New York ten days before a similar program was held at the Chicago Coliseum. Supported by a group of “ardent workers” (nine female, four male), Hedgeman coordinated a “monster mass meeting” at Madison Square Garden on June 16, 1942.7 This was MOWM’s first major action since the July 1, 1941, demonstration was canceled. The Chicago Defender noted that MOWM’s rallies were “kept as completely Negro in makeup

“We Are Americans, Too”  • 49

Ticket to MOWM’s “Monster Mass Meeting” at Madison Square Garden in New York, June 16, 1942. Organized by Anna Arnold Hedgeman, more than eighteen thousand came out to show support for MOWM and hear speeches from the likes of Walter White, Mary Bethune, Frank Crosswaith, Adam Clayton Powell, and others. (Schomburg Center Clipping File, FSN-Sc 002-968-1)

as possible,” with few whites in the audience and none serving as speakers, and another reporter remarked on the rally’s “decidedly working class atmosphere.”8 “The most significant thing about the Rally is that this historic gathering was genuinely American,” remarked one contemporary writer. “The leaders of the movement have no spiritual, intellectual, or political ties with any foreign land or ideology.”9 It was attended by more than eighteen thousand and blessed with plenty of local press coverage. As attendee Ellen Tarry recollected, “Harlem was like a deserted village. Every man, woman, and child who had carfare was in Madison Square Garden.” For Tarry, Mary Bethune’s speech was the program’s highlight, and the crowd “applauded until she had to beg them to stop.” “We have grown tired of the turning the other cheek,” Bethune said among nodding heads and murmurs of approval. “Both our cheeks are now so blistered that they are too sensitive for further blows.”10 Bethune was one of many prestigious speakers that evening, but, embarrassingly, MOWM’s leader never gave his keynote address.11 Hedgeman slotted Randolph to deliver his address no later than 10:30 p.m., immediately following a performance of Dick Campbell’s playlet starring Lorenzo Tucker and Canada Lee, The Watchword Is Forward.12 By all accounts, their performance was “carried out to perfection,” and Campbell’s script effectively dramatized the hypocrisy of racial segregation in an ostensibly democratic nation.13 Things started to get off schedule with Frank Crosswaith’s long-winded oration. Hedgeman tried to limit the seasoned street speaker’s time onstage, but, referring to himself in the third person, he informed the audience, “Frank Crosswaith is utterly unable to disclose the corners of his soul in five minutes.”14 Never one to be upstaged, Adam Clayton Powell followed Crosswaith. In what became a historic moment, the future politician gave a lengthy speech announcing his bid for Congress.15 Described as “selfindulgent” by one of his peers, his performance foreshadowed what would become

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Cast of The Watchword Is Foreword (left to right): Dick Campbell, Lorenzo Tucker, Monty Hawley, Jimmy Dillard, Mercedes Gilbert, Rex Ingram, Canada Lee, and Willie Bryant. (Richard Grupenhoff/Lorenzo Tucker Collection, photo courtesy of Richard Grupenhoff)

classic Powell—the lifetime congressman who made a career of opportunistically seizing the spotlight whenever possible.16 The audience did not seem restless, but after five hours the program was far behind schedule. The only critical account of the event was printed in the Daily Worker. The communist newspaper attacked The Watchword Is Forward as “insidious poison of the Trotskyites, Norman Thomasites, and Lovestoneites,” but the fact that it did not fault the apparent lack of organization at the rally itself suggests that those in attendance did not mind the lengthy affair.17 After Crosswaith, Powell, the play, and many other speakers, the late hour caused authorities to threaten closing the venue before Randolph could deliver his planned remarks. Instead of wowing the audience with his trademark “deep, resonant voice,” Randolph led a procession of one hundred uniformed BSCP members to the stage. His introduction stirred the crowd, which was already in a frenzy, singing Union army battle songs and other “militant Lutheran music.”18 Despite not having the time to deliver his address, Randolph commented to an associate in the BSCP Ladies’ Auxiliary that the event went “beyond all expectations.”19 To Benjamin McLaurin, an officer in both MOWM and the BSCP, these rallies were “a warning and lesson to white America that Negroes are not going to take a licking from Jim Crow lying down.”20 The local MOWM chapter was kick-started by the rally, enrolling nearly six hundred new members in less than three months.21 Rallies such as this one sometimes fostered a spike in MOWM recruitment, but they also helped build and reinforce bonds of solidarity in African American communities.

“We Are Americans, Too”  • 51

Through theatrical protest, the proceedings gave religious denominations, civic organizations, and the various institutions that formed the social fabric of urban African American life a reason to coalesce. Participating together in a shared experience reified the mutuality of their grievances against Jim Crow, and MOWM’s sponsorship of the program implicitly placed it in the forefront of the fight against this hated enemy.22 Encouraged by high attendance at its rallies, Randolph thought that MOWM was “ready to consider the next step.”23 He invited members to a national policy convention in Detroit during September 1942, where attendees would “set forth our goals, declare our principles, formulate our policies, plan our program and discuss our methods, strategy, and tactics.”24 Randolph wanted MOWM to transition from an ad hoc organization into a FEPC watchdog that used pressure politics to ensure that Executive Order 8802 would be implemented. This shift transformed the organization from the March on Washington Committee to the March on Washington Movement.25 Naturally, the first items of business were “to draft a constitution and by-laws” and establish a bureaucracy. To maintain the order necessary for drafting and adopting an organizational constitution, the event was intentionally kept small, with a total of sixty-six delegates convening.26 New York, Chicago, and St. Louis were among the most highly represented of MOWM’s two dozen chapters, with

Booklet documenting the proceedings of MOWM’s Detroit Conference (1942) bearing the organization’s slogan, “Winning Democracy for the Negro Is Winning the War for Democracy” (Herbert Garfinkel Collection, author’s possession)

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Detroit, Jacksonville, and New Orleans also having a larger than average numbers of delegates present.27 St. Louis MOWM’s delegates included T. D. McNeal, David Grant, Thelma Grant, Harold Ross, Joseph McLemore, Jordan Chambers, and Boyd Wilson.28 Milton Webster came from California, and a young Howard University student named Pauli Murray came from Washington, D.C. BSCP officer Bennie Smith and NAACP leader Gloster Current led the Detroit contingent, while Ethel Payne and Neva Ryan did the same for Chicago. Among others, New York sent Benjamin McLaurin, Layle Lane, Eardlie John, Lawrence Ervin, and Perry Ferguson.29 Local activists such as these would prove to be MOWM’s lifeblood. Recognizing that “blue-printed” grassroots activism by local leaders was the wellspring of its power, MOWM encouraged individual branches to act autonomously. The role of the national office was to coordinate the activities of the local branches for maximum results and, if necessary, to issue a call for the march on Washington.30 Milton Webster, T. D. McNeal, Lawrence Ervin, and Charles Burton were the core of MOWM’s Resolutions Committee, and they adopted more than thirty directives, including a repudiation of communism, support for the war against “the Axis powers representing totalitarian slavery,” and a denunciation of “Anti-Semitism [and] Anti-Catholicism [as] a vile manifestation of Fascism.” Of all the resolutions adopted in Detroit, the one that shaped MOWM’s legacy more than any other was its commitment to using nonviolent civil disobedience as a tactic to generate social change. Through nonviolent civil disobedience, Randolph promised that African Americans would “sense their importance and value as citizens” and fuel MOWM’s drive toward the “elimination of discriminations in hotels, restaurants, on public conveyances, in educational, recreational, cultural, and amusement and entertainment places.” Employment discrimination was offensive, but, as Randolph saw it, public segregation was the kind of racism that “touches the Negro masses in a more intimate and vital fashion than any other.”31 Inspired by Mohandas K. Gandhi, Randolph’s vision of nonviolent direct action as a method to fight for civil rights was ahead of its time by a generation, and few of MOWM’s members wholeheartedly committed themselves to this idea.32 Still, historian Beth Bates reminds us, MOWM “introduced large numbers of African Americans to a concept that led to the upheaval, if not overthrow, of Jim Crow in the 1960s,” and it contributed to the developing tradition of nonviolent resistance in American political thought.33 The 1942 conference in Detroit marked MOWM’s transition from “a coalition of agencies cooperating during the war emergency” into a permanent, membersupported, dues-paying organization with its own personality and agenda.34 By the end of the conference, MOWM put together what the Chicago Defender called “a program of action . . . for progressive steps in the fight to break down jim-crowism in the government, armed forces, and industry.”35 Randolph was pleased that MOWM had a “long and short range program,” one that addressed the “near and

“We Are Americans, Too”  • 53

remote, immediate and ultimate” problems faced by African Americans. MOWM seemed poised to catalyze a national assault hastening the “abolition of discrimination, segregation, and jim-crow” throughout the federal government, including the armed forces.36 By this point, Randolph had spent more than two decades in activism with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Messenger magazine, and his lofty goals reflected an awareness that dismantling white supremacy required a protracted struggle that confronted the twin problems of racial discrimination and economic inequalities.37 The Detroit conference marked the maturation of MOWM as a national organization, but it was also the point at which its relationship with other groups such as the National Urban League and the NAACP began to sour. These organizations were willing to participate in an ad hoc coalition, but they were hesitant to lend their resources to help a potential rival such as MOWM get off the ground.38 Suspicious of Randolph’s actual ability to create change and unconvinced that marching was on the minds of most African Americans, Lester Granger of the Urban League quietly drifted away from supporting MOWM campaigns.39 Granger never denounced Randolph or MOWM in the press, but he advised local Urban League officials to be wary of MOWM’s affairs. “The civil disobedience advice which is now being given by the March on Washington Committee,” Granger wrote St. Louis Urban League leader John T. Clark, “holds serious implications regarding the future of Negroes and their part in the war effort. I consider the advice dangerous and shortsighted. I think it would be a big mistake for the Urban League to endorse this position.”40 Walter White directly told Randolph that the NAACP could not be counted on to back “another permanent dues-paying, duplicating organization.”41 Gone were the days when the NAACP wrote, “urging our branches everywhere to cooperate” to make the march “an overwhelming success.”42 Randolph failed to convince other leaders that “it is not the intention of this movement to carry on any work that is

Milton Webster, A. Philip Randolph, and Walter White together at a 1942 MOWM rally. (717.7649, Arthur Witman Photo, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

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a duplication of that which is being done by the NAACP or the National Urban League.”43 To Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, the only appreciable difference between his organization and MOWM was in its marketing. Wilkins lampooned MOWM’s position that “they believe in mass action whereas they say we are not a mass organization.” Indeed, the NAACP had the backing of the masses. Its membership increased sixfold during the war years to nearly a half million, a number that dwarfed MOWM’s membership totals.44 Detroit marked the decisive moment when the NAACP withdrew its financial and organizational support from MOWM; no longer would it assign paid staff to assist Randolph or publicize MOWM’s campaigns in its correspondence to branches. Entrenched in the ranks of black protest for more than three decades, the elder organization handled MOWM circumspectly while it made the transition from “a coalition of agencies cooperating during the war emergency” into a permanent and potentially competitive member-supported organization. The NAACP’s board of directors believed that MOWM threatened to undercut its membership base, the lifeblood of any dues-paying organization. The NAACP saw its very identity at stake, charging that much of MOWM’s work “duplicates existing organizations.”45 There was reason to be wary, as MOWM’s eight-point program included planks condemning lynching, criticizing the poll tax, and a call for “the abrogation of every law which makes a distinction in treatment between citizens based on religion, creed, color, or national origin.”46 Anyone familiar with the NAACP’s work at this time could see the similarities. As far back as 1941, the NAACP branches in New York and Chicago were doing exactly what MOWM proposed by picketing discriminatory companies that held defense contracts.47 Shortly before MOWM’s Policy Conference, Walter White wrote William H. Hastie, remarking that what Randolph proposed “is almost completely a duplication of what the N.A.A.C.P. has been advocating and working for during the last thirty-four years.”48 The NAACP kept this “growing breach” out of the public eye, but careful observers noticed the change.49 Walter White and A. Philip Randolph rarely appeared in public together anymore, and their communication was reduced to occasional office correspondence. The extent to which these two organizations grew apart became evident at MOWM’s next major national event, the 1943 “We Are Americans, Too” conference in Chicago. Roy Wilkins stopped by not as an invited speaker or as a distinguished visitor, but as a spy gauging MOWM’s ability to sustain a long-term threat to the NAACP.50

“We Are Americans, Too” The year 1943 was a midpoint in America’s involvement in the Second World War, and it was also a time of transition in MOWM’s wartime challenges to segregation. This year marked, in Randolph’s words, “a decisive stage” in the military and ideological war between “aggressive totalitarianism” and “embattled democracy.”

“We Are Americans, Too”  • 55

Randolph optimistically promised that an Allied victory would lead to the demise of “the mythical doctrine of Nordic supremacy.”51 Winning the war abroad and securing civil rights gains in the United States remained intertwined as the most pressing issues, but some were looking ahead to the prospects of a postwar America. MOWM’s national convention that year was unified around the theme “We Are Americans, Too,” and the convention sought to institute the broad Double V aims of winning the war abroad while securing progressive racial reforms in the United States.52 The slogan was originally proposed as “I am an American, too,” but William Bell of the Atlanta Urban League convinced Randolph to substitute the singular I with the plural We.53 MOWM’s conference title, “We Are Americans, Too,” played on the recently created i am an american day, which the U.S. Congress established in 1940 as a celebration of citizenship.54 “We Are Americans, Too” emphasized claims to full citizenship in the United States and affirmed the place of black people in American life. “Negroes have shared in the building of our common country,” read a MOWM scroll presented during a prayer service at Soldier Field. “From the Boston Massacre to the North African offensive, their blood has watered the sands of every war in defense of American democracy. Their labor, more than anyone else’s, has built the South. Their music, folk tales and dreams have helped make American culture what it is.”55 The proceedings featured an interracial banquet honoring A. Philip Randolph and a “Monster Mass Meeting” to rally for victory over “Hitler, Hirohito, Mussolini by enforcing the Constitution and

Artwork publicizing MOWM’s “We Are Americans, Too” convention in Chicago (1943). (Herbert Garfinkel Collection, author’s possession)

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abolishing Jim Crow.” To leave no question about the group’s “all-American” nature, the closing ceremonies were held on the Fourth of July—a fitting date considering that an element of critical patriotism underscored much of MOWM’s rhetoric. The conference’s musical selections spoke to both the African American protest tradition and what Walter Johnson dubbed “the metanarrative of racial liberalism.” Songs such as “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and “We Shall Not Be Moved” emphasized solidarity, while selections such as “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “God Bless America” gestured toward MOWM’s avowed patriotism.56 “The large attendance and high enthusiasm,” a reporter remarked, “is real proof that the Negro masses are awake and vitally interested in obtaining their full and unadulterated rights.”57 That two thousand attendees came to “We Are Americans, Too” speaks to the urgency of African American activists and to the organizing expertise of local MOWM member Ethel Payne.58 Known as “the first lady of the black press” for her work with the Chicago Defender in the 1950s, Payne was connected to Randolph through her father, a Pullman porter.59 Despite her accolades, Payne was not without her detractors. Chicago MOWM member and BSCP union official Milton Webster complained to Randolph that MOWM had “too many dames” involved in planning the event, and, because of this, the program was on course to be “a grand, A-1 mess up.” Coming from Webster, a union official described as “the most influential organizer in BSCP circles,” the criticism carried weight with Randolph. Webster disparaged Payne for being “all hopped up” for the event, and he alleged that “she has not the slightest idea of how to go about getting the money” to make a convention of this magnitude happen. Under Payne’s direction, the “prickly” Webster also warned Randolph that “We Are Americans, Too” risked falling apart because “there are too many women mixed up in this thing.”60 Webster’s inability to work alongside talented women as equal partners caused Ella Baker and Daisy Lampkin to complain about him. Most presciently, Baker noted that Webster “seems quite bitter to the N.A.A.C.P. . . . [H]e not only gave all credit for the March on Washington to the Brotherhood, but spoke heatedly about those who collect thousands of dollars from the people under the guise of saving the race.”61 Underneath Webster’s acerbic comments about Payne is the fact that she had a lot in common with Randolph. The people who mattered most respected Payne, and, also like Randolph, she could get people and organizations to lend their bodies or their resources to the advancement of her programs.62 While Payne and Randolph both had strong connections with local and national African American constituencies, they also shared a lack of appreciation for the troubles of financing a social movement. As Cynthia Taylor has shown, these difficulties were compounded in Chicago MOWM, where operations were marred by “considerable friction” along gendered fault lines.63 With a reputation for an abrasive personality, Webster is not the most credible critic of fissures in Chicago MOWM, but he was not alone in grumbling about the

“We Are Americans, Too”  • 57

proceedings of “We Are Americans, Too.” Roy Wilkins noted that the convention was sloppily organized, with sessions starting late and running overtime. Compounding his frustration, he complained, panels did not address topics that the program announced. Wilkins believed that the breadth of MOWM’s resolutions would cause the organization to lose focus, and he left convinced that the NAACP’s new competitor would not last very long. As someone who attended the conference to check up on a rival institution, Wilkins must have rested a little easier when he learned from an anonymous informant that MOWM’s disorganization cut into its own bottom line. “Everybody was handling money,” Wilkins reported, “everybody was selling programs,” and some unscrupulous individuals “got away” with sizable portions of the revenue from “We Are Americans, Too.”64 Webster’s attacks on Payne aside, she proved to be worth the five hundred dollars that MOWM paid her for organizing the event.65 In addition to the porters whom she grew up around, Payne had a deep network of associates throughout Chicago that included other well-connected African American organizers and clubwomen such as Neva Ryan and Irene Gaines, as well as African American ministers such as Charles Wesley Burton.66 Organizing MOWM’s ambitious program for “We Are Americans, Too” required Payne to mobilize her extensive community contacts, and the event was not marked by the visible disorganization that marred MOWM’s 1942 Madison Square Garden rally. The program included no shortage of people. Hometown activist Charles Wesley Burton, T. D. McNeal and David Grant of St. Louis, Senora Lawson of Virginia, and New Yorkers Layle Lane, Lawrence Reddick, and Lawrence Ervin were among the more recognizable MOWM figures speaking on panels or facilitating discussions. The list of other panelists reads like a compendium of 1940s liberal and progressive thinkers: Melville Herskovits, Milton Webster, Earl Dickerson, Thurman Dodson, James Farmer, Erik Williams, Norman Thomas, Ira De Reid, Archibald Carey, Carl Hansberry, and Channing Tobias.67 The Metropolitan Community Church hosted many of the proceedings for “We Are Americans, Too.” Choosing this South Side religious institution was appropriate, as it had a history of involvement in progressive causes dating back to a 1930 campaign for securing African Americans jobs in the Chicago City Transit Corporation.68 Locating the conference here marked the first time that MOWM used sacred space for a major event, thus tacitly aligning it with religious leaders in Chicago’s African American community.69 The venue was a fitting location for MOWM members and supporters “to ponder and discuss the use of Non-Violent Civil Disobedience as a technique for liberation.”70 MOWM’s increasingly loud advocacy of nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action differentiated from Gandhi’s in that it was not seeking the overthrow of a government. Gandhi applied nonviolent civil disobedience against a colonizer, but MOWM saw itself as essentially reformist, hoping to “maintain American civil government because wherever it ceases to function; mob law reigns and Negroes become victims.”71 In

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this context, “maintaining American civil government” meant that it was pushing the Roosevelt administration to uphold the spirit of EO 8802 and to prosecute perpetrators of racially motivated violence. MOWM modeled its case for “a broad national program based on non-violent civil disobedience and non-cooperation” on Gandhi’s struggle, but the rationale was expressed in Thoreauvian rhetoric, “that a citizen is morally obligated to disobey an unjust law.”72 A history of the language used to describe this protest tactic illustrates the complexity of ideological crosscurrents on America’s earlytwentieth-century Left. Syndicalists in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) introduced the term direct action to describe their sabotage, strikes, and demonstrations. Gandhi used the phrase sparingly, and it was not until 1939, with the publication of Krishnalal Shridharani’s War without Violence: A Study of Gandhi’s Methods and Its Accomplishments, that sataygraha became synonymous with direct action. Two years later, the first U.S.-based pacifist usage of this phrase was published in CORE’s Fellowship magazine. CORE may have innovated the idea of using nonviolent goodwill direct action, but MOWM was the first to try implementing the concept in a secular national campaign for protesting and overturning racial segregation.73 Randolph’s introduction of nonviolent civil disobedience into struggles for civil rights made him a pioneer of protest, or, in J. Holmes Smith’s words, “a distinctly American Gandhi.”74 Being compared to Gandhi, of course, meant different things to different audiences. Depending on one’s perspective, Gandhi could be seen as an idealistic and unrealistic radical, a symbol of resistance to white oppression, or a religious teacher who offered political insights. Thus, calls for an African American Gandhi could mean anything from a staunch advocate of nonviolent civil disobedience to an uncompromising charismatic leader. Whatever the implication, black readers were familiar with the Indian nationalist because hundreds of articles were written about him in the pages of African American newspapers in the 1930s.75 Unlike the historic peace churches, which were committed to pacifism and “noncooperation,” MOWM’s program of nonviolent direct action actively sought contact and conflict in order to “recondition the mind and weaken the will of the oppressor.” Randolph championed nonviolence as a protest tactic, but, in his unwavering support of African American soldiers and defense workers, he stopped short of the moral perfectionism that characterized traditional pacifism in the United States. To A. J. Muste, dean of American pacifism, supporting MOWM was not contrary to his long-standing opposition to war. White pacifists such as Muste may have been genuine in their commitment to protesting against racial segregation, but, as one scholar of twentieth-century pacifism noted, “they frequently did so for transparently instrumentalist or naively abstract reasons.” Advocating for desegregating the military and the defense industry, Muste argued, was a way to raise awareness about the evil of racism and to demonstrate the effectiveness of nonviolence as a force for social change.76

“We Are Americans, Too”  • 59

MOWM’s adoption of nonviolent goodwill direct action promised much, but it failed to gain widespread traction or develop into significant national action.77 The influential theologian Reinhold Niebuhr proposed a similar course during the 1930s, but, like Randolph’s plans, little real activities took place.78 A program this sweeping was groundbreaking, but historian Gerald Gill points out that it did not resonate strongly with a generation living “in an era of continued white violence directed against blacks.”79 As early as 1925, E. Franklin Frazier warned that anything approximating Gandhi’s struggle in the United States would unleash “an unprecedented massacre of defenseless black men and women in the name of law and order.”80 Indeed, only a small band of activists committed themselves to nonviolent direct action to advance racial equality. The most notable of these were Bayard Rustin, James Farmer, Glenn Smiley, and George Houser.81 The seemingly high enthusiasm for nonviolent direct action at “We Are Americans, Too” was influenced by the unusually strong presence that pacifist and interracial groups such as CORE and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) had in the region.82 Randolph invited FOR to the convention so that it could expound upon the philosophy and practice of using nonviolence to confront the color line. Based largely in the Midwest, this interracial pacifist group claimed fourteen thousand members and 450 local chapters, with Chicago being among its strongest and most active.83 Bayard Rustin and J. Holmes Smith, a white man who founded and lived at the Harlem Ashram with Rustin and, for a time, Pauli Murray, gave lengthy presentations outlining the applicability of “nonviolent goodwill civil disobedience” to MOWM’s delegates. Rustin and Smith were convincing enough, as the delegates voted unanimously to endorse this protest methodology as an integral part of MOWM’s program.84 E. Stanley Jones, a Quaker missionary associated with FOR and billed as “the most militant internationally known white champion of the cause of the Negro people in the world today,” brought a similar message to an audience of two thousand at DuSable High School’s auditorium to hear him, along with Randolph and Milton Webster.85 Randolph described nonviolent civil disobedience as a “revolutionary . . . methodology and technique” of theatrical protest that was deliberately “unusual, extraordinary, dramatic, and drastic.” This was necessary, Randolph argued, because traditional programs of lobbying and legislative change had proved inadequate in shaping public opinion and neutralizing the negative value judgments that Americans tended to ascribe to race.86 In his introduction to George Houser’s book about CORE’s founding, Erasing the Color Line (1945), Randolph wrote of nonviolent goodwill direct action, “It is applied Christianity. It is applied democracy. It is Christianity and democracy brought out of gilded churches and solemn legislative halls and made to work as a dynamic force in our day to day life.”87 In an unpublished draft of a pamphlet authored by MOWM executive secretary E. Pauline Myers, nonviolent goodwill direct action was described as

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“bold, aggressive, and revolutionary,” something that should not be confused with “resignation” or “submission.” Courage was key, and practicing nonviolent civil disobedience depended on “matching one’s ability to suffer against an opponent’s ability to inflict the suffering.” Myers argued that with “severe and exacting” discipline, MOWM could reform American society through a campaign that sought to “recondition the mind and weaken the will of the oppressor.”88 In the early 1940s, nonviolent goodwill direct action sounded to many like a foreign concept, and its roots in India certainly reinforced the perception that this wordy protest tactic might not translate well into the American experience. Randolph argued that to reject Gandhi’s techniques on this premise, one would also have to renounce Christianity because that religion was “a product of an oriental clime. Jesus Christ, like Gandhi, was born in the eastern world.”89 It would be nearly two decades until resistance to the Civil Rights Movement unmistakably showed the nation how violent American culture really was, but few in the 1940s mistook pacifism as a mainstream ideology.90 To demystify the concept of nonviolent goodwill direct action, FOR paid travel expenses for Myers when she spoke alongside Bayard Rustin at several events in the Midwest during 1943.91 Myers reinterpreted African American responses to racial inequality and segregation since Reconstruction within the context of nonviolent protest. For instance, she presented the Great Migration as an example of what MOWM was trying to achieve—namely, coordinating the concerted action of thousands of African Americans across the nation taking strides to better their condition. Some within the ranks of American pacifism questioned the sincerity of MOWM’s commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience, and they had good reason to do so. James Farmer was ambivalent about working so closely with MOWM because he thought that it could “fold up in a year.” Farmer was pessimistic about MOWM’s prospects, and he believed that its stance on civil disobedience was “just a threat, like the original march. . . . One can cry ‘wolf, wolf’ only so often, you know.” Randolph could not convince hard-line pacifists of his commitment to nonviolence, and he had just as much trouble convincing ordinary African Americans of this tactic’s sagacity or usefulness.92 A poll in Negro Digest indicated that only 32 percent answered yes to the question “Is civil disobedience practical to win full rights for Negroes?” In her memoir, Pauli Murray recounts a similar poll in the Pittsburgh Courier that showed even less confidence in civil disobedience, with many respondents expressing disbelief that this “Oriental” tactic applied to the violent realities of American race relations.93 Nonviolent goodwill direct action failed to attract much African American support, but this commitment did allow white liberals who wanted to be involved in civil rights campaigns a place alongside MOWM. Despite being criticized by activists across the color line and ideological spectrum, MOWM’s position on

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whites within the organization was less hard-line than contemporary observers thought. MOWM had always welcomed whites as supporters, but restricted them from formally joining the organization. White liberal supporters including Lillian Smith, A. J. Muste, Norman Thomas, Roger Baldwin, J. Holmes Smith, and Morris Milgram defended MOWM’s racial membership policy as a way to “assert a kind of sturdy independence,” not “narrow black nationalism.”94 By publicly incorporating J. Holmes Smith and E. Stanley Jones as allies in a nonviolent crusade, MOWM showed that sympathetic whites could participate so long as they collaborated from outside of the organization or within the auxiliary called Friends of March on Washington Movement.95 Randolph’s experience with the NNC convinced him that “wherever you get your money, you get your policies and ideas.”96 Believing that donors drove organizations, Randolph put himself on MOWM’s finance committee, the only one of MOWM’s ten committees in which he personally participated. Explicitly rejecting money coming from outside of African American communities was a way to insulate MOWM from charges of Communist meddling, a problem that Randolph thought would discredit MOWM and hamstring the new organization. “There is no instance of any people . . . winning freedom who did not have the will to pay for it in treasure, blood, and tears,” stated a MOWM proclamation, “and since who pays the fiddler practically always calls the time.” MOWM went “on record as opposed to soliciting or accepting any donations from any people except Negroes.” This was seen as necessary because outside financial contributions could “weaken the Negro” and force African Americans “to depend upon some other race to pay for [his] own rights.”97 Limiting the revenue stream to African Americans places MOWM in a tradition of collective self-help and self-reliance that dates back to the nineteenth century.98 Organizational policy indicated that funding would primarily come from local membership dues, which were split evenly between branches and the national office. To MOWM’s detriment, it never established an effective apparatus for collecting dues from its local chapters. Even the St. Louis branch, which was credited with helping to secure thousands of jobs in the city’s defense industries, sent no money to the national office for more than a year. Other than membership dues, MOWM planned for additional finances to come mostly from an annual fundraiser appealing to “churches, trade unions, business groups, fraternal, civic, and social clubs.”99 These “defensive enterprises,” as Abram Harris called them, catered to a notoriously underdeveloped economic segment of the population, and thus they never approximated the capitalist accumulation of comparable white-owned businesses.100 MOWM’s financial model quickly proved unviable. Within a year of “We Are Americans, Too,” the national office was nearly bankrupt, and it had to eliminate E. Pauline Myers’s paid position. As early as 1942, when some local MOWM chapters were gaining momentum, Randolph admitted to St. Louis

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MOWM chairman T. D. McNeal, “The National March on Washington Movement hasn’t got a quarter.”101 MOWM members at “We Are Americans, Too” discussed things other than justifying its commitment to nonviolent civil disobedience and the organization’s position on how to best utilize white supporters. These topics dominated headlines in African American newspapers, but subcommittees also formulated statements, such as “The Outlook and Future of the Fair Employment Practice Committee,” the need for a federal “Commission on Race in America,” and “The Negro in Post-war Planning.”102 Agitating for economic opportunity and fighting for political change remained the core of MOWM’s focus, but the group did not shy away from getting involved in America’s culture wars.103 MOWM’s concern with reforming the black image in American minds, white and black alike, guided its militant political action and inspired its push to change how mass media represented African Americans. MOWM asked members to boycott “anti-Negro movies,” and it criticized the Amos and Andy radio program as “a menace to all Negro people.”104 “Negroes are caricatured and slandered in the press and on the stage,” lamented MOWM members at a prayer service. “School textbooks paint the Negro as a happy slave, a buffoon and a corrupt politician.” Clearly alluding to Joel Chandler Harris’s writing and to films such as Gone with the Wind and The Birth of a Nation, MOWM continued, “Bestselling novels and million dollar movie plays repeat this lie of the history books.”105 Restricting the organization’s funding to black coffers might have contributed to the deterioration of MOWM’s own pocketbook, but its resolution to organize local marches on centers of government and defense production was a boon in cities such as St. Louis and Chicago. An outpouring of local activism in industrial midwestern cities, however, was not enough to capture the attention of America’s largest black newspapers. This was disastrous for an organization that relied on the media to publicize its dramatic and theatrical protests. Without marching on the capital, a place Randolph called “the head . . . and nerve center of the world,” MOWM simply could not garner enough publicity to maintain credibility as a national force.106 Although St. Louis, Chicago, Richmond, Detroit, and New York had active memberships that, in varying degrees, found ways to “march” locally, most MOWM branches were unable to generate excitement for relatively small demonstrations that never lived up to Randolph’s promise of “a national disciplined and non-violent march of Negroes to demand action of our national government.”107

Fighting Jane Crow: Women’s Work in MOWM With more than three decades of experience working in the BSCP Ladies’ Auxiliary and alongside Randolph in civil rights efforts to her credit, Rosina Tucker remarked in the Washington Post that “very few men can do much without women.”108

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Tucker’s words could have easily been spoken about MOWM. Pink-collar professional workers in its national office kept the organization functioning by handling correspondence, writing press releases, and finding ways to implement policy. Women such as E. Pauline Myers, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, and Eugenie Settles worked directly under Randolph—and none of them received much public recognition for their efforts. Women in MOWM’s national office were paid less than their male administrative counterparts in the BSCP, and they received less workplace recognition as secretaries—not directors.109 A gendered division of labor was a factor in the differential in wages and occupational prestige between these two organizations, but MOWM’s bare-bones budget and the longevity of time served by BSCP staffers are also reasons workers within these two Randolph-fronted organizations were paid differently. Economic distress, job dissatisfaction, and Randolph’s notoriously poor managerial skills contributed to the high turnover and institutional disorganization that hampered MOWM’s national efforts at a time when administrative stability was sorely needed. “I am almost convinced that you do not realize that if you had an effectively operated office, your work would be simplified and could be completed in a much shorter space of time,” one frustrated MOWM staffer wrote Randolph.110 A weakness of Randolph’s leadership was that he had “little interest in administrative work or grasp of its content.” While the BSCP’s second tier of organizers and administrators masked this flaw, MOWM’s slim staff could not compensate.111 Not surprisingly, none of the women who worked in MOWM’s office lasted more than a year. E. Pauline Myers stands out among MOWM’s national staffers because she served longer than anyone else and she was the organization’s first full-time paid employee. Myers was involved in racial affairs and organizing since she was a student leader at Howard University from 1927 to 1931. After graduation she worked for adult education programs sponsored by the YWCA in Chicago and Richmond. These experiences cemented Myers’s reputation as a “race woman” before coming to MOWM in December 1942.112 From the beginning of her employment, Myers openly discussed being “swamped with work.” She was responsible for locating and establishing a permanent national office, planning and coordinating mass meetings, lobbying for enforcement of fair employment laws, fund-raising, and overseeing the affairs of New York’s MOWM branch.113 When Myers was not busy writing informational pamphlets or organizing national conferences, she was traveling the country to encourage local activists to establish their own MOWM branch. Taking home a monthly salary of two hundred dollars, Myers was vital to MOWM’s daily operations because it had so few paid staff. Everything that she did was accomplished on a piecemeal budget consisting of donations and loans from other groups such as the BSCP and FOR, as well as small contributions from private

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As MOWM’s executive secretary and only full-time paid employee, E. Pauline Myers authored pamphlets such as these to articulate MOWM’s program and raise awareness about its activities. (Herbert Garfinkel Collection, author’s possession)

supporters and door receipts collected at dances and teas.114 MOWM’s rallies in 1942 incurred a debt of four thousand dollars, and its treasury rarely possessed half of its estimated ten-thousand-dollar budget. Myers inherited these financial hurdles when she took the job, and she constantly worked against the odds in her mission of consolidating “five million Negroes into one great mass of pressure for freedom and democracy.”115 Myers’s year with MOWM was a period of institutional transition. By the time Myers came on board, Randolph made his memorable threat to march and MOWM held major rallies that attracted tens of thousands of people. Now, it sought to enhance grassroots support and strengthen its network of local chapters. Without professional full-time field secretaries, something from which the NAACP benefited greatly, upstart branches received minimal guidance through correspondence with Myers. Myers disseminated literature to branches that outlined organizational hierarchy and established rules for electing officers, and she personally wrote local volunteers with advice. MOWM’s national office recommended each branch create its own executive board subdivided into the following committees: Winfred Lynn Case, Non-Violent Goodwill Direct Action, Non-Partisan Political Action, Western Hemispheric Conference of Free Negroes, National March on Washington, Finance, Membership, Program, Publicity, and Advisory Commit-

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tee on FEPC.116 If these committees functioned as Randolph imagined, MOWM could wage a campaign to eliminate racial segregation from the armed forces by supporting Winfred Lynn’s refusal to be inducted into a segregated army as his case moved through the courts, oversee massive civil disobedience to challenge racism on the home front, organize African American voters into a political bloc that could swing state and national elections, and have a voice in getting the United States to recognize the independence of Third World nations during the postwar era. Despite this ambitious international agenda, there was a lack of substantive dialogue between the national office and its local branches. Whereas Randolph thought on an international scale and saw the world in what one writer dubbed a “color-conscious internationalism,” MOWM’s grassroots activists preferred to focus on singular issues that were pertinent in their respective cities.117 A remark by Randolph at a 1942 MOWM rally encapsulated the organization’s message: “Negroes made the blunder of closing ranks and forgetting their grievances in the last war. . . . [W]e will not make that blunder again.” A young radical who disagreed with W. E. B. Du Bois’s position of muting protest during the First World War, Randolph wanted to make sure that MOWM carried the torch of protest through the present conflict. In response to progressive critics warning that protesting for civil rights and job opportunities would lead to a backlash, Randolph retorted, “Well, Negroes are already having trouble and a little more won’t hurt.”118 “We Negroes reject the advice to wait,” New York MOWM member Layle Lane argued, “because of the bitter disillusionment after the last war to make the world safe for democracy.”119 Pauline Myers took a similar stance on the necessity of critical patriotism during this war. “If America is sincere about the freedom of the world,” Myers argued, “she must grant that freedom at home.” For her, and undoubtedly for many of MOWM’s members, the “hour of crisis” was conducive to fostering progressive changes in American race relations. America’s increasing importance in international affairs caused “the eyes of India and China” to gaze toward the United States, and they were scrutinizing America to see if the country’s standing as moral leader of the free world was merited. Myers believed that observers would notice thirteen million African Americans with “patience” growing “sorely tired” about “being the white man’s burden,” and she hoped that whites could be convinced that racial discrimination was the greatest problem in American society. Under Myers’s lead, MOWM directed some of its resources toward a campaign to “shape public opinion by letting the world know that the Negro is outraged by the hypocrisy” of America assuming leadership of the “free world” while leaving racial segregation unaddressed.120 “The Negro citizen,” declared MOWM’s 1944 Statement to the Political Parties of the Nation, “is vitally concerned not only in a military victory of his country but also in the triumph of the expressed aims of the war.” The core of these goals, as MOWM put it, was “the preservation and extension of democratic

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principles.” These principles, in MOWM’s formulation, were compromised by disfranchisement and racial segregation.121 Communicating MOWM’s philosophy was one of Myers’s strengths, but fundraising remained a weak point for her and for the organization as a whole. In 1942 Myers had the New York MOWM branch “agog” with a proposal to borrow two thousand dollars from individuals so that MOWM could launch a fund-raising drive aimed at netting twenty-five thousand dollars. Despite Myers’s enthusiasm, Benjamin McLaurin was one of many left unconvinced about “the physical ability to carry through such a program.” McLaurin’s distrust of Myers resurfaced the following year, when another two thousand dollars in unpaid bills accrued. He wrote Randolph, “I am more and more discouraged about the things I hear relating to our good friend Pauline.” After blaming MOWM’s poor showing in the District of Columbia on her, McLaurin commented, “Only a miracle will make possible the success of the campaign.”122 Less than two months later, MOWM’s Steering Committee called for Myers’s resignation because she was “not as successful as had been hoped and expected.”123 Rather than linger as a lame duck for a month, Myers opted to stay on duty for just a week. Myers chose to resign only after satisfying a previous commitment to speak to an upstart but enthusiastic MOWM chapter in Buffalo.124 Myers was not the kind of individual who carried grudges into the public sphere, and it appears that she kept news of her impending dismissal confidential. With her career in crisis, Myers delivered two speeches and never let anyone in Buffalo know that the organization was phasing her out. Jesse Taylor, a member of Buffalo MOWM’s Executive Board, enthusiastically wrote Randolph with news of MOWM’s recent progress in his city. Taylor called the Sunday mass meeting “the greatest affair of its kind ever held in Buffalo” and praised Myers for captivating the audience with a ninety-minute speech that convincingly articulated MOWM’s platform. Taylor’s letter to Randolph ends on an ironic note, optimistically remarking, “We’re looking forward to her early return to Buffalo.” Taylor’s impression of Myers suggests that she was not only a superb spokesperson, but also the kind of organizer who never brought personal bitterness about her career troubles into the public, especially when helping a promising new local chapter organize.125 Anna Arnold Hedgeman stepped in and temporarily filled the position left vacant by Myers’s dismissal. Hedgeman earned “nothing but praise” during her first few days as an interim leader in MOWM’s office, but she quickly left MOWM to work with another organization headed by Randolph, the National Council for a Permanent FEPC.126 Meanwhile, Myers went on to secure a more lucrative position as administrative assistant in the Fraternal Order of Negro Churches. She was ambivalent toward her new employer, whom she claimed to work for “in abeyance because of my sincere loyalty to the March on Washington Movement.”127 Instead

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of authoring treatises on nonviolent goodwill direct action and speaking to primarily African American audiences on MOWM’s behalf, Myers now found herself lobbying congressmen to pass state and national antidiscrimination laws.128 As with many jobs in Myers’s career, this one was short-lived, and within a couple of years she left to work with the Elks as an assistant to J. Finley Wilson. Myers was familiar with issues that the Elks fought for under Wilson’s leadership: access to better housing, political rights, and workplace equality.129 Myers had the patience to handle Wilson’s infamously dictatorial personality, but in short time she was “dropped from Elkdom on the ground that I created too much jealousy on the part of the women of the order.”130 Once again, she quickly gained employment working for progressive causes, and she found a job in an organization that became known as the United Negro College Fund. Myers, now a middle-aged professional, held this position until the mid-1950s.131 MOWM’s finances were in disarray toward the end of Myers’s tenure. Money was owed for office equipment purchased more than a year earlier, and there were unpaid bills for printing expenses, accountant’s fees, rent, and window signs.132 Desperate to establish “a sound financial basis,” Randolph asked all twenty-two members of MOWM’s Executive Committee for small personal loans. A. Philip Randolph, Benjamin McLaurin, Rev. Paul Turner, and Aldrich Turner each gave one hundred dollars, but these gestures could not sustain the organization. MOWM’s weak finances were mostly attributable to its inadequate infrastructure for levying and collecting dues. Instead of appealing to newly hired African American workers in defense industries, MOWM’s Executive Committee devised an elaborate funding scheme that tapped existing African American institutions as a major revenue stream. This included asking pastors to have an “after collection” during their Sunday services for MOWM, soliciting donations from professional men and women, and directing appeals to politically active Elks lodges and labor unions.133 MOWM had high hopes when it hired E. Pauline Myers, but operating within an organization that had little capacity to develop sustainable income curtailed the ability of this “courageous, efficient, and dynamic” young organizer from Virginia to accomplish the ambitious program that she and MOWM articulated.134 Randolph’s lack of interest in administrative chores and his tendency to not be directly involved in implementing his innovative ideas negatively impacted the only actual march that New York MOWM sponsored. Even here, the city that Randolph called home since leaving Florida at the age of twenty-two in 1911, he was removed from MOWM’s day-to-day operations.135 At Randolph’s direction, New York’s local chapter responded to the pending execution of Virginia sharecropper Odell Waller with a silent parade on July 2, 1942—a year and a day after the threatened march on Washington. Waller confessed to killing his white landlord, Oscar Davis, during a squabble over settling up on the tobacco crop that Davis received

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Flyer advertising New York MOWM’s silent parade protesting the execution of Odell Waller, a Virginia sharecropper convicted of murdering his landlord. MOWM took the position that Waller acted in self-defense and explained his fate as the inevitable result of racial violence, economic exploitation, and voter-suppression methods such as the poll tax. (Herbert Garfinkel Collection, author’s possession)

cash for from the Agricultural Adjustment Act. An all-white jury rejected Waller’s plea of self-defense, which would have resulted in a manslaughter conviction, and convicted him of first-degree murder for the shooting. With an execution looming, this case appealed to those concerned about criminal rights, discriminatory jury selection, and the inherently brutal system under which many sharecroppers lived. Most poignant, Waller’s impending death was seen by many as the miscarriage of justice that spawned from the twin evils of poll taxes and systematic racial violence—a deadly combination for many African Americans living in the South during the age of terror.136 Randolph called the Waller incident “a test case for American democracy,” and he devoted the June 1942 issue of the Black Worker to raising awareness about Waller’s travails.137 Randolph asked Pauli Murray, who was on the payroll of the socialist-leaning Worker’s Defense League (WDL), to orchestrate the silent parade for MOWM. Murray was an obvious choice, as she had been involved with the Waller case since 1940 and had a history of working to alleviate the plight of sharecroppers. She and Randolph were connected through MOWM from her days as a graduate student at Howard University, when Randolph covered her traveling expenses so that she could attend MOWM’s national conferences in Detroit and Chicago. Better yet, the WDL agreed to continue paying Murray’s salary while her services were

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temporarily loaned to MOWM.138 Against Murray’s advice, Randolph left for Los Angeles to attend the NAACP convention at which he was to receive the prestigious Spingarn Award. Being on the West Coast removed Randolph from planning or attending the demonstration, which was rescheduled for July 25, 1942—precisely when he would be out of town. Randolph’s truancy is certainly understandable, but his absence from this demonstration, MOWM’s first in the city since the Madison Square Garden rally, “disappointed . . . thousands in New York.”139 Longtime BSCP official Ashley Totten warned Randolph that the Odell Waller demonstration faced “collapse unless assured you will speak.”140 New York MOWM members Anna Arnold Hedgeman and Lawrence Ervin were capable organizers and orators, but neither of them could command an audience or generate publicity like Randolph. In a big city with a long history of African American protest, it takes the presence of a giant to get noticed—and without Randolph around, the memorial parade for Odell Waller managed to attract only five hundred people.141 The NAACP’s ten-thousand-strong “Silent Protest Parade” against lynching in 1917, an event that made headlines throughout the nation and left a lasting impression on future MOWM member Layle Lane, dwarfed this disappointing showing.142 The two demonstrations were incomparable in terms of size, but a 1943 commentator in the Journal of Negro Education drew a parallel between MOWM’s World War II activism and the NAACP’s silent march. “It was a case of history repeating itself,” wrote Roscoe E. Lewis, as “pressure groups . . . gave substance and meaning to patriotic fervor in terms of freedoms on the home front.”143 More than two decades after the NAACP registered its protests against lynching, black New Yorkers were still marching to express their disgust with racial violence—albeit on a much smaller scale. Organizing the silent parade was a valuable experience for Pauli Murray, who pulled off the event despite having only a few weeks for planning.144 With little support from MOWM’s national office, which at the time was still unconsolidated and without the leadership of full-time staff, Murray spent much of her energy giving street speeches raising awareness about the parade.145 Many of those who supported the protest were connected to a network of African American woman activists revolving around the YWCA.146 Murray became acquainted with these women through her WDL work for National Sharecroppers Week, and in her memoir Murray described leaders of Harlem’s YWCA as “strong independent personalities who, because of their concerted efforts to rise above the limitations of race and sex . . . shared a sisterhood that foreshadowed the revival of the feminist movement in the 1960s.”147 “By 1940,” notes Bettye Collier-Thomas, “there was a well-organized web of women’s networks and contacts ready to spring into action and respond to any crisis in the society.”148 In New York, this band of sisters on the noncommunist African American Left included social studies teacher and

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union leader Layle Lane, National Association of Colored Women member and director of the Brooklyn YWCA Anna Arnold Hedgeman, International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union organizer Maida Springer, and a soon-to-be-published best-selling novelist by the name of Ann Petry.149 Although Ella Baker was familiar with those women, she did not participate in the Odell Waller parade or other New York MOWM events because she was away in the South working as a field secretary for the NAACP during the war years.150 If not for Murray’s connections to leftist African American women in the YWCA, it is unlikely that MOWM would have been able to respond at all to Waller’s execution. This incident suggests that in MOWM, as in the NAACP, “women were indispensible but underappreciated.”151 The role of women in organizing MOWM’s protest of Odell Waller’s execution and the presence of E. Pauline Myers, Layle Lane, and Senora Lawson on MOWM’s Executive Committee indicate that MOWM benefited from black women’s activism and insights. Without women’s contributions, Randolph’s charismatic leadership would not have amounted to much more than an occasional speech that threatened an impending march.152

A Lost Cause: Maintaining a Local Chapter in Washington, D.C. The apex of MOWM’s presence in Washington, D.C., was during the summer of 1941, when the organization was fresh and its message new. MOWM member Thurman Dodson collaborated with Ralph Bunche, Rayford Logan, Rosina Tucker, Mary Church Terrell, and Jeanetta Welch to get at least five thousand local residents to assemble at the capital for the July 1, 1941, protest. With the demonstration canceled, these well-known members of the city’s African American elite put together a rally and reception celebrating the signing of EO 8802.153 Held at the Watergate theater, it was an “ideal night and an ideal setting.” The symbolic proximity of the hotel to the Lincoln Memorial was not lost on the attendees. Two years earlier, fifty thousand people assembled there for Marian Anderson’s concert, and now, in 1941, there seemed no need to gather for anything but a celebratory occasion.154 Upwards of two thousand came to MOWM’s Victory Rally, where they heard speeches from Jeanetta Welch from the AKA Sorority, Walter White from the NAACP, and Mayor La Guardia as well as, of course, a keynote address by A. Philip Randolph.155 Momentum gained by forcing EO 8802 could have energized a capital branch of MOWM if it enacted a plan of action that gave prospective members a reason to join, but it was difficult to generate excitement for local branches that did not have a clear vision for keeping people involved. MOWM’s inability to transform the enthusiasm of capital residents into a sustainable forum for protest

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undermined the organization’s ability to build a functional local chapter in the one city where it was needed most. E. Pauline Myers’s last major effort as a MOWM staffer was in Washington, D.C. Benjamin McLaurin visited that city in 1942, and he reorganized its officer corps around Thurman Dodson, Lillian Speight, Judge Houston, and Jeanetta Welch. Even with the branch’s revamped leadership, McLaurin complained to Randolph that “I am not at all pleased” about its inertia, and he criticized it as “everything but organized.”156 Rebuilding D.C. MOWM would be a difficult task for Myers, especially since Randolph made headlines in that city when he left the NNC in 1940. The local NNC chapter was thriving, most notably because it spearheaded a successful push to integrate the workforce at the Glenn L. Martin aircraft factory.157 Myers’s visit to the capital stunned her, as she found that under Dodson’s leadership, “there are exactly no members in the Washington unit . . . not one single individual.” Myers complained of having “practically no cooperation” from local activists, many of whom remained disillusioned with MOWM after the initial march was canceled. MOWM’s most faithful member in the city, Thurman Dodson, was a committed but ineffective organizer. In Myers’s eyes, Dodson’s integrity was unquestionable, but he “lacks the ingenuity and initiative to get the real job done.” Myers saw two possibilities: MOWM could give up trying to organize a branch in the capital and focus on developing chapters in more receptive locales, or it could invest in “a tremendous educational campaign [and] membership crusade.” Myers chose the latter option. After meeting with porters, ministers, and officers of various civic groups, Myers saw the crux of her problem was that leaders of other organizations had little to gain by lending their credibility to MOWM’s efforts. A troubling pattern developed. Everyone she met seemed interested in MOWM’s plans, but they were all hesitant to align themselves and their organizations with a floundering protest movement that had little to offer in return.158 Myers gradually made headway, and her assessment of MOWM’s prospects in Washington became more favorable. She secured temporary space for D.C. MOWM from an accountant who donated the front of his office, which was located on a busy thoroughfare. Myers got local churches involved by securing an endorsement from a local alliance of Baptist and Methodist ministers. Just as significantly, she convinced Ralph Matthews of the Baltimore Afro-American to enlist as MOWM’s publicity chairman for the capital area. Myers was excited that “people from all walks of life including students, domestics, trade unionists, business men, church men and government workers are signing up for recruiting members.” To convince wary capital residents of MOWM’s merits, Myers maintained a busy speaking schedule, which often included up to three engagements every day. Reporting that “Washington is really waking up” as “a brand new group of people . . . are enlisting

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in the campaign,” Myers projected “getting at least 5000 members by December 1.”159 This optimism proved unfounded, and in less than two months she would be relieved of her post as MOWM’s only paid full-time officer. Myers’s dismissal in the midst of an organizing campaign left D.C. residents with all the more reason to look skeptically at MOWM. The disastrous experience of MOWM’s branch in Washington, D.C., is an example of the difficulties that officials such as Myers experienced when they compensated for poor local leadership by trying to organize chapters from the top down. Discord in D.C. during the 1940s was very different from the factionalism plaguing the local NAACP chapter during its 1913 inception.160 Unlike Archibald Grimke, who transformed D.C.’s NAACP chapter into the largest in the country, Thurman Dodson navigated trickier political terrain. Dodson essentially worked alone in his effort to maintain a MOWM branch in the city that was, by the organization’s very name, supposed to host the march. Unlike other locales where MOWM and NAACP members cooperated, Washington’s NAACP branch openly refuted MOWM, refusing to assist with any planning or logistics for the demonstration. Although Randolph carefully explained his reasoning for canceling the original call to march, some local NAACP members remained hostile for years because of his unilateral actions. This rift made Washington, D.C., a stark contrast to cities such as St. Louis, where enthusiastic activists maintained simultaneous membership in both the NAACP and MOWM. The local NAACP “refuse[d] to endorse the march” because it unequivocally disagreed with MOWM’s racially exclusive membership policy. One of Dodson’s most vocal critics was Gertrude Stone, a white activist and an officer in the local NAACP.161 Animosity flowed both ways, with Dodson doubting the NAACP’s “ultimate sincerity in any cause.” Like George Schuyler in the satirical novel Black No More, Dodson alleged that the NAACP was more concerned with securing permanent funding for professional agitators than advancing meaningful social changes. Without citing much evidence, Dodson charged that “the NAACP has become infiltrated with outright Communists and fellow travelers,” especially in the capital branch.162 After the July 1941 demonstration was anticlimactically canceled, Dodson had trouble finding a place to legally stage another demonstration. Bureaucratic roadblocks combined with a general lack of local enthusiasm made it difficult for Randolph to call for another march on Washington during the ensuing war years without looking like a fool. In November 1942, red tape blocked Dodson from leading a picket outside of the Senate. Complying with federal regulations meant that demonstrators could not gather outside of the building. MOWM hoped to surround Capitol Hill, but doing that would now necessitate gathering up to one thousand demonstrators to complete the line around its circumference.163 MOWM also had trouble acquiring appropriate permits when events were held far from

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sites of federal power. Washington was supposed to join Chicago and New York in hosting major MOWM rallies during 1942, but Dodson was unable to secure the stadium used by the Washington Senators, a Major League Baseball team. Forced to reconsider having a rally in the capital, Randolph propitiously relocated that third rally to St. Louis, a city that became MOWM’s most effective chapter.164 Decades later, in correspondence with Herbert Garfinkel, Randolph glossed over racial divisions and bureaucratic roadblocks from government officials, attributing MOWM’s disappointing record in Washington, D.C., to “the conservative climate of Washington, among both white and colored people.”165 MOWM floundered in the city where it mattered most, for marching on the capital was ostensibly the reason that the organization existed. Without strong grassroots support in this strategically important city, it was easy to dismiss MOWM as a paper tiger. Randolph never led a march on Washington during the war, and MOWM’s branch in that city was dysfunctional, but the organization had other chapters coordinating locally and leading campaigns with varying success. Chicago had a large MOWM membership base, but it, too, was hamstrung by internal divisions that hindered its long-term viability. In Denver, MOWM had a small but active cadre of members who tried to attack employment discrimination in public utilities, whereas in New York, long a hub of African American protest, MOWM confronted issues ranging from police brutality to employment discrimination by insurance companies. Finally, in St. Louis, MOWM led a charge against racial discrimination in the hiring practices of defense plants and sponsored a series of sit-ins at area restaurants. African American residents of the Gateway City used MOWM as a foundation to build a movement for securing equal employment opportunities in the defense industry and for the right to spend those wages without discrimination. With MOWM at the forefront, St. Louis was perhaps the most active site of African American protest during World War II. Organized by BSCP official T. D. McNeal, St. Louis MOWM exemplifies the ways that ordinary people were inspired by Randolph’s threat to march. Getting to the District of Columbia was inconvenient and expensive, but African Americans in St. Louis MOWM found other locations closer to home to march on.

3

Wartime St. Louis and the Genesis of MOWM in the Gateway City, 1942 Winning Democracy for the Negro Is Winning the War for Democracy.

I

—MOWM slogan, as seen on a souvenir program and various organizational letterhead

t had been about a year since Franklin Roosevelt warded off A. Philip Randolph’s threat to march on Washington by creating the Fair Employment Practice Committee, but Executive Order 8802 seemed to make only a negligible impact in many cities. Nationwide in 1942, African Americans accounted for only 1.8 percent of the federal employees above entry-level or custodial job classifications, and those who had more lucrative occupations usually held temporary positions that would be eliminated after the war.1 The federal government invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction projects for defense production facilities in and around St. Louis, but fewer than three thousand of the twenty thousand people employed in construction were black. BSCP and MOWM member E. J. Bradley complained to the United States Housing Authority in 1941 that “it is absolutely impossible to get Negro mechanics [hired] on any . . . USHA projects in the St. Louis area due to discrimination solely in the white unions.”2 Shut out of the city’s construction industries, African American workers were also grossly underrepresented in defense production. Even though the federal government spent more than $3 million in that city every week, the war machine that Roosevelt dubbed the “arsenal of democracy” appeared to have little use for African American workers in St. Louis.3 African Americans in St. Louis were hit hard by the Depression and were the largest group on relief during the thirties. At the worst of the Depression, an estimated 80 percent of African Americans in St. Louis were unemployed or underemployed, and as the 1940s began their unemployment rate was still at 20 percent.4 Wartime production increased by 150 percent within a month of the Pearl Harbor

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attack, and by the end of the war three-quarters of all manufacturers in St. Louis held defense contracts. The employment situation was unchanged for most black workers in St. Louis. Fifty-six companies with war contracts employed an average of only three African Americans each, and at one point during the war nearly threefourths of the city’s defense contractors had zero African American employees.5 Of those that did hire across the color line, few utilized African American women in any capacity, and those that did confined their labor to menial work.6 Secretary of War Henry Stimson identified “the vast reserve of women power” as “the largest and potentially the finest single source of labor available today,” but it took a highly publicized grassroots campaign to convince St. Louis defense contractors of the merits of African American female war workers.7 Baltimore, another border city, had local manpower needs in excess of thirty-five thousand, but employers maintained a ceiling on the proportion of African American workers. Likewise, aircraft companies and other defense industries in Kansas City, Cincinnati, and the San Francisco area resisted hiring black workers.8 Nationwide, the few companies that used African American workers often restricted their occupational mobility by concentrating and confining them in the lowest-paying job classifications.9 In May 1942, A. Philip Randolph and Milton Webster called a meeting at the St. Louis YWCA, during which they proposed that a local MOWM unit be established. T. D. McNeal and David Grant, both of whom left the NNC when Randolph resigned in 1940, were present that day, as were George Vaughn, Guy Ruffin, Gladys Gunnell, Thelma Grant, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Ross, Juanita Blackwell, Leyton Weston, Mr. and Mrs. A. Parham, Frank Casey, John Rhoden, Mabel Curtis, Sidney Redmond, James Cook, Mrs. C. H. Lee, Carl Miller, Nathaniel Sweets, C. Sullivan Carr, and Mrs. Norris.10 Within a month, a group of NAACP members and clubwomen in St. Louis staged demonstrations outside of manufacturing plants that openly violated EO 8802 despite holding defense contracts inked after the nondiscrimination clause was added. Undoubtedly, some of those assembled were among the 110 members of the St. Louis County NAACP branch who supported Randolph’s call to march on the capital and made preparations for traveling there back in the summer of 1941.11 Calling themselves the “March on Washington Movement, St. Louis unit,” the leaders of this “little band of Spartans” became a leading outlet for wartime protests against the color line.12 In a short time, “the St. Louis Division,” noted a writer for MOWM’s newsletter, “seems to be a ball of fire.”13 Over the span of three years, St. Louis MOWM’s pickets and protests reliably attracted 150–500 demonstrators, and its biggest rally brought in upwards of 10,000 attendees. Under MOWM’s aegis, these rallies, pickets, and sit-ins were marked by an urgency and militancy that set it apart from earlier efforts to challenge racism in the Gateway City. The diligence of MOWM’s activists and the strong community support for its campaigns propelled the new organization into “the forefront of activism in St. Louis during the war.”14

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“March on Washington General Committee” group portrait with T. D. McNeal seated in the center, with David Grant standing directly behind him. Among those also pictured are E. J. Bradley, John Davis, Leyton Weston, Harold Ross, A. N. Vaughn, and Charles Ross Pitts. (629.18, Bennie Rodgers Collection, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

St. Louis’s African American newspapers cheered MOWM for “its ability to hold the continued interest of a cross-section of the local citizenry” and for transforming this zeal into action.15 This kind of unity was common in St. Louis’s African American community, which had a tradition dating back to at least 1900 that was described by one writer as “striving for upward mobility, not within a self-contained middle class elite but within the larger African American community as a whole.”16 United by their opposition to racism and their “faith . . . in a working democracy,” members of St. Louis MOWM challenged just about every element of racism in their city—and sometimes they won.17 Their efforts to “crack” St. Louis, a city some called “the seat of undemocratic and reactionary labor policies,” focused on gaining employment for black workers in the burgeoning defense industries. Although it is impossible to verify the claim, St. Louis MOWM took credit for hastening the economic integration of more than ten thousand African Americans into wartime industries.18 The labor shortage associated with defense mobilization and the FEPC undoubtedly contributed to this increase, but local activism by organizations such as MOWM also factored into the racial diversification of wartime workforces.19 “While there has been some criticism of the movement in other areas,” noted the Chicago Defender, “the St. Louis branch of the undertaking appears to be well

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deserving of commendation. Their efforts . . . have born fruit in a degree unmatched elsewhere.” The FBI noticed that “the most active Negro organization in the City of St. Louis is the March on Washington Movement,” and enthusiasm for MOWM in the Gateway City was so fervent that it surprised even Randolph. “Negroes are restless,” remarked a FBI agent in the St. Louis field division, “and are pressing demands for equal opportunities with white people in industry.”20 The years that MOWM was at the helm of African American activism in St. Louis coincided with a period in which “a new dimension to the concept of civil rights” was developed. Desegregating public space remained a vital issue, but this imperative was now combined with advocating for equal access to jobs—and both of these goals were seen as complementary.21 St. Louis MOWM’s work fits within a trend in labor activism that dates back to the Depression, in which African American organizations deployed the tactics and language of organized labor to simultaneously fight management and existing workers for the privilege of securing employment opportunities.22 MOWM tapped into this emerging tradition and used it to open thousands of jobs for African American workers, up to 60 percent of whom were looking for employment in the years leading up to the war.23 St. Louis had two major African American newspapers, the St. Louis Argus and the St. Louis American, both of which championed the cause of racial equality during the war and were generally supportive of the Double V campaign.24 The growth of African American newspaper publishing in St. Louis paralleled that of the black press’s expansion throughout the United States. The Argus, which began as a newsletter in 1905 under J. E. Mitchell, was named for the mythological omniscient Greek giant who saw the world through one hundred eyes. By the 1940s, the Argus was the city’s leading African American newspaper, and it was well established as one of St. Louis’s most successful black-owned businesses. The St. Louis American was founded in 1928 as a Democratic alternative to the Argus’s pro-Republican leanings, and it too reported favorably on MOWM’s activities.25 The editor, Nathaniel A. Sweets, was an ardent MOWM supporter from the beginning, and he showed up at many of its events. Both the Argus and the American gave MOWM extensive and favorable press coverage, but Henry Wheeler stands out as the journalist who was more invested in MOWM’s efforts than any of the city’s other newspapermen.26 Uniquely situated at the northern terminus of Jim Crow and the gateway to the American West, St. Louis’s geography made it symbolically and tactically important as a site of racial activism.27 A daily newspaper noted that “the anomaly of our geographic position,” as “neither south, north, east nor west,” combined with an influx of wartime migrants to make St. Louis a culturally and politically dynamic place during MOWM’s years.28 Daniel Monti aptly describes St. Louis, Missouri’s most vibrant city, as “northern enough to have suffered more than its share of industrial divestment and urban blighting. It is southern enough to have cultivated a modest

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image of itself as a conservative and cultured community . . . and it is just Midwestern enough to be satisfied with adopting someone else’s innovations.” Monti continues, “If St. Louis is not a boring place . . . it certainly lacks the good natured rowdiness and corrupt charm of Chicago, its former stepchild to the north.”29 This self-proclaimed “crossroads city” was populated by “elements reflecting the sentiments” of the entire nation, creating a demographic and ideological mixture that some thought made St. Louis “in the past, in the matter of race relations, more than a level-headed town.”30 “On the whole, the negro has received much fairer treatment in St. Louis than in most metropolitan areas,” wrote one local newspaper, “although manifestly there is room for improvement.”31 The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a newspaper renowned for its journalistic excellence during the mid–twentieth century, characterized the city as having “a long and admirable record of broad-minded tolerance. . . . [T]his city has been for years one of the nation’s leaders in maintenance of civil liberties.”32 One year earlier, the Chicago Defender offered a different perspective, identifying St. Louis as “one of the largest defense materials manufacturing sections of the nation, and one in which members of this racial group are most grossly victimized.”33 Modern historians portray St. Louis as a fully segregated southern-style border city akin to Cincinnati and Baltimore, or another expanding city along a river in a border state, Louisville. The “Gateway to the West” and the “Gateway to the South” could be described as having what one writer called “a mélange of northern and southern attitudes.” In border cities such as these, public spaces tended to be segregated and there was noticeable income inequality, but African Americans still held the franchise and were a notable force in municipal politics.34 Located on the outskirts of town, Fort Leonard Wood’s Jefferson Barracks housed twenty-five hundred African American soldiers. Their presence added another layer to St. Louis’s complicated and often contradictory race relations.35 As at nearly all U.S. military posts during World War II, African American soldiers stationed there served in segregated units under the leadership of a uniformly white officer corps. The presence of African American soldiers incited fear and hatred from some white residents living near military bases located in the South, and St. Louis was no exception.36 Without referencing any specific incident, a FBI report dryly noted that “allegations have been spread that Negroes, presumably soldiers, have molested white families and as a result anti-Negro sentiment is at a high pitch.37 African American men in uniform did not participate in St. Louis MOWM’s protests, but to many, they powerfully emphasized the contributions African Americans made to the war effort.38 African Americans at Jefferson Barracks did not have to protest in the streets to be symbolically important. The first all-black parade in Jefferson Barracks’ history brought out local dignitaries, including T. D. McNeal, fellow MOWM member and Pine Street YMCA director James Cook, and Mayor William Becker—all three of whom were photographed together in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat saluting the troops as they passed.39

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African American recruits march at the hastily constructed Jefferson Barracks. The presence of soldiers serving under segregation was an emotional touchstone among many in the city’s black community. (717.949, Arthur Witman Photo, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

Racism in St. Louis was not as pervasive as in other southern cities such as Birmingham and Jackson, but it was prevalent enough to be categorized by one historian as “one of the most segregated cities in the nation” and described by a local newspaper as “pock-marked with little jim crows.”40 Local NAACP leader Sidney Redmond called his hometown “just a big Southern city,” but to Montgomery, Alabama, native E. D. Nixon, St. Louis was remarkably freer than his hometown.41 African Americans residing in or traveling through border cities such as St. Louis faced what legal historian Alfred L. Brophy describes as “a constant bombardment of indignities that reinforced their status as inferior citizens.”42 While African Americans in St. Louis could vote, access public libraries, and enjoy public conveyances without segregation, local law segregated the city’s public schools, theaters, hotels, swimming pools, hospitals, and restaurants. This pattern of partial spatial separation typified what one writer adroitly describes as “the peculiarities of a city that was curiously both Midwestern and southern.”43 African Americans could legally move about freely, but restrictive covenants racially divided the city’s housing stock. The practice continued long after the Supreme Court’s unanimous Buchanan v. Warley (1917) decision declared unconstitutional the city’s 1916 ordinance forbidding African Americans from moving into neighborhoods that were 75 percent white.44 By 1940 St. Louis’s 108,765 African Americans overwhelmingly resided in housing clusters that were plagued by the typical maladies accompanying urbanized inequality.45 These neighborhoods were densely populated and had poor street lighting, flagrant violations of building codes, inadequate plumbing, and unreliable garbage disposal.46 There was an artificial shortage of residential units available to African Americans in wartime St. Louis, a problem that left black residents vulnerable to rent gouging. A third-party survey found that on average, 20 percent of the income earned by African Americans went to rent, making it the most significant expenditure among the city’s black residents.47

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Whether in Chicago, Harlem, Louisville, or St. Louis, urban African American neighborhoods throughout the United States were generally beset with overcrowding, unsanitary building maintenance, less than equal access to municipal facilities, and inferior schools.48 Living conditions such as these fueled E. Franklin Frazier’s acerbic attack “The City of Destruction” in his controversial The Negro Family in the United States. Frazier’s criticism of black urban life has generated much debate and some well-founded criticism, but few would suggest that the environment in which African American urban dwellers found themselves was wholesome, or even desirable.49 As bad as these conditions were, American cities offered more promise than being in a rural economic dead zone. By the end of the 1940s, nearly forty thousand more African Americans were calling St. Louis home.50 Because U.S. Census data are collected in ten-year cycles, it is difficult to calculate the precise number of migrants who arrived in St. Louis during the war, but the pattern of settlement in comparable cities suggests that a majority of the individuals associated with this increase came to St. Louis during the war.51 Though not as large as the internal population movements during World War I, this wartime migration brought upwards of 1.6 million out of the South. Nearly two-thirds of these migrants were African Americans, and they left Dixie in favor of cities in the Midwest, on the West Coast, and on the Eastern Seaboard.52 The number of African Americans in New York increased by 62 percent, Chicago by 80 percent, Los Angeles by 116 percent, Cleveland by 76 percent, Oakland by 292 percent, and Detroit by 100 percent. In any other era, the growth of St. Louis’s African American population by 35 percent would be remarkable, but it paled compared to other cities during this period.53 MOWM member David Grant spoke in hyperbole when he argued, “St. Louis had all of the Jim Crow and discrimination of the deepest part of Mississippi,” but his commentary demonstrates that Mississippi was the benchmark against which African Americans measured the lack of civil rights.54 There was room for an organization such as MOWM to make progress in St. Louis because, unlike in the Deep South, the issue of discrimination was at least subject to debate. As one St. Louis resident put it, the city was far from perfect, but “it was a tremendous improvement over Mississippi.”55 In the Magnolia State, the Democratic Party’s rooster bore an emblem boosting “White Supremacy,” but African Americans in St. Louis could vote, and they used the ballot to exercise power in municipal politics. In St. Louis, an organization such as MOWM could secure parade permits and at least reasonably expect to be protected by local law enforcement.56 Despite its many elements of segregation and racial inequality, this was a city, according to the biographer of a prominent St. Louis activist, “with a rich history, a vibrant cultural life, and a tradition of civil rights activism.”57 During the Second World

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War, MOWM tapped this tradition and briefly became the city’s leading voice of militant protest. St. Louis MOWM’s emphasis on gaining jobs in war industries meant that it replicated some of the same ends as the local Urban League.58 African Americans predominantly worked as domestic servants, janitors, and common laborers in steel and iron mills set up along the Mississippi River.59 Since its inception in 1917, the St. Louis Urban League helped African Americans cope with slum living conditions and economic marginalization that marked their place at the bottom of the city’s occupational hierarchy. Under the longtime leadership of John T. Clark, the St. Louis Urban League had a history of supporting protests that furthered the aim of bolstering opportunities for working-class African Americans and improving their living conditions.60 In addition to helping migrants find and obtain jobs, the local Urban League was an important lobbying group in helping African Americans gain access to nurseries and dental offices, and, most important, launching construction of the Homer G. Phillips Hospital.61 One of the more prominent povertyrelief campaigns that Clark contributed to was a 1939 effort to raise awareness of the plight faced by Depression-era sharecroppers camped on the roadside of U.S. Highways 60 and 61 in Southeast Missouri’s Bootheel region.62 The similarity of MOWM’s program to that of the Urban League is perhaps best evidenced by the fact that Clark briefly served as St. Louis MOWM’s first chairman.63 It is unclear why Clark relinquished his position in MOWM, but advice from Lester Granger is suggestive. Granger wrote Clark, warning that MOWM was “dangerous and shortsighted,” and he told Clark, “It would be a big mistake for the Urban League to endorse” MOWM’s activities.64 MOWM’s local activity flourished in areas where local BSCP organizers were versed in civil rights unionism. Not surprisingly, cities such as St. Louis and Chicago were home to its most active locales.65 Chicago’s Charles Wesley Burton and St. Louis’s T. D. McNeal were BSCP organizers and leaders in their respective communities. Their adeptness as organizers allowed them to channel frustration with discrimination into focused political activism. Men and women affiliated with the BSCP saw it as “not a Labor Union but a way of life,” and the union was often a vital part of the community’s social fabric.66 On holidays St. Louis BSCP members reinforced their standing as pillars of their community by visiting families of infirm members to deliver gift baskets and offer cash to help through difficult times.67 Small deeds such as these reinforced solidarity among union members and endeared the union to families. As members of the BSCP union and Elks fraternity, T. D. McNeal and Leyton Weston brought these humanitarian values to their activism.68 Rather than gaining credibility through proving their commitment to an ideology, St. Louis MOWM’s leadership built political capital by adhering to ideals

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of community improvement and by showing sensitivity to human suffering. Their work, in MOWM’s words, helped bring “St. Louis a little nearer to the democratic ideal by the time our boys come back from the wars where they are placing their very lives on an altar of sacrifice in the name of democracy.”69 St. Louis MOWM contributed to a trend in public discourse that emphasized “freedom,” and the language of its appeals was remarkably patriotic.70 Taking this position allowed the organization to insulate itself from charges of sedition for protesting during wartime. Thus, its critique of military segregation and racial inequality was framed as an effort to bring the United States closer to the egalitarianism implied in America’s founding documents. Victory meant more than military conquest; it was also “the triumph of the expressed aims of the war” outlined in Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms: freedom of speech and freedom of religion, as well as freedom from fear and freedom from want. MOWM’s interpretation of the war emphasized human dignity, racial equality, and the sovereignty of both individuals and nation-states to act in any way that did not trample upon human rights.71 MOWM’s patriotism was far from blind, and it was certainly not unconditional. As a spokesperson and recognized leader of the fledgling organization, T. D. McNeal argued that the war’s goals “can’t be reached so long as democracy is denied to the Negro or any other segment of our population.”72 McNeal saw “hope and possibility” in the war against Hitler’s fascist extremes, and he was optimistic that the conflict would usher in “a new order of democracy and humanitarian enlightenment” throughout the United States and the Western world.73 His views were consistent with a wartime trend in which the language of African American protest juxtaposed the loyalty of black citizens against the persistence of white supremacy in America.74 African Americans in the Gateway City developed a “deep resentment . . . just prior to the outbreak of the war,” because employers seemed uneager to fulfill their obligation to hire equitably and without regard to race. This frustration was compounded by the persistence of segregation in a city that was becoming increasingly “southern” as it swelled with new residents. David Grant lamented that industrial shop floors were increasingly reflecting “rural attitudes on race” that were imported by newly arriving migrants. This was a change from the previous decade, when scarcity gave the city’s working class bigger issues to worry about than skin color. “It is my belief that the depression years produced the best race relations St. Louis has ever known,” Grant said, and he attributed this to the solidarity that grew out of shared hardships during the thirties.75 William Sentner, an outspoken Communist and president (1937–48) of District 8 of the CIO-affiliated United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers, complained that St. Louis was being overrun by “ignorant hicks” whose complexion allowed them to step ahead of urbane and respectable African Americans for jobs in retail and industrial sectors.76 This arrangement was

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intentional, as company policy was to recruit workers from economically depressed rural areas instead of utilizing the racially diverse local labor pool.77 The purpose of “the Jim-Crow policy of St. Louis industry,” Sentner argued, was to divide workers and “maintain low wages” by importing cash-strapped rural workers who labored for less money.78 St. Louis MOWM identified unequal access to employment opportunity as the greatest racial injustice that could be addressed during the war. If lucrative employment could not be gained during the war, T. D. McNeal speculated, “what chance will we ever have to get in when the mad scramble for the few available jobs starts after the emergency?” Concerned that black workers “will be further handicapped by being completely ignorant of production methods” in the inevitable return to a peacetime economy, McNeal feared that they would become irrelevant in the postwar industrial economy.79 The St. Louis Argus echoed this anxiety. “The chief question among our people has been what part are we to play,” the newspaper noted, in the “industries which are engaging in production of the things that are needed for National Defense.”80 MOWM’s newsletter repeated this refrain: “The Negro people must organize and fight for their democratic rights NOW, during the war, and not wait until the conflict is over, for then it may be too late.”81 This was especially important, MOWM member David Grant forecast, because “if we are excluded now, where will we work when the war emergency is over?”82 African Americans faced the problem of carving a niche for themselves in the wartime economy, “because the Negro people have no great captains of industry, no landed aristocrats, no powerful financers. We are just working people.” This is not to say that African Americans were uninterested in business ownership or that their entrepreneurialism universally failed. In 1943 the St. Louis directory listed 636 businesses with a cumulative of one million dollars in capital that were owned and operated by African Americans. The problem, according to a contemporary observer, was that “the average Negro businessman has comparatively little capital and not a great deal of banking credit.” African American businesspeople owned restaurants, beauty and barbershops, and funeral parlors, not large-scale industrial complexes.83 St. Louis’s diversified manufacturing base meant that the city made just about everything during the war, including ordnance, aircraft, combat boots, medical supplies, electric generators, and steel helmets. African Americans were abysmally underrepresented in nearly all of the city’s largest employers, and more than threequarters of St. Louis’s defense factories had zero African American employees. U.S. Cartridge was the city’s biggest defense contractor. With upwards of thirtysix hundred African Americans in its workforce in 1943, it also employed more black workers than any other company in the city. At 12 percent of the company’s employees and 13 percent of St. Louis’s population, African Americans worked for

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U.S. Cartridge at a rate that was close to their proportion of the local population. In comparison, African Americans constituted only about 5 percent of the workforce at Ameritorp and Atlas Power Company. Likewise, they represented around 10 percent of the employees at St. Louis Air Craft and Curtiss-Wright Corporation. When African Americans could get jobs in the roughly two hundred defense plants that held more than sixty thousand separate contracts, they “did the meanest work at the lowest pay” and were concentrated “into generally janitorial capacities.” A St. Louis Urban League official complained that African American defense workers were intentionally relegated to jobs marred by “disagreeable odors, fumes, dust and extremes of temperatures.” It was no secret that manufacturers operating with public funding continued to discriminate long after EO 8802 was signed. The law was on their side, but it seemed to be a dead letter. The city’s African American residents increasingly began to see that their economic woes could be addressed only by aggressive agitation.84 St. Louis MOWM chairman T. D. McNeal looked to the nineteenth century for parallels. He saw the Reconstruction amendments as historical precedents for the issues facing his community because they taught him that “we must keep in mind the fact that laws and executive orders confer rights, but organization is the source of power.” In the American system, this meant that political power arose when pressure through mass organization supplemented voting.85 As critical patriots dedicated to achieving racial equality in the United States, members of St. Louis MOWM hoped that they could bring the United States closer to democratic ideals. “We’re not fighting the government,” a MOWM skit summarized. “We’re fighting discrimination.”86

St. Louis MOWM Members Randolph’s leadership of MOWM is well known, but much of the organization’s real action occurred at the local level—often remarkably independent from its national office. For almost a full year before Randolph and other national officials urged “local marches on city and government buildings be held by local chapters,” African Americans brought MOWM’s promised “march” into their own communities through pickets, demonstrations, and rallies. These working-class people were unlikely to trek across the country on a moment’s notice to assemble for a protest, but they were energized by an organization headed by individuals who earned considerable political and social capital through decades of involvement in their respective communities. Randolph was an inspiration, but these local activists were much more committed to the concepts of black freedom, economic opportunity, and racial equality than to serving a distant but highly respected national leader. In St. Louis, MOWM drew support from people who were associated with the NAACP and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, as well as the Urban League.87 This

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local cooperation represented an ideal that Randolph hoped could be replicated on a national scale. Like the iconic working-class men in the BSCP, MOWM drew support from African Americans who were also affiliated with fraternities, lodges, women’s clubs, and business leagues.88 Much of St. Louis MOWM’s early success is attributable to the character of the individuals who were part of the organization. They were joiners. There were the kind of people who contributed to black institutions, and they liked planning or participating in social and political activities. As a new addition to the St. Louis scene, MOWM created more institutional space for African American leadership to grow, and the roll call of individuals willing to “fight, sacrifice, & pay” for racial equality in wartime St. Louis seemed endless.89 MOWM could “draw from the little people” and other “intelligent, thoughtful people . . . but who are not considered generally in their communities” as leaders of the race.90 In New York, for example, some of MOWM’s most committed supporters were men who worked as ushers in local hotels, retail workers, and “girls at the perfume counter.”91 People like this had a penchant for activism, but prior to MOWM’s arrival they lacked a platform on which their voices could be articulated. People joined MOWM because it offered an exciting program that reflected the general mood of black America during the Second World War. This mood, according to one editorial, was “impatient” as a “pig whose neck is under a fence rail.”92 T. D. McNeal, David Grant, Sallie Parham, Juanita Blackwell, Leyton Weston, Thelma McNeal, Pearl Maddox, Rev. James Bracy, Henry and Ruth Wheeler, Jordan Chambers, and James Cook are among the individuals who surfaced at points in St. Louis MOWM’s campaigns. They could not be counted among the “many embittered, bewildered black folk” whom Pittsburgh Courier columnist George Schuyler criticized as passively waiting for ephemeral leaders to excite them by uttering proclamations and espousing platitudes.93 Perhaps more than anyone else, the official chairperson of St. Louis MOWM, T. D. McNeal, stands out as a “fighting crusader.”94 McNeal’s reputation as a leader within the city’s African American community and his experience of collaborating with Randolph in the BSCP gave him the credibility that made him such an effective leader of the local MOWM branch.95 Anna Arnold Hedgeman remarked that BSCP members such as McNeal “were not only leaders in their labor movement but in most instances were prominent in their home towns.”96 McNeal spent only one year on the job as a porter, but he worked more than ten years serving the union as an international field organizer. McNeal earned Randolph’s trust during this time, and he was appointed to a full-time position with the BSCP in 1937.97 McNeal’s experiences with the BSCP refined his leadership skills, schooled him in managing interpersonal relationships, and solidified his reputation as a force within the community. McNeal’s time alongside Randolph in the BSCP and MOWM also taught him about “the thinking, motivations, aspirations and fears” of Americans from

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both sides of the racial divide.98 The “wide awake” McNeal possessed boundless energy, and he routinely put in twelve- to sixteen-hour days for the union and other causes.99 McNeal was more of an organizer than a fiery and charismatic figurehead, and he was described later in life as “inevitably calm . . . Quiet. Dignified. Superb speaker, relying on logic, organization and subject matter rather than rhetoric.”100 These attributes allowed McNeal to lead a local MOWM chapter that was so well run that it impressed even the hypercritical Roy Wilkins.101 Born and educated in Arkansas, McNeal resided in St. Louis for twenty years by the time he assumed leadership of the city’s MOWM chapter.102 Incidentally, McNeal never planned on settling there. He stopped in town at the age of sixteen to spend the summer with an aunt en route to attending college in Washington, but stayed because he “became interested in a girl.” Convinced that “blacks with a college degree were not getting employment commensurate with their education,” McNeal decided to take up work as a porter and never bothered pursuing higher education.103 When he first arrived in the 1920s, St. Louis was, in the words of a writer inspired by the poetry of Fannie Cook, “a northern city with southern exposure.”104 Its seventy thousand black residents constituted 9 percent of the city’s population, making St. Louis the eighth-largest urban black community in the United States. At the time, St. Louis’s playgrounds, swimming pools, and lunch counters were segregated. Schools were segregated, too, but pressure from the St. Louis Urban League ensured that they were among the better-funded Jim Crow school systems in the United States.105 McNeal thought of his roles as leader of an African American protest organization and an official in a labor union as complementary pursuits because, as he saw it, “Negro people are essentially a working class of people.”106 McNeal described himself and others like him as “on the march, fighting to complete the structure of their economic, social and political citizenship,” goals that had remained tragically unfulfilled since Reconstruction’s collapse. McNeal believed that freedom meant more than the negation of physical bondage and chattel slavery—to him freedom was holistic; it meant “the unabridged right to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of movement in the community, the free public school system and above all, the right to employment and service on the basis of equality.”107 By steering MOWM’s campaigns toward improving access to jobs, McNeal was implementing his conviction that civil rights and economic opportunity were intertwined.108 Military induction nearly removed McNeal from social and civic engagement during the war years. McNeal’s position with the porters qualified him for an occupational classification that allowed conscription to be avoided, but documentation of his deferment barely made it on time. Like many porters, he was excused from serving in the armed forces because working on railways was seen as essential to

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the war effort. With Randolph’s help, McNeal convinced the draft board that his career as a union official was more important than being sent overseas because increased troop movements resulted in a porter’s workweek soaring to as many as one hundred hours. The two argued that McNeal’s skill as a field organizer kept porters from slacking off or getting surly because of the stress associated with the high workload of mobilizing civilian conscripts. Still, the local draft board targeted him. According to McNeal, one member confronted him, threatening, “We understand that you like to march. So, we’re gonna put you in, and let you do some real marching.” Ordered to serve in the military, McNeal drank heavily the night before induction and overslept the next day. Consequentially, he missed the appointment to report at Jefferson Barracks for induction. The afternoon mail brought a letter from General Hershey granting deferment. McNeal believed that Hershey’s deferment would not have mattered if he reported to Jefferson Barracks on the appointed hour because getting out of the military would have been nearly impossible after his induction.109 McNeal narrowly avoided military service by hitting the bottle, and one can argue that St. Louis MOWM would not have had its most important member if it weren’t for booze. McNeal was reviled by white supremacists, and they informed McNeal of their disdain for him by sending violent hate mail. In a letter postmarked August 20, 1942, right after a major MOWM rally at Kiel Auditorium, an anonymous writer warned McNeal to “remember East St. Louis it will happen here.” The World War I–era racial pogrom across the Mississippi River from his adopted hometown killed dozens and displaced several thousand African Americans, but McNeal refused to back down to those who warned him that every “nigger” should “stay in your place.”110 “The traditions of the South . . . the tradition of Supremacy of the white race,” wrote the unnamed president of the Atlanta-based white supremacist group Vigilantes, Inc., were being reclaimed by “real white people in the North [who] realize that social equality with the negro in this country is a mistake.”111 McNeal coolly turned over hostile letters such as these to the post office, “not that I expect them to do anything about it.”112 For him, the worst harassment was “threats on the telephone late at night.” McNeal never notified the press or authorities, but he would get called “a lot of obscene names” and was told many times that his residence was going to explode. McNeal claimed that the threats never caused him to consider stepping away from his role as a leader in black St. Louis, but he acknowledged that such incidents “didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.”113 McNeal dealt with being the target of hate crimes by arming himself and practicing his marksmanship. He took first prize in several target-shooting competitions in and around St. Louis during the late 1930s and early 1940s, usually finishing just ahead of his son Ted McNeal and fellow BSCP and MOWM member E. J. Bradley. McNeal was not shy about advertising his prowess with firearms, and a photograph

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of him standing with a rifle and surrounded by three shooting trophies appeared in the St. Louis Argus.114 This picture was published just months after Cleo Wright was removed from a jail and dragged through the streets behind an automobile before being burned to death in Sikeston, Missouri.115 Coming only six weeks after Pearl Harbor, the ugly incident involving a crowd of three hundred made national headlines and was a brutal reminder of lynching’s ghastly past.116 The Argus’s picture of McNeal subtly suggested that men like him knew how best to defend their homes, and it is noteworthy that nothing like the lynching of Cleo Wright happened in St. Louis during the war, nor was there any outburst of massive urban violence such as there was across the river two decades earlier. This is partially attributable to the pattern of racial violence in border states such as Missouri, where attacks occurred statewide but were much less frequent in urbanized metropolitan areas.117 David Grant was undoubtedly St. Louis MOWM’s most charismatic member. The tandem of Grant and McNeal formed the twin pillars of St. Louis MOWM’s leadership. McNeal’s organizational skills suited him to oversee general operations, while Grant’s oratorical ability made him MOWM’s public face. They had a “hothead–level head” dynamic that helped in negotiations with local businesses and government officials. “Seeing those guys look terrified when one of us started yelling was priceless,” Grant reminisced, and the duo would usually pick who played which role as they walked into the building.118 A 1942 cartoon in the St. Louis Argus speaks to Grant’s reputation in the city. This illustration features a muscular darkskinned forearm with a clenched fist smashing two white men labeled “Southern Race Baiters.” The fist is emblazoned with the name “David Grant.”119 A St. Louis native since birth in 1903, Grant grew up in the Mill Creek Valley neighborhood that was razed by urban renewal in 1960.120 Grant left town in his twenties and “sort of knocked around,” working as a musician and waiter on excursion steamers traveling along the Mississippi River and Great Lakes during the interwar years. In between traveling as a migrant worker, he attended the University of Michigan but did not finish his degree. Personal circumstances and unstable finances delayed Grant’s studies, but he eventually completed a three-year course of study at Howard University Law School.121 Studying under Charles Hamilton Houston, “a giant of a man” and the architect of the NAACP’s legal strategy that culminated in the 1954 Brown decision, made an impression on Grant. Thurgood Marshall and Robert Carter are Houston’s most famous protégés, but scores of law students including Grant were also products of Houston’s vision. “He wanted to graduate social activists,” Grant said, “and he instilled that spirit into us from the moment we entered Howard.”122 Grant was admitted to the Missouri Bar immediately after his 1930 graduation, and he opened a private practice in his hometown quickly.123 Within a year of returning to St. Louis, Grant led a picket against Woolworth’s because the local

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David Grant unloads signs at a St. Louis MOWM rally. In his hands is a placard reading “Shut our Mouths and Stop our Marches with Jobs, Democracy, and Freedom—March on Washington Committee” (717.7622, Arthur Witman Photo, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

retail giant did not hire African American clerks. Out of this demonstration grew the Colored Clerks’ Circle, a union that staged pickets at stores doing business in predominantly black neighborhoods but did not hire African American clerks.124 Grant’s professional development is especially remarkable considering that he spent his teens and twenties as a skilled but somewhat transitory worker. In addition to working as a porter, waiter, and jazz musician on the resort circuit traveling through Hot Springs, Arkansas, and West Palm Beach, Florida, he also operated a crane in a Detroit icehouse and ran a drill press.125 These experiences made Grant sensitive to the hardships of working-class African Americans. Grant’s connections to everyday people in St. Louis and personal familiarity with insecure bluecollar work influenced the way he practiced law throughout his nearly half-century career as an attorney. Described by a colleague later in life as someone who gave “calm, deliberative and careful service to the cause of civil rights and justice,” this native son of St. Louis devoted himself to “fight on all fronts” for “Negro rights and equality before law.”126 Grant gained headlines in 1942 when he “sacrificed a $4000 position” as assistant circuit attorney after being dismissed by his supervisor, Henry Morris, for participating in NAACP investigations of the Cleo Wright lynching. Grant thought his firing was retaliation for being personally and publicly involved in NAACP work, but Morris explained that the action was necessary because Grant inappropriately brought a government office into “controversial issues” about the “abuses and inequalities visited upon the Negro people.”127 “No Negro who is honest with himself and sincere in his attitude towards his people,” Grant wrote in a statement upon his dismissal, “can labor happily under a superior who insists that he lay aside his interests in public matters affecting the welfare of the Negro people, in order

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to keep his job.”128 With a choice between “a forty-two hundred dollar job and the respect and confidence of two hundred thousand or three hundred thousand of my people,” Grant stood at an intersection between professional security and personal dignity. For him, “the choice was not hard to make.” He left for Jefferson City to continue his work with the NAACP investigation, thus walking away from what would be his last steady job for more than a decade. Fortunately for Grant, he was able to resume his private practice and continue earning a living by representing St. Louis’s African Americans in small legal cases.129 David Grant’s reputation within the city was that of a hometown hero and an uncompromising “race man.”130 As a black professional with a private practice catering to an economically marginalized and racially segregated working-class population, Grant understood that his financial fate was inextricably tied to that of his clients, and he was convinced that upwardly mobile professionals like himself should act on behalf of the less privileged. After all, Grant argued, how could any doctor or lawyer “whose clients were economically dispossessed earn respectable income when these same customers could not adequately pay for professional services?” Grant thought that “those who are fortunate enough to get training . . . and make a living off of their peers” had moral and pecuniary reasons to “do everything they could to improve the economic condition of those they are going to serve.”131 This meant that Grant sided with the accused. He helped in civil rights litigation and his primary income came from small cases such as property closings, but Grant especially loved representing the accused. He reveled in offering the best possible legal representation to defendants charged with simple assaults and other cases where police brutality or harassment was a factor. The only people whom Grant would not touch in the courtroom were pedophiles and drug peddlers. “If you can’t get Perry Mason, call Attorney Grant” was a refrain heard around St. Louis whenever an African American was in trouble with the law.132

David Grant at the podium during a St. Louis MOWM rally. As a lawyer with a commanding courtroom presence, Grant’s oratorical skills served him well as one of the city’s leading African American spokespeople. (836.273, Arthur Witman Photo, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

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To Grant, his legal work was part of a struggle to counter the “complete emasculation” of the Reconstruction amendments and civil rights laws that were dismembered in an era of “cancerous” white supremacy.133 No cynic, Grant remained optimistic that “the currents of hate and prejudice . . . directed at the Negro people” could be defeated by the kind of “determination, persistence, leadership, fortitude, courage, and vision” embodied by the biblical character Moses. 134 Professionally, Grant did his part to legally dismantle racial segregation. Grant gave his colleague Thurgood Marshall counsel during the six-year campaign to eradicate the dual salary scale that underpaid African American educators, a push that culminated in 1943 with Emma Jane Lee v. Board of Education of Festus. In this capacity, Grant solicited and sorted documentation that proved to the Court that there was a pattern of racially determined and unequal wages throughout the state. Grant also contributed to the case by speaking at fund-raisers hosted by the Pine Street YMCA.135 Teacher-salary equalization campaigns such as these seem “rather mild compared to the militant civil rights protests of the 1960s,” but historian Adam Fairclough reminds us that in the context of race relations during the 1940s, “it was a bold strike against white supremacy.”136 Grant deflected praise for using his legal talents in the service of racial equality, preferring to give credit to “fearless people” such as Emma Jane Lee and the other teachers who risked their jobs and their safety to file complaints about the dual wage system that devalued the education of African Americans. It was people like them, Grant said, who gave reason to “hope as a racial group for the ultimate achievement of democracy.”137 Grant believed that “economic equality” and the right to work were synonymous with the right to live, and he viewed the federal government as responsible for safeguarding equal access to employment. “When I am unable to work,” Grant testified before Congress in 1944, “I cannot train my daughters, I cannot train my sons, and I am in a position where I feel that the man who deprives me of my right to work makes prostitutes of my daughters and criminals of my sons.”138 Growing up in a working-class family on the verge of poverty taught Grant that economic disparity was an inevitable by-product of racial segregation. “The solution to the racial things that we suffered were finances and we were poor,” Grant reflected. “I believed this business of money until Hitler came on the scene.” Grant always knew that lack of access to jobs was a problem, but the rise of totalitarianism proved to him that unequal power relations and hostile racial attitudes loomed just as large in the formula for racial oppression in the United States.139 Grant’s understanding of economics as central to “the race problem” was consistent with that of the St. Louis Argus, which identified economic distress as being at the root of social disorganization. “To deny one employment is a blow at his very existence and at his life,” wrote the Argus. “When the head of a family is denied employment solely because of race, creed or national origin . . . it makes a beggar of his wife, or possibly a prostitute, and thieves of his children.”140

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Attending the 1943 “We Are Americans, Too” conference in Chicago prompted David Grant to start thinking about ways to transform abstract discussions into real action that affected his community. Rather than march on Washington, Grant thought it would be much more useful to march on war plants and public utilities that discriminated against African American workers. Government offices and the postal service were not immune to his expansive agenda of likely sites at which to demonstrate, either. The systematic denial of African American applicants for jobs was a problem, but, as Grant detailed in correspondence with Layle Lane, the defense contractors, public schools, and utility companies that did hire African American employees almost always clustered them in dead-end menial positions. Finally, because newly hired African Americans were precariously located at the bottom of seniority charts, Grant thought that they risked being dismissed en masse should production stall or if management decided to reduce payroll. Grant saw economic equality as interlocked with other social issues, so he pushed MOWM to come up with programs to address disparities in educational opportunities, get African Americans an equal voice in labor unions, and generally enhance civil rights.141 There were many paths that led individuals toward MOWM, and Grant joined because Randolph’s program reflected his belief that civil rights and workers’ rights were interconnected. In MOWM Grant led marches at defense plants that discriminated against African Americans, organized pickets outside of restaurants to protest separate and unequal food service, and gave free legal advice to Pearl Maddox and others who participated in sit-ins. He saw the systematic denial of jobs as a form of racial violence more destructive than lynching, “because when I am lynched, that is all they can do to me; I am dead; I am gone,” whereas economic marginalization restricted one to a life without dignity or autonomy and perpetuated multigenerational poverty. He looked forward to the day when “we control a handsome portion of our local economic life” and no longer “remain at the mercy of those who live by the profits of the money we spend.” To advance the cause, Grant advocated “a rigorous discipline” and, if necessary, “quarantine, social ostracism and general abuse, physical where invited, but always verbal” to keep the appearance of community cohesion on vital issues. Convinced that consensus necessitated a degree of coercion, Grant called for African Americans to “rip the covers off of the backside” of all who patronized white merchants and professionals when there was a choice to support black businesses.142 Like McNeal, Grant was all too aware of the opposition that he faced for fighting racism. Hate mail always seemed to come after his biggest speeches. In one particularly belligerent two-page handwritten letter, an anonymous author used at least fifteen racial slurs, including a statement saying, “The only good nigger is the one that has a trace chain around his neck and hanging from the limb of a

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tree.” The writer castigated black workers for failing to perform their duties when the inspector was away, a charge that harked back to the stereotypes of African Americans as indolent and immoral. Another anonymous letter attacked African Americans as “100% liars, 100% thieves . . . 98% adulterers including bucks and wenches” and for being vectors of syphilis.143 Sustaining protests over the course of decades in the face of mean-spirited taunting and threats such as these necessitates stubbornness, faith in eventual success, and a circle of supportive friends who reinvigorate one’s commitment to pursue justice. David Grant found this solidarity in his lifelong friendships with T. D. McNeal and another MOWM supporter, the local boss-style politician Jordan Chambers.144 Grant and Chambers grew up in St. Louis and met in high school, and both were the sons of Pullman porters. Whereas Grant was known as a fiery orator in the cause of civil rights and a knowledgeable lawyer, Chambers functioned as an old-fashioned paternalistic-style politician known throughout his neighborhood as “Pops.” Grant made his name by fighting racist employers, but Chambers drew his power by helping African Americans secure municipal jobs. Grant was an idealist and Chambers a politician known as the “Negro Mayor of St. Louis,” but both men were community leaders. Chambers was the flashier of the two, and he reveled in the symbols of opulence. If he was not wearing his trademark ten-gallon hat, Chambers could still be spotted in a crowd as the man with a diamond ring, expensive cigar, or Cadillac. As owner of the Riviera nightclub and the People’s Mutual Burial League and Undertaking Company, Chambers was economically rooted in the city’s working-class African American community. Chambers was a consummate businessman, and he had a huge network of connections throughout the city. Gail Milissa Grant, daughter of David Grant, remembers that Chambers “looked like a black Wyatt Earp” and that he was “the textbook grassroots organizer.” Vivian Grant, David’s spouse, recalled that Chambers was “a gentleman, although he was known for his rough, tough language and his demeanor was, maybe, abrasive.” Very much a people person, Chambers was as comfortable with educated men such as Grant as he was with the numbers runners and prostitutes who patronized his nightclub and the young boxers whose careers he launched.145 David Grant and Jordan Chambers were two of St. Louis’s first black Democrats, and fellow MOWM supporters Joseph McLemore and George Vashon joined them as early defectors from the party of Lincoln. Until the Roosevelt years, many African Americans saw Republicans as “the ship, while all else the sea,” and Republicans dominated St. Louis’s local government from 1904 through 1933.146 In exchange for nearly unanimous support from African American voters, the GOP offered little more than “mops, brooms, and garbage cans”—dead-end patronage positions at the bottom of municipal services. St. Louis’s black Democrats swam against a strong political tide, because “emotionally no man in the world would love the Democratic

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party if you are black because it was the party of the south and that was the party of the Ku Klux Klan and that was where the lynching was.” Grant got involved with the party in 1931 out of “resentment” for the traditional African American commitment to the Republican Party. Republicans elicited an “emotional response to a false premise that the Republican Party was formed for their freedom,” but as Grant saw it, there was little commitment to civil rights or to egalitarian principles.147 The thin ranks of African American Democrats in St. Louis began growing after Roosevelt’s 1932 election, and in 1934 Missouri history was made when African American candidates won contests for justice of the peace and constable on the Democratic ticket.148 By the time MOWM’s activism kicked up in the 1940s, many of its strongest supporters were also Democrats. Working with the Negro Central Democratic Organization, Grant contributed to this party shift by “preaching the Doctrine of the Divided Vote” and pointing out that any party with unquestionable support from a voting bloc was obliged to offer little political rewards because those constituents had nowhere else to turn in a two-party system.149 Juanita Blackwell represents a brand of women’s leadership within MOWM, and her experiences illustrate the ways that conceptions of gender circumscribed women’s roles in the organization. As the local chapter’s first secretary, Blackwell was an “especially valuable” asset in the formative months of MOWM’s “militant program.” She was one of the main grassroots activists who developed and refined leadership skills while contributing to St. Louis MOWM’s efforts. For more than a year, this “brilliant young Fiskite,” known to friends as Nita, planned and facilitated meetings at the Pine Street YMCA.150 Under fellow MOWM member James E. Cook’s leadership, this institution offered low-cost or free space for civic and political groups to conduct business and host events.151 In contrast to St. Louis MOWM’s public rallies, where men were the visible figureheads, women’s voices flourished at these meetings.152 Every week an “irate group of Negro citizens; discharged porters, disgruntled former defense work applicants, interested professionals, civic leaders, common laborers, and the general run of the unemployed” met to talk about their difficulties and to support one another by sharing their frustrations.153 These meetings were a time to plan public demonstrations, freely discuss local racial conditions, and tell each other about where jobs could be found. Sometimes, as Marie Harding Pace and Thelma McNeal did, people would share “an interesting article from Negro Digest on Liberia” or read selections from The Races of Man.154 During lulls in high-profile activities, these weekly meetings allowed St. Louis’s leading African Americans to mingle among themselves and with less recognized members of the community. These interactions strengthened individual relationships and enhanced the cohesiveness of St. Louis MOWM members.155 The fiery Blackwell “demonstrated a spirit of eternal vigilance” at these meetings, and she spoke with a voice that was “par excellent—an unusual accomplish-

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ment for a secretary.” Blackwell’s outspoken reputation and strong personality helped her as an organizer, and these attributes also made her not shy away from challenging MOWM’s male officers when she thought that they were wrong. In one instance, MOWM treasurer Jordan Chambers downplayed the FEPC’s importance in comparison to “other social gains” made in recent years. Blackwell responded with an “impromptu two minute speech” affirming MOWM’s need to “be vigilant” and “constantly protest against injustice . . . Ku Klux Klanism and Nazism,” with or without federal law on their side.156 Blackwell’s “genius” contributions to St. Louis MOWM abruptly ended when she moved to Los Angeles in the autumn of 1943 for work in the USO fulfilling the recreational and social needs of African American men in uniform.157 She was one of thousands who relocated there, driving its African American population up by 75 percent during the war.158 Blackwell’s departure for the West Coast came just as St. Louis MOWM started cooperating with the Fellowship of Reconciliation to host “special institutes and training courses” that instructed activists in recognizing “one’s ability to suffer against an opponent’s ability to inflict the suffering.”159 This promising young local leader chose a different path for herself at precisely the time when the organization for which she worked launched a project to train members in the tactics that would be used to contest segregated food service in downtown department stores. Even among specialists in African American women’s history, Juanita Blackwell will never become a household name, but countless people like her make contributions to social and political movements.

Founding the March on Washington Movement, St. Louis Unit St. Louis MOWM confronted many of the typical indignities facing African American communities in the Jim Crow era, but forcing compliance with EO 8802 was its primary issue. The upswing in defense production following America’s entry into World War II mitigated the massive unemployment plaguing many during the Depression, but it was obvious that these jobs were not open to all regardless of race.160 Statewide, early indicators from other cities showed that defense plants throughout Missouri were reluctant to hire African American workers. Almost always, management explained their racially exclusive workforce by blaming white workers for refusing to work alongside African Americans.161 When they could find jobs, African Americans were typically pigeonholed into menial labor or allowed to work only within completely segregated divisions.162 As the situation worsened, the St. Louis Argus lamented that “there has grown in America the idea of the white man’s job.”163 The scarcity of employment opportunities for African American workers in the rapidly expanding industrial sector prompted St. Louis MOWM’s response,

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and securing jobs in businesses that profited from public funds was its greatest concern. Like its national parent, St. Louis MOWM “was set up for the purpose of fighting discrimination against Negroes in national defense work,” and it saw federal power as an important ally.164 Although EO 8802 was on the books, the color bar held strong. The African American population in St. Louis hovered around 12–13 percent of the city’s population during the war, but they constituted less than a quarter of that proportion within the ranks of employees in the city’s defense plants.165 Most African American defense workers were clustered into a small set of companies, which means that many employers simply refused to hire them at all.166 By 1945 the national picture of African American employment was, in the words of one scholar, “relatively easy to describe . . . because the overwhelming weight of evidence shows that Negroes are concentrated disproportionately in unskilled, menial jobs.”167 St. Louis MOWM exposed workplace exclusion and occupational stratification by investigating employment conditions and compiling statistics that documented the pervasiveness of racial discrimination in defense plants. Without an FEPC office in St. Louis until 1944, St. Louis MOWM acted as a proxy for the understaffed agency by urging “all negroes who have been denied jobs . . . to go in person to the [MOWM] local headquarters . . . and give the facts in their cases to the committee.”168 Once details were sorted out and facts were checked, St. Louis MOWM’s volunteers helped visitors through the process of filing formal complaints with the regional FEPC. As one might expect from a busy group staffed by working people who volunteered their time, St. Louis MOWM’s office paperwork was less of a priority than organizing and agitating. Indeed, a formal founding document was not drafted until October 28, 1942—a full two months after local organizers acted in the March on Washington Movement’s name to plan the nine- to twelve-thousand-person Kiel Auditorium rally and four months after it announced a membership drive in the aftermath of a mass layoff of African American workers at U.S. Cartridge. The founders of St. Louis MOWM dedicated the upstart organization to “the Negro people of St. Louis, Missouri,” and outlined a vision of MOWM acting with an unwavering “faith in the ultimate achievability of a working democracy.”169 In accordance with procedure outlined by MOWM’s national office, the St. Louis unit held a local conference to elect officers, established a constitution, and outlined specific local goals that fitted within the organization’s national objectives.170 MOWM wanted to have a broader and more representative membership base than other African American civic organizations in the city, including the NAACP and Urban League. Building on its vision of recruiting African Americans in Washington, D.C., for the 1941 march, the national office advised the fledgling chapter to recruit members through a “Block Plan” that divided the city into “districts of not more than ten square blocks.” From this grid, MOWM members could raise awareness about the organization’s program by appealing to people in their neighbor-

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hood through casual conversation.171 MOWM looked for new members in venues where working-class African Americans congregated and mingled, the kind of places where they were free to work out their problems, organize, or simply enjoy themselves without fear of reprisals from whites. Diehard MOWM stalwarts believed that organizing should take place “in the pool room, on the street corner, in the church,” and anywhere else potential members might be found.172 To foster cross-class participation and be “truly representative of the Negro citizens of the St. Louis community,” St. Louis MOWM originally charged no annual dues.173 This unprofitable arrangement quickly changed to an annual membership fee of ten cents and steadily rose until it was capped at two dollars.174 Formal membership was nominal and sporadic, but the numbers who joined or donated show that some saw it as a duty to support MOWM’s efforts. Much of St. Louis MOWM’s money came from the BSCP and from individual union members, but local groups such as the Booklovers Club also made financial contributions.175 Founded in 1907, this reading group was composed mostly of teachers and others from the “cultural middle class.” Many of its members were involved with the League of Women Voters and were active in various religious, charitable, and social-work venues.176 The fact that a professional middle-class women’s group would give money to a cause such as MOWM speaks volumes to how people in the city perceived the upstart organization—they saw it not as a competitor for institutional power, but as a welcome addition to the finely textured social fabric that constituted African American life in St. Louis. The BSCP was St. Louis MOWM’s financial lifeblood, and it made several contributions that kept the struggling organization afloat. This troubled E. J. Bradley, head of the union’s St. Louis local, who wrote Randolph, “We have been seriously concerned about the upkeep of the movement here in St. Louis.” Bradley and the porters felt “compelled to support it” and were “100% behind the March Movement,” but the union had its own set of problems to worry about, and he questioned the wisdom of investing its limited resources in civil rights efforts.177 In addition to the union’s contributions, individual porters paid MOWM membership dues and often made additional cash donations. A list of donors who gave twenty-five dollars or more includes BSCP representatives and porters such as Leyton Weston, E. J. Bradley, and T. D. McNeal as well as NAACP member Bige Wyatt and the prominent local physician Thos J. Center.178 Support for MOWM from high-profile members of other organizations suggests that in St. Louis, the BSCP, the NAACP, and MOWM functioned well together. Unlike the national offices of these groups, local activists in St. Louis seemed unconcerned about organizational boundaries and identities. The BSCP paid for St. Louis MOWM’s office space, which was housed next to the union’s office in the People’s Finance Building. MOWM used this convenient location, as well as the Pine Street YMCA and Wheatley YWCA, to conduct weekly

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meetings. These gatherings kept members connected with one another and informed them of the organization’s happenings. Located on 11 Jefferson Avenue, People’s Finance was one of the most vibrant addresses in black St. Louis during the 1940s. Built in 1926 by contractors who refused to hire black tradesmen, the structure was owned and operated by African Americans ever since the bank collapsed during the 1930s.179 In an editorial reminiscence from the 1970s, one writer mentioned that “the People’s Finance Building” housed “most of the prominent Negro doctors, lawyers, and businessmen. . . . It was a custom to visit in each other’s office to exchange views.” T. D. McNeal and Leyton Weston of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters always seemed to be around, as was newspaperman N. A. Sweets. Numerous African American attorneys also called People’s Finance their professional home. Among this group was Sidney R. Redmond, a local NAACP leader who was chief counsel in the case to have Lloyd Gaines admitted to the University of Missouri; George L. Vaughn, who led the fight against residential discrimination; and Joseph McLemore, who was remembered in one newspaper as “the first Negro in this area to run for Congress.”180 The professionals working in the People’s Finance Building were the kind of people Grant wanted at St. Louis MOWM events, and he tried to get “as many prominent Negroes as possible in line” for marches in the city.181 St. Louis MOWM benefited from the involvement of independent small business owners and professionals, two groups who, George Lipsitz points out, have historically mustered “community resources for social contestation in southern cities.”182 McNeal’s experience with the BSCP dating back to the union’s formative years taught him that gifts of time and effort from dedicated grassroots members were sometimes more valuable than money. St. Louis MOWM rarely had much in its coffers, but it could count on good attendance at public protests and a high level of engagement by its members and supporters. In McNeal’s words, “The program of the MOW does not require a lot of money, because all of those who do work in the movement contribute their time in addition to their money.”183 McNeal’s primary function as St. Louis MOWM’s official leader was to coordinate a cadre of about two dozen members who formed the organization’s core and to ensure that every volunteer had identifiable goals. Members chose specific jobs and reported to committees such as the Speaker’s Bureau, Publicity Committee, or Complaints Committee.184 By focusing the energy of members on specific tasks, McNeal extracted the most possible work out of its more active members. McNeal’s role was not to inspire them, but to orchestrate their efforts in order to achieve greater efficiency. This demanded an intuitive sense, for asking too much from certain members could drive them away. Even the most zealous individuals risked losing enthusiasm and burning out. Like CORE, the Future Outlook League, and other mid-twentiethcentury African American protest organizations, MOWM was driven by small,

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tightly knit groups of dedicated activists—and these were the kinds of people who could eventually weary of their commitments and get distracted from the movement by family responsibilities, demanding employment, or general weariness.185 There was a pattern of cross-membership between St. Louis MOWM and other African American organizations. Reporters covering St. Louis MOWM’s first public demonstration at U.S. Cartridge in 1942 noted that attendees came from business groups, professional women’s organizations, and “Negro Trade Union Auxiliaries,” such as the St. Louis chapter of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.186 Many of St. Louis MOWM’s members held simultaneous affiliations in professional groups such as the Missouri State Association of Negro Teachers and the Mound City Bar Association, protest groups such as the NAACP, and fraternities such as the Elks Lodge. Groups such as these had a history of working together on campaigns for specific issues such as equalizing educators’ salaries, and they did so without any considerable fratricidal or destructive rivalries. St. Louis MOWM tried to replicate this sort of success by attacking issues that attracted the broadest possible audiences. Cross-membership and organizational cooperation do not appear to have deleteriously affected or undercut any of the civic, trade, and fraternal groups with which St. Louis MOWM collaborated.187 It is noteworthy that none of St. Louis MOWM’s members publicly distanced themselves from previous affiliations with the NAACP.188 Rather than draw members away from existing organizations, St. Louis MOWM added to the richness of the city’s African American institutions.189 As Kimberley Phillips has shown in her study of Cleveland’s Future Outlook League, the pattern of complementary and simultaneous membership in African American organizations was not confined to St. Louis.190 Pauli Murray embodies this tendency better than any other MOWM member. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, when she lived in New York and Washington, she held memberships in the NAACP, MOWM, the United Office and Professional Workers, Local 453 of the American Federation of Teachers, and the American Jewish World Congress.191 Local cross-fertilization between organizations such as MOWM, the NAACP, the BSCP, the Urban League, and various social groups enriched the institutional life and enhanced the ability of individuals to agitate for change in St. Louis during the war years. As in the NAACP, MOWM’s local branches had considerable autonomy to determine what issues they wanted to address and which tactics they should use. St. Louis MOWM launched protests and issued press releases without prompting from Randolph or appealing to the national office for approval. Article 11 of MOWM’s constitution reads, “The locals or branches shall pattern their organization after the National Organization,” and FBI records indicate that St. Louis MOWM “followed the policies laid down by the national organization but it has stressed considerably the obtaining of additional jobs for Negroes and advocating nonsegregation.”192

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MOWM’s national office wanted local branches to emphasize the injustice of being conscripted into a segregated army vis-à-vis the Winfred Lynn case, raise awareness about decolonization and the prospects of a free Africa and Caribbean, and transform African American voters into a national nonpartisan political bloc, but the St. Louis chapter focused on gaining jobs with defense contractors, conducting sit-ins at downtown restaurants, and picketing local utility companies. Their independence indicates that Randolph did not run MOWM or dictate strategies to his followers. St. Louis MOWM members borrowed the national organization’s framework and used it to guide their responses to racial inequality. The fact that grassroots activists controlled the character and scope of St. Louis MOWM’s campaigns does not mean that local chapters of this organization operated in isolation. MOWM members in St. Louis and Chicago corresponded regularly, and local leaders of each branch frequently wrote to the national office to keep Randolph informed about the progress they were making.193 T. D. McNeal and David Grant saw their grassroots campaigns as part of a larger project that was disassembling America’s racist status quo. St. Louis was geographically distant from the District of Columbia, so activists in that city found ways to connect their local issues to the national movement of their namesake. Although there were no immediate plans to march on the capital, McNeal explained, “we keep the name because it is known and respected in Washington.”194 Rather than wait for Randolph to arrange a national demonstration during the war, St. Louis MOWM marched on arms manufacturing plants, sponsored prayer meetings outside of city hall, picketed utility companies, and staged sit-ins at restaurants that refused to serve African Americans.

4

Pickets, Protests, and Prayers St. Louis MOWM’s Campaign to Integrate the Defense Workforce It is a new type of militancy. —Anonymous FBI investigator

O

n August 14, 1942, St. Louis MOWM held a major rally at Kiel Auditorium, a city-owned space named in honor of former mayor Henry Kiel.1 An event of this magnitude had never happened before in St. Louis, but a mass layoff of 145 African American workers at Carter Carburetor served as “a crystallizing event” in wartime protest that led to St. Louis MOWM’s maturation.2 With a budget of less than $1,000, the rally drew approximately 10,000 attendees, garnered the support of the city’s African American newspapers, and presented a program that unmistakably demonstrated the indignation of St. Louis’s black population.3 MOWM did not have enough money to pay for a deposit on the auditorium, so the BSCP covered the $450 sum with the expectation of being repaid through collections taken at the event.4 As chairman of St. Louis MOWM’s Finance Committee, Harold Ross solicited all of the major civic, professional, and fraternal groups in the city to help pay for the rally. “We believe,” Ross appealed, “that you are willing to share the responsibilities and opportunities for service to the race to be found within the movement.” Citing a small victory at U.S. Cartridge accomplished with “a minimum amount of support,” Ross argued that there was a collective responsibility to assist all African Americans in obtaining blue-collar employment. Ross promised that individuals or groups who donated $5 or more would receive the recognition of having their names printed in the rally’s program, thus publicly aligning midlevel donors with an organization that appeared to be in the forefront of racial protest

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in St. Louis.5 A wide assortment of black-owned businesses responded to Harold Ross’s call and purchased advertising space in the program. Some combination of political consciousness, racial solidarity, and an audience comprised of their clientele caused nearly all of the undertakers, restaurants, nightclubs, bars, auto mechanics, hotels, hair stylists, drugstores, physicians, and taxi services to place advertisements that included a statement supporting MOWM as part of their message.6 Jim Crow spawned the development of African American–owned businesses and social organizations, and these kinds of places were described by one historian as “safe havens” from racism. These “parallel institutions” gave African Americans “private space to buttress battered dignity, nurture positive self-images, sharpen skills, and demonstrate expertise.”7 By placing ads in MOWM’s souvenir program, St. Louis’s independent black-owned businesses showed that a broad array of blue- and white-collar professionals supported the organization’s endeavors. This healthy black business community was a crucial element in financing and sustaining MOWM’s grassroots activism, and they helped make the event at Kiel Auditorium the largest of its kind that the city had ever seen. “Try to get as many people in the parade as possible, old and young, educated and uneducated, good and bad, crap shooter and preacher,” Randolph advised McNeal. All were “needed in this fight for Negro rights.”8 Speaking in hyperbole, McNeal called for “25,000 Negroes” to “storm the air-cooled auditorium,” a clearly exaggerated number considering that Kiel Auditorium’s capacity was only 15,000.9 “Mobilize Now!” urged a handbill advertising the rally, “It is Now or Never! We Are Americans Too!” Wake up Negro America! Do you want work? Do you want equal rights? Do you want justice? Then prepare now to fight for it. 25,000 Negroes must storm the air-cooled auditorium Friday night, August 14th demanding jobs and protesting: 1. Jim Crow St. Louis Labor Unions and War Plants 2. Lynchings at Sikeston and Texarcana 3. Mobbing and shooting our boys in Uncle Sam’s uniform 4. Violation of President Roosevelt’s order No. 8802 5. Jim-Crow policy of the navy, army, and U.S. Marines 6. Insult of the Red Cross in segregating Negro blood.10

In a bold publicity ploy, McNeal advertised the rally in the city’s daily newspapers. Even though it cost more money than comparable advertising space in African American–owned weeklies, “the Executive Committee and members of the Movement felt elated over the success which the advertisement had brought” by articulating the depth of resentment that many African Americans were feeling to an audience that preferred to remain oblivious about happenings across St.

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Louis’s racial divide.11 The city’s African American newspapers enthusiastically supported MOWM’s organizing in the weeks and days leading up to the rally. The St. Louis American encouraged readers to attend, for “it is in the time of stress” that “insistent protests against the undemocratic acts and practices here at home” would prove the most effective. The paper urged readers to look inward and, instead of marching on Washington, consider protesting against “jim crow and segregation right here in St. Louis and Missouri.” Placing a premium on “courage right here at home,” the American chided those who denounced far-away lynchings and attended programs when big-name stars passed through on the lecture circuit but turned a blind eye toward pressing local issues such as segregated lunch counters and unequal employment opportunities. As the American saw it, the challenge was to encourage individuals to agitate for change in their own localities, where their activism could have the most impact.12 Supporters organized a motorcade of more than one hundred vehicles to parade through the city and drum up support for the rally.13 A fifteen-minute voluntary blackout and temporary closing of shops “in Negro residential and business districts” accompanied the Kiel Auditorium rally, a technique that St. Louis borrowed from New York and Chicago.14 Getting compliance from the local African American community for the St. Louis blackout was easy—many of the city’s residents and business owners were already at the rally, making their participation in the blackout all but guaranteed. Ostensibly, all St. Louis MOWM had to do was remind people to turn off the lights on their way out the door before coming to the rally. It was not coincidental that St. Louis MOWM’s protest and publicity tactics resembled those of other cities. In the weeks leading up to the event, McNeal wrote Harlem MOWM asking for examples of publicity material and other information about its blackout in anticipation of the rally at Madison Square Garden.15 The context of America at war added another layer of drama to the blackout, making it an even more powerful symbol. England had long used urban blackouts to stymie German bombers, and American cities from Manhattan to San Francisco were doing the same as part of their efforts at civilian defense.16 MOWM seized upon the idea of turning off the lights in the name of freedom, an action that suggested a community was defending itself under threat of a siege. The fifteen-minute duration, as Randolph pointed out, allowed for “better cooperation from businesses” and was an easy way to “make the most dramatic presentation of the feeling of dissatisfaction and resentment” that people experienced with segregation and racism.17 Attendance estimates of the Kiel Auditorium rally vary from eight to twelve thousand, but the low and high estimates both indicate that a sizable crowd assembled to express concern about the lack of compliance for EO 8802.18 The slate of speakers featured “an aggregation of top-flight” leaders, including “men of national repute” such as A. Philip Randolph, Walter White, and Milton Webster, as well as

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local and regional activists such as David Grant, T. D. McNeal, Rev. James Cook, and Chicago MOWM chairman Wesley Burton. Together, they united “to protest in one great massive voice.”19 White used his time onstage to lambaste southern congressmen for sabotaging the nation’s war effort in their quest to maintain white supremacy, arguing that the real opponents to America’s interests were “Gene Talmadge of Georgia, Governor [Frank M.] Dixon of Alabama, Congressman [John E.] Rankin of Mississippi, the Ku Klux Klan, the National Workers League, and all of those who share their views.”20 Speaking as MOWM’s local leader, McNeal emphasized the event’s patriotic undertones: “We pledge ourselves to fight against the Axis powers and at the same time dedicate our efforts to burying Jim-crowism.” Fervent applause interrupted McNeal several times, and it was loudest when he announced, “We pledge ourselves to fight against the Axis powers and at the same time dedicate our efforts to burying Jim Crowism in the same grave as the Axis dictators.” In a summary of the night’s oratory, the Pittsburgh Courier remarked, “It was quite plain [that MOWM] was not against whites or against the United States Government.”21 David Grant opened the rally with a speech entitled “St. Louis Negro and the War Effort,” an oration that one newspaper lauded as among the evening’s finest. Audience response was so enthusiastic during Grant’s outlining of “what St. Louis

A 1942 MOWM rally launched a series of pickets and protests in St. Louis that made the city a hotbed of African American agitation for civil rights during World War II. Seated from left to right: James E. Cook, Charles Wesley Burton, E. J. Bradley, Milton P. Webster, A. Philip Randolph, Walter White, David Grant, Ollie Miller, T. D. McNeal, C. Hayden Wilson, and Kenneth Spencer. (336.44, Black History Photographs, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

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Negroes resent and want remedied” that he had to request applause be tempered so that he could complete his remarks in a timely manner. As he often did, Grant used history to shed light on the present predicament. Referring to Du Bois’s “Close Ranks” position during the First World War as an example of when African Americans were “promised equal rights but didn’t get them,” he urged the audience to make sure that the past did not repeat itself. If African American soldiers returned from the current war to a country where racism remained unbroken, Grant argued, the result would be another round of “riots, unpunished lynchings, unemployment, labor union bars, and discrimination.” In a reference to the previous generation’s experience of seeing two hundred thousand African American veterans return from overseas to face a “Red Summer” of racial violence, Grant called for “not 1917 promises, but 1942 action.” Grant continued, “In 1917 we didn’t demand freedom but by the great Jehovah we demand it now!”22 The proceedings on that Friday evening went on for more than five hours and did not conclude until one in the morning. A. Philip Randolph delivered the event’s keynote address, but Randolph “had to omit many portions” of his remarks “due to the lateness of the hour.”23 Randolph used his time to urge an assault on racial segregation in the army, a form of racial discrimination that he argued reduced an entire “race to the status of second-class citizens.” Randolph assured the audience that “contrary to some reports that the March on Washington Movement has been abandoned, it is very much alive and it was only postponed,” perhaps only for another month. Instead of assembling on the National Mall or marching on Pennsylvania Avenue, Randolph alerted the crowd, another rally was scheduled for early September at Griffith Park, home of the Washington Senators baseball club.24 Randolph probably regretted announcing this event so brazenly because it was quickly canceled. A columnist “noticed just about as many women were present as men,” but only one woman, Sallie Parham, spoke at the rally. Likewise, the fact-filled Chicago Defender women’s page makes only passing reference to Frances Moseley’s arrival in St. Louis to assist the MOWM chapter with logistics and operations for the Kiel Auditorium rally.25 The only public commendation of women’s contributions to the Kiel Auditorium rally in the St. Louis Argus is buried in a column by T. D. McNeal, the concluding paragraph of which extends “special thanks” to “the fine group of young women,” including Ollie Miller, Fannie Pitts, and Fannie Torian, “who made the meeting possible through hard and intensive work in the financial drive to raise money with which to finance the affair.”26 Photographs and newspaper accounts of subsequent MOWM demonstrations prove that women were well represented at all of the organization’s marches, sit-ins, and planning meetings. Despite their strong showing at events, women were rarely sought out as spokespeople by local or national African American newspapers such as the Chicago Defender, Pittsburgh Courier, or St. Louis Argus. Thus, while women were a

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sizable proportion of the organization’s supporters, men composed the ranks of MOWM’s public leadership.27 Sallie Parham was the only female to speak officially at the MOWM’s Kiel Auditorium rally. As an administrator of the St. Louis YWCA and leader of the local National Council of Business and Professional Women, Parham was one of the city’s most recognizable African American women. In her remarks, Parham emphasized that while men shouldered firearms oversees in the name of freedom, women on the home front bore a responsibility to “fight for victory here now so that they [African American males] may have a real victory at home when they return from war.” Parham saw the war as one in which “white men are fighting to preserve their democracy and we are fighting to get our democracy.” The duty of African American women, said Parham, was to “shoulder the problems of the American negro in the same way many men are shouldering the guns” to liberate Europe. This entailed constant agitation for equal opportunity in defense manufacturing, pressing for a federal antilynching law, advocating the repeal of literacy tests and poll taxes, and reforming insulting policies such as the segregation of Red Cross blood banks. Above all, Parham said, the most important fight was to make sure that “those who are gone for victory now” could come home “to a Victory here” at the war’s conclusion.28 Speaker after speaker “scathingly attacked jim crowism, segregation and race prejudice in war industries and in the Army,” and familiar songs such as “John Brown’s Body” morphed into “Robert Brooks’ Body” to honor the light-skinned African American from Kentucky who, mistaken as a white, was killed while serving in the 192nd Tank Battalion.29 The chorus lent itself to MOWM’s ends, as lyrics printed in the program used capital letters to emphasize the phrase “marching on.”30 Ministers, choirs, and spirituals gave the event a religious undertone, and many of the orators articulated a litany of societal evils that could be resolved by the faithful support of an inspired audience. Furthering the similarity between the rally and a religious service, Rev. James M. Bracy opened the proceedings with an invocation and James Cook, director of the Pine Street YMCA, initiated a collection to gather donations supporting the fledgling organization. Speeches repeatedly expressed loyalty to God and country, as orators emphasized that “the Negro was loyal but that he preferred evidences of democracy now rather than many promises of full democracy after the war.”31 In addition to speeches, “playlets, skits and songs depicting the troubles and aspirations of the Negro people were presented” that highlighted the plight of African Americans in the Jim Crow era. Local arts groups, the Aldridge Players and the Celestial Choristers, collaborated on a performance of Dick Campbell’s The Watchword Is Forward.32 William Smith Jr. played the lead role nicely, “with welldelivered lines telling how reluctant he was to ‘join an army that send you down south in Jim Crow coaches.’”33 Impressed, A. Philip Randolph described the program as “epoch-making,” and he praised local organizers for putting together an

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event that lived “up to the standard of mass meetings held anywhere by the March on Washington Movement, including New York and Chicago.”34 The air-conditioned auditorium kept things comfortable on that summer night, but recent history and developments in other cities suggested that St. Louis had the potential to ignite with racial violence. To prevent an outburst at the Kiel rally, African American soldiers from Jefferson Barracks were assigned to surround the building, and their presence ensured that “there was absolutely no trouble at all.”35 There is no evidence of COINTELPRO-style sabotage that was wielded against later generations of African American activists, but the FBI did monitor racial protest organizations such as MOWM.36 The Pittsburgh Courier snidely remarked that “many FBI men” stood out in a sea of thousands of “sepia Americans” at the Kiel Auditorium rally.37 MOWM’s patriotic overtones did not satisfy the FBI, and McNeal warned Randolph that federal investigators were building a sedition case against him “on the basis of skits staged at our protest meeting.”38 Nothing came of this scare, and the FBI directed its resources toward disrupting the activities of more subversive African American groups around the city—namely, the Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, a pro-Japanese organization that MOWM denounced as “hopelessly ignorant, anti-social, anti-Negro, and anti-Democratic.” Just as Randolph emphasized his patriotism by criticizing Communists and asserting, “If America goes down, the Negro goes down,” St. Louis MOWM used PMEW as local foil to make itself seem more moderate and credible, and criticized it as “foolish, ridiculous, and dangerous.”39 The list of organizations that St. Louis MOWM thanked for planning and coordinating its first major public rally reads like a directory of black St. Louis’s civic and social life: the Ushers Alliance of St. Louis, Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of St. Louis, Celestial Choristers, We Group, Business and Professional Girls Club, and Industrial Club of the YWCA. St. Louis MOWM also thanked the bands playing at the rally and both of the city’s African American newspapers, the Argus and the American, for their positive coverage of the event.40 Pulling off a demonstration of this magnitude necessitated MOWM’s collaboration with local branches of the NAACP, YMCA, BSCP, American Legion, and Elks Lodge 1012—all of which cosponsored the event. The ability of “practically every Negro organization in the St. Louis area” to coalesce and make this impressive one-day rally happen caused T. D. McNeal to comment, “For the first time we seem to have absolute unity and solidarity among Negroes in the community and everyone is doing everything possible to make this the greatest demonstration of Negro power ever seen in the country.”41 A pattern that would mark much of St. Louis MOWM’s activities for the next few years was in place. Cooperation with other African American organizations, critical patriotism, support for the war, and appeals to racial solidarity typified the kinds of messages that elicited strong responses among St. Louis MOWM’s supporters.

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Broadside celebrating St. Louis MOWM’s actions in 1942. A major rally at Kiel Auditorium attracting upwards of ten thousand attendees and a protest held at Carter Carburetor are pictured with the caption “The People Protest—The People March!” (Herbert Garfinkel Collection, author’s possession)

March on Carter, August 29, 1942 In addition to being a coming-out party for the new organization, MOWM’s rally at Kiel Auditorium drummed up support for a public demonstration two weeks later at Carter Carburetor. The small-arms plant held a contract in excess of one million dollars to make artillery and bomb fuses, but zero African Americans could be counted among its workforce of roughly three thousand.42 T. D. McNeal urged “all intelligent Negroes” to “drop everything and join this demonstration,” but he acted less impulsively than his rhetoric suggested. Hopeful that discussions would lead to workforce integration, St. Louis MOWM reached out to Carter, but the company “ignored our request for a conference.” Carter explained that its hesitancy to utilize African American employees was part of a freeze on hiring while the machines were retooled and fitted for defense production. In the meantime, the company announced that no new workers would be needed. Carter’s personnel policy prioritized the rehiring of six hundred workers laid off when production slowed, after which, general manager H. H. Weed explained, there were “3500 applications” to

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sort through before any new applicants would be considered.43 In short, Weed told St. Louis MOWM that Carter Carburetor’s racial status quo would be upheld for the foreseeable future. This clarification did not satisfy the Citizen’s Protector, a left-leaning newspaper that derided the general manager’s claim that the company had “no established policy barring Negroes from employment” as a “manifest untruth.”44 It was at this point, after discussions led to nothing, that McNeal said Carter “asked for a march!” Becoming more aggressively confrontational, MOWM announced that “all Negroes who are interested in fighting for economic justice in the form of jobs for our people” should assemble at a local park and “saunter” together for nearly a mile to a picket line at Carter Carburetor’s plant.45 A crowd of two to five hundred African Americans came to Tandy Park on a hot late-summer day for the March on Carter, the first event that MOWM sponsored since the rally at Kiel. From there, they marched in single file for one mile to the company’s plant, bearing what one observer remarked was a “grimness of facial expression and a spirit of militancy.” The “large crowd” was in a solemn mood, and the “quiet and orderly march” was accompanied by a police squad car and two motorcycle patrolmen that came because “we notified the police department before every demonstration in writing, told them we were going to obey the law.”46 Paraders walked behind “a large American flag,” a practice that became a signature at all St. Louis MOWM events.47 David Grant led the assemblage, and he “cautioned each of the marchers to be silent throughout the parade, to engage in no arguments with bystanders and to refer questions to parade monitors.” Grant also made sure that everyone disbanded in an orderly manner after the mile-long trek to the picket line outside of the factory was completed.48 A photograph of the event shows Pittsburgh Courier youth writer Walter Dixon at the front of a procession carrying an American flag, followed closely by Jordan Chambers and T. D. McNeal. A caption accompanying the picture labeled those in the background as “feminine lovers of democracy.”49 Getting to Carter from Tandy Park required passing through a white neighborhood. One newspaper noted that reactions ranged from disaffected to vocally sympathetic. One white sympathizer yelled, “I don’t blame you!” and another shouted that the city’s racial problems were caused by an influx of white southerners.50 The whiteowned St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that Carter’s employees silently stared at the procession but remained aloof, giving “no sign of recognizing the demonstration.”51 Those who looked closely enough could read messages emblazoned on the carried placards: “Racial discrimination is sabotage,” “Barring Negroes from war industries makes Axis propaganda,” “Fight the Axis—Don’t fight Us,” and “Our Bond Dollars Help Pay Carter’s Payroll; Why Can’t We Work There?”52 Attendance for the march at Carter was far short of T. D. McNeal’s call for “10,000 Strong” to fight for “jobs, freedom, equal opportunities, and full citizenship,” but

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Upwards of five hundred demonstrators at St. Louis MOWM’s 1942 March on Carter Carburetor paraded for one mile to assemble at the lily-white defense plant. T. D. McNeal is second in line. In front of him is the American flag, a symbol of patriotism that was a mainstay at MOWM events. (717.7625, Arthur Witman Photo, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

the Chicago Defender enthusiastically called this demonstration “a complete success” and praised MOWM for raising awareness about the “vicious” racist hiring practices at Carter and other area defense plants.53 McNeal, too, was satisfied with the turnout. “The purpose of this demonstration,” he said, “was to dramatize the plight of the discriminated Negro” and put the issue squarely in the “conscience” of the city’s white residents. McNeal wanted MOWM to make known “our problem before the people of St. Louis,” and he believed that “the conscience of the people will do the rest.”54 MOWM’s protest at Carter did not succeed in changing the face of its workforce, but it did set a standard that marked many of St. Louis MOWM’s later activities. “The more unique the demonstration,” official MOWM policy held, “the more it will catch the public eye and enlist the support of the press.”55 To accomplish this, leaders in St. Louis always prominently displayed the American flag at their protests, and they used Christian prayer to articulate their grievances. The recurrent trope of patriotic Christianity in St. Louis MOWM’s pronouncements indicates that McNeal, Grant, and other MOWM members thought that claiming loyalty to the United States and expressing this ideal in religious terms would help the message resonate with their constituency and be favorably received by the city’s power structure. In a tradition in African American philosophy that was exemplified in James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” St. Louis MOWM members believed that affirming devotion to God and loyalty to country would lead to a more egalitarian nation and greater equality.56 In quantifiable terms of increasing employment opportunities for African Americans, the march on Carter was one of St. Louis MOWM’s least effective demonstrations. Carter management successfully dodged the spirit of EO 8802 for the war’s duration. As in many other companies throughout the industrial Midwest, strongly held notions of racial and gender entitlement to jobs guided Carter’s personnel decisions.57 Denouncing “the Fascist practices of the Carter company”

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St. Louis MOWM marches in single file outside the gates of Carter Carburetor. Despite operating on a defense contract inked after EO 8802 mandated nondiscrimination in employment, the company had zero African Americans among its workforce of nearly three thousand. (717.7621, Arthur Witman Photo, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

brought little immediate gain, but it offered lessons about how to campaign for fair employment and kept St. Louis MOWM in the headlines following its rally at Kiel Auditorium.58 MOWM’s short-lived and unsuccessful campaign against Carter Carburetor was instructive because it taught that the most recalcitrant employers also made the least desirable targets for staging demonstrations. Confronting Carter might have been the right thing to do, but it was not the best way for a young organization to build momentum. Grassroots social movements need victories to keep members motivated. Progress was most easily gained when agitation focused on employers that were already receptive to hiring African American workers, albeit in disproportionately small numbers and in the least desirable jobs. Companies committed to hard-line segregation or racial exclusion proved poor choices for sites to stage protests because they were less likely to make concessions than manufacturers that were comparatively less discriminatory. A similar pattern characterized the nature of cases handled nationwide by the FEPC. Because the federal government intervened only when complaints were filed, companies that were so discriminatory that few African Americans sought work there often operated free from the agency’s oversight.59

Prayer Demonstration at St. Louis Memorial Plaza, October 18, 1942 As a new protest organization, St. Louis MOWM relied on aggressive civic engagement and extensive coverage of its protests through the city’s African American newspapers. Keeping the community motivated for mobilization required always following through with more demonstrations, pickets, and public meetings. In the aftermath of the march on Carter, McNeal called for people “from all walks of life”

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to attend a prayer meeting at city hall the following week.60 For unclear reasons, the prayer demonstration was rescheduled for a month later, on October 18, 1942. St. Louis Memorial Plaza was chosen because of its close proximity to municipal buildings.61 Demonstrations such as this one were part of a coordinated effort by MOWM’s national office to have local units hold prayer services in highly visible locations. Even though Randolph was not an avid church member and his early writings in the Messenger reveal an inclination toward agnosticism, Randolph, the son of a preacher, understood the importance of getting the church involved in civil rights affairs.62 Religion was central to St. Louis MOWM’s activities, and each meeting opened and closed with a song and a prayer.63 By striking a balance between protest and patriotism, MOWM registered its protest and remained within the boundaries of respectability. Taking this position made it easier for the organization to insulate itself against charges of treason while it walked the fine line between fighting for a cause and contesting the state during a significant war. Publicity for the prayer demonstration promised “a most unusual event,” and newspapers drummed up interest in the weeks beforehand by depicting African Americans as “not only a fighting people, but also a praying people.”64 McNeal tried to make it easy to attend without disrupting people’s busy schedules, and he promised that “the program as a whole will consume less than an hour and will be packed with interest.” He secured cosponsorship from the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance, which enlivened proceedings with a three-hundred-voice choir drawn from African American churches throughout the city. As at many of St. Louis MOWM’s other events, the presence of ministers was conspicuous. Of these, Noah Clark from Lane Tabernacle CME Church stands out as one of MOWM’s most consistent supporters among men of the cloth.65 In his capacity as head of the local YMCA, Cook gave MOWM rooms to hold its weekly meetings. This kind of support was vital. Under Cook’s leadership, the Pine Street YMCA outpaced the Harlem YMCA branch for the distinction of having the largest enrollment of African American members. Using a venue this well known, and with so many potential MOWM members circulating nearby, was advantageous for the young organization.66 With estimates of fifteen hundred to three thousand attending St. Louis MOWM’s prayer demonstration, the Gateway City hosted what was by far the largest MOWM demonstration of this type.67 The high turnout is particularly impressive considering that this demonstration did not benefit from having nationally known speakers such as A. Philip Randolph or Walter White. Plans for this joint effort between St. Louis MOWM and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance were “perfected” at one of MOWM’s weekly Pine Street YMCA meetings.68 McNeal wanted to build up support from “whites of the city,” and he hoped that “all local churches” would attend to pray “for the victory of the United Nations

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and for justice to the Negro people now.”69 The outdoor service was advertised as a way for people to demonstrate their faith in God and express support for St. Louis MOWM while “presenting a mass Prayer Petition to the All Mighty for a full share of the Democratic way of life for the Negro people.”70 To publicize the event, St. Louis MOWM posted broadsides throughout the city, spoke on the radio, made announcements in pulpits, and got supporters to write complimentary editorials in African American newspapers.71 The Pittsburgh Courier noticed that “every effort is being made to see that the citizens of St. Louis attend and share in this event with the view in mind of obtaining divine help in the fight on the part of the Negro for justice and fair play and for an eventual victory for the allied forces . . . and a real peace to the world.”72 T. D. McNeal’s religious outlook rested upon a theological foundation that emphasized egalitarian ideals. McNeal pointed out that “plants where five months ago Negroes were formerly confined to sweeping the floors and other extremely menial work have opened the doors of economic opportunity . . . to well paid jobs, in-plant training and better jobs with better pay,” and he promised that further progress in the defense industry awaited if support continued. “We, the Negro people of St. Louis,” wrote McNeal in the St. Louis American, “will consecrate our souls to the unfinished task of completing the structure of our economic, social and political citizenship.”73 McNeal’s ten-minute message at the prayer demonstration focused on the prospects of African American soldiers replaying the experiences of their counterparts in the First World War, when veterans returned from serving in a segregated army to a nation marred by racial violence and plagued with inequality. McNeal viewed America’s war against Hitler, Mussolini, and Hirohito as an ideological battle—and victory meant that soldiers would return from overseas to enjoy the democratic promise of unimpeded voting rights and employment opportunities in a world without racial restrictions. McNeal prayed that “we, the Negro masses in the March on Washington Movement[,] dedicate our spirit and pledge our lives never to waver in our patriotism and all-out efforts to help win the war for the United Nations and never to falter, grow faint, or fail in our fight for a truly democratic America, so help us god.” He believed that African Americans could obtain equal protection as citizens and ultimately bring the United States to a place where it could justly “assume the moral and spiritual leadership of world democracy.”74 Abolishing the poll tax was paramount, as the states with this restriction to suffrage saw only 24 percent of adults vote in 1940. In comparison, voter turnout during that election cycle was 66 percent across the rest of the nation.75 Opponents of the poll tax saw it as an antidemocratic measure that disfranchised upwards of 11 million voters, and to many, its repeal seemed to promise that the FEPC stood

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a chance of surviving through the war years and beyond.76 In his prayer, McNeal told the outdoor congregation that “we can win the war and lose the peace” if efforts to promote racial equality were neglected, and expanding the electorate in poll tax states was presented as a way to safeguard the tenuous gains made under Roosevelt. As nearly every MOWM spokesperson did at some point during the event’s proceedings, McNeal took a moment from his ten-minute prayer to “restate the composition, aims and purposes of the March Movement,” defining it as “an all Negro movement that is not anti-white.” He made sure to carefully “stress and emphasize” that support and encouragement “of all liberal forces” were appreciated, but affirmed that “the main and basic responsibility” for social change rested “upon Negroes themselves.” A consummate organization builder, McNeal urged listeners to join MOWM at the fee of one dollar per person. This part of McNeal’s message failed to resonate with the audience, and only eighty dollars—less than half of the event’s cost—was recuperated. Weather, not apathy, appears to have been a major factor. Skies were overcast throughout the program, and a steady downpour developed toward the conclusion—right when a collection basket was passed through the crowd.77 For many in attendance that day, religion and politics were inseparable—the path to true Christianity was also the way to truly fulfill the American promise of democratic equality. Recurring throughout MOWM’s messages in publicity leading up to the event was a theme that sincere Christians supported America’s military efforts abroad and carried on “a righteous war” against racial inequality that “will bring true Christianity to all.”78 To those at the prayer demonstration, religious convictions were a vehicle for alleviating racial hostility and establishing genuine relationships across racial boundaries. These ethos are exemplified by Rev. James M. Bracy of First Baptist Church’s statement that spiritual power was the only way for mankind to break down barriers, “ancient as the Chinese walls. . . . Some are racial walls, some walls of hate, others national, others social. All walls are prisons. And since most walls are built by the prisoners, themselves, they can be destroyed only by Jesus, who is the kind of truth that sets men free. . . . He can annihilate the partition between the races. He can break down the dividing walls of hate.”79 Combining religion and radicalism appealed to Randolph, and doubtless others of his generation, since he grew up steeped in the church and recognized its potential as a vehicle to mobilize for progressive change.80 Raised by a “superreligious” grandmother who mandated daily prayer meetings and the son of a minister who did not shy away from social justice campaigns, Randolph knew that religion had “the power of moving people.”81 MOWM’s public prayer service in St. Louis had its glitches, especially in terms of collecting revenue, but the event was successful enough that A. Philip Randolph wrote Chicago MOWM leader Charles Wesley Burton, directing him to “plan [for November 9 a] public prayer meeting in

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the Loop, in the interest of teen age boys lynched in Mississippi.”82 Wracked with dissension over Burton’s “undemocratic” leadership, the Chicago MOWM branch finally held its “Inter-Faith, Inter-Denominational, Interracial Prayer Service” at Soldier Field during the concluding ceremonies of MOWM’s “We Are Americans, Too” convention on July 4, 1943. Harlem’s MOWM branch sponsored a similar public prayer demonstration on city hall’s steps on November 9, but only fifty people came out.83 The disappointing attendance prompted Eugenie Settles to write a letter to A. Philip Randolph commenting, “The entire program was undoubtedly soul-stirring,” but attendance was smaller than hoped, and “there were not many souls for it to stir.”84 Although the Chicago and Harlem MOWM prayer demonstrations paled in comparison to the initial program orchestrated in St. Louis, the fact that this technique was mimicked in other cities suggests that MOWM activists in America’s industrial heartland were at the forefront of implementing innovative protest methods.

The Long Campaign to Integrate U.S. Cartridge, 1942–44 St. Louis MOWM expended much of its energy engaged in a series of protests, pickets, and negotiations to break racial barriers at U.S. Cartridge, a bullet manufacturer known locally as the Small Arms Plant. Armed with “a new set of alphabets,” a reference to the FEPC being added to the long list of New Deal agencies known by their acronyms, St. Louis MOWM spent the better part of three years agitating to get African American workers a fair shot at obtaining jobs filling the company’s federal contract worth two hundred million dollars. As the most prolific producer of .30- and .50-caliber ammunition in the world, U.S. Cartridge boasted that “its production is measured in fantastic figures, literally billions of cartridges,” and its campus was “a vast fenced in area, covered with hundreds of ultra-modern brick and concrete buildings.”85 Unlike ordnance plants in other parts of the country that were building up as America headed toward war, U.S. Cartridge already had a pattern of exclusion in place before the war. African Americans were shut out of construction projects associated with making additions to its massive campus, and the same could be said of African American tradesmen and laborers seeking work at an explosives factory that was being built outside of St. Louis. 86 Within six months of the attack on Pearl Harbor, this impressive production center expanded to somewhere between 21,000 and 23,500 employees—only 300 of which were African American and none of whom were women.87 Nationwide, women represented approximately 600,000 of the 1 million African American workers who entered the defense industry during the war, but Earl Lewis notes that there was widespread reluctance to accept a “black Rosie the Riveter.”88 In addition to being severely underrepresented on the company’s payroll, African American workers at

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U.S. Cartridge found their opportunities for promotion to be almost nonexistent. All of them were classified as porters, and their duties were limited to janitorial service and moving material around the campus. One worker wrote MOWM, “We are all doing porter work but just for a few mens they put on the production line. . . . I has been sweeping every day since I been there.”89 The company’s exclusionary practices and pigeonholing of African American workers into a few occupational classifications were so well known that they were alluded to in Fannie Cook’s novel Mrs. Palmer’s Honey (1946).90 The few African Americans employed at U.S. Cartridge faced racial conditions that were, at best, insulting. Comments from a company spokesperson reveal a neopaternalist worldview tinged with a Gone with the Wind–style paranoia of misguided and ill-prepared black people infiltrating and ultimately destroying American cultural and economic institutions. “You just can’t,” U.S. Cartridge explained, “turn unskilled workers loose in an ammunition plant.” 91 The implication was clear: African American workers could not be trusted with direct involvement of armament manufacturing. With notable exceptions such as the Ford Motor Company, where 11,000 African Americans were utilized for war work and many of them performed tasks that required a high degree of specialization, this pattern was consistent throughout the nation. “The greater the degree of skill involved,” observed Robert Weaver, “the higher the degree of exclusion.”92 Stereotypes rooted in slavery about African Americans having irregular and sloppy work habits, needing excessive direct supervision, and being prone to laziness were used to justify maintaining the color line on the assembly line, where poorly performed work could destroy the product and endanger soldiers.93 The daily experiences of African American workers gave lie to U.S. Cartridge’s claim that “there was no concerted or set policy of intra-plant segregation of Jim Crow.”94 They were concentrated in dead-end occupational classifications with lower pay grades, inconvenienced by “Colored Only” restrooms located in remote parts of the campus, and served leftover food in the employee cafeteria.95 “Prior to the war,” U.S. Cartridge admitted to the FEPC, “Negro Workers found employment chiefly in heavy industrial trades” that were limited to the most “menial and lowest-paying jobs.”96 This occurred in spite of an eighteen-month-old good-faith promise made to the Urban League that the company would train more African Americans for skilled positions that brought higher pay and carried more prestige. The program’s goal was to prepare African American workers to fill supervisory positions in existing segregated divisions, thus eliminating the possibility that orders from a white foremen could be interpreted as racially antagonistic. This compromise offered the prospect of modest upward mobility for blue-collar African Americans, but it amounted to little real progress.97 Negotiated in 1941, this agreement between the Urban League and U.S. Cartridge did not make a sig-

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nificant impact on the proportion of African Americans on the company’s payroll, and more than a year later there were still reports that the company had not followed through on its promise.98 The St. Louis Urban League prodded local defense plants to offer jobs to African American workers from the moment production began increasing with the Lend-Lease program, but the city lagged behind in the rate at which African Americans were hired in defense industries.99 An example of this pattern is the difficulties faced by Blyden Steale and Elvin Matthews as they sought work at U.S. Cartridge. Steale and Matthews both worked on union job sites alongside white tradesmen, and “they are the only two Negroes in the city who are members of the St. Louis local of the A.F.L. [American Federation of Labor] union of Bricklayers, Masons, and Plasterers Union.” Just days before St. Louis MOWM’s first demonstration at U.S. Cartridge, Steale and Matthews were denied employment with the company.100 For many, this incident reinforced the idea that U.S. Cartridge’s word could not be taken in good faith and that organized protest would be needed to help African Americans carve a niche for themselves in the workforce. In May 1942, U.S. Cartridge dismissed more than one hundred African American workers and did not provide paperwork explaining their separation—an action that all but ensured their permanent exclusion from St. Louis’s wartime labor force. This poorly handled mass layoff occurred while the company was hiring hundreds of production workers per week and outraged St. Louis’s African American community. Company incompetence in handling the discharge, the probability of racial targeting in those who were separated, and the possibility that a number of these workers could have underperformed make it difficult to determine whether the layoff was racially malicious. Regardless of intent, this became the impetus for St. Louis MOWM’s first demonstration at U.S. Cartridge.101 In hindsight, something was bound to happen. United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers Local 825 leader William Sentner warned the War Production Board of “growing and deep resentment” among black workers in the plant.102 With little FEPC presence in the city “so that we could feel that something or somebody was there,” David Grant explained to Congress, “the only place we could go was to the streets.”103 This is precisely what occurred on June 20, 1942, when an “army of marchers,” numbering between two and six hundred, “representing all social and occupational strata,” picketed the factory for two hours. On a hot solstice day with temperatures hovering in the low nineties, demonstrators representing a broad array “from the dicty to the despised” surrounded the perimeter of U.S. Cartridge’s sprawling campus.104 Many of them walked just over four miles to get there, and much of that terrain traversed through predominantly white neighborhoods.105 Ranging from “adolescence to almost senility,” this assortment of “ministers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, housewives, laborers and labor union rep-

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resentatives” was the fruition of T. D. McNeal’s push “to organize the Negro in the poolroom, on the street corner, in the church and every place else he is found.”106 Letters written to the organization by its members testify to the cross-class solidarity that characterized St. Louis MOWM’s three-year campaign at U.S. Cartridge. One correspondent, a U.S. Cartridge employee, wrote David Grant to inform St. Louis MOWM about working conditions at the company, even though “I feel very uncapable [sic] of giving my advice as I am a member of the working class.” The writer, whose signature is indecipherable, told of instances when deserving African Americans were passed over for promotion, and he urged Grant to cultivate greater support for the movement among African American clerics and educators.107 A year after this letter was written, Grant boasted that St. Louis MOWM also attracted a “complete cross-section” of the city’s African American professionals, with “doctors and lawyers and teachers and preachers and fathers of boys who then were in the armed forces, and the wives of those men and their children” all supporting the organization.108 A. Philip Randolph ensured that local MOWM agitation “will make white people in high places and the ordinary white man understand that Negroes have rights that they are bound respect,” and the U.S. Cartridge demonstrations took strides toward achieving this psychological and political goal.109 The patriotic atmosphere typifying St. Louis MOWM’s pickets and protests manifested in demonstrators at U.S. Cartridge marching behind a “huge American flag” that made clear their claim to full citizenship. “A large detachment of squad cars and police officers” received this “peaceful” protest “courteously,” while U.S. Cartridge employees looked over the assembled crowd that waved “VV” signs made by extending the middle and index fingers of both hands. For two hours, they walked single file around U.S. Cartridge’s eight buildings.110 The police came out at McNeal’s request, and he promised the St. Louis police chief that MOWM’s demonstrations cultivated a “patriotic atmosphere” and would be “orderly, peaceable and in conformity with the laws of our City and Country.”111 David Grant noted that white observers “kept their thoughts to themselves,” a silence that may have been influenced by the amount of law enforcement personnel at the event. Grant was responsible for ensuring that the crowd’s words and gestures would not unreasonably arouse the potentially hostile onlookers. In his capacity as march leader, Grant had “to advise people in the line of the march not to carry on conversations with bystanders, with people who might be there to heckle,” and he instructed marchers to notify police or appointed event monitors about any disturbances.112 Demonstrators were encouraged to remain silent, but MOWM authorized eighteen different slogans on placards to communicate a message that was strongly influenced by Double V rhetoric. Some of the slogans used at the U.S. Cartridge demonstration included “How can we die freely for

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democracy abroad if we can’t work equally for democracy at home?” “Selective service for Negroes—U.S. Army—Front Line!—U.S. Cartridge—Rear Line!,” “Winning Democracy for the Negro is Winning the War for Democracy,” and “Why Make Propaganda for Nazi Goebbels?”113 This kind of framing typified a trend described by Martha Biondi as one in which “African Americans turned the war against fascism into a war against white supremacy at home.”114 The St. Louis American called MOWM’s protest at U.S. Cartridge “one of the most significant demonstrations ever staged in St. Louis,” and the Pittsburgh Courier followed suit, praising it as “one of the most spectacular ever held in the Mound City.” St. Louis’s mainstream white-owned newspapers were less enthusiastic. Noting that the demonstration came only two hours after the company announced that a program to train African American workers would be launched in the “immediate future,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dismissed MOWM’s efforts as “anti-climactic.” Meanwhile, the St. Louis American attacked the Post-Dispatch for sending a “crudely biased . . . Dixie-trained reporter” to the scene. Citing clearly posted signs designating racial segregation in the factory, this African American newspaper took exception to the Post-Dispatch’s use of the modifier alleged whenever it mentioned racial discrimination at U.S. Cartridge. To the African American press, there was no need for any newspaper to characterize the presence of racial discrimination as something that may exist but was theretofore unproven. U.S. Cartridge’s “jim crow policy is an open book,” the American wrote, comparable to the “alleged . . . Jap attack on Pearl harbor on December 7th.”115 Acting as a mouthpiece for St. Louis MOWM, the St. Louis American wrote that the demonstration was the reason U.S. Cartridge promised to start training African Americans for more skilled work, and this success “served notice to other defense plants that their time is coming.” This kind of publicity was welcome news for MOWM, which wanted to use its action at U.S. Cartridge as a springboard to launch similar demonstrations “in every plant in St. Louis working on war production.” Not satisfied with a few menial jobs and a small raise for the company’s existing African American workers, McNeal promised, “There is no intention on the part of the Negro community to let up in its fight on small arms because of these . . . token job considerations.” An emboldened T. D. McNeal asserted that “the Negro citizens of St. Louis have a right to thousands of jobs” filling defense orders throughout the city. In a letter to U.S. Cartridge’s public relations director, McNeal warned that the march “was a mere token of what the Negro people think . . . and how they resent discriminatory policies and anti-democratic attitudes of the U.S. Cartridge company, all of which flagrantly violate the declared policy of the American people as expressed in President Roosevelt’s executive order number 8802.” McNeal threatened to occupy public space around U.S. Cartridge indefinitely, promising to keep the issue “in the streets” with “constantly increasing numbers . . . until it is settled

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and settled right.” These comments neatly encapsulate St. Louis MOWM’s tactics, which centered on “the physical impressiveness of large numbers” to nonviolently disrupt everyday life in an effort to attract the attention of a presumably reluctant but dutiful federal government.116 MOWM’s actions shifted the balance of power in this workplace. In the aftermath of the June 20 demonstration, U.S. Cartridge gave an across-the-board tencent-per-hour raise to all of its African American workers. This was the first time in company history that African Americans received a pay increase of any sort, even though white workers enjoyed periodic raises throughout their employment.117 Before committing St. Louis MOWM to picketing, McNeal and Grant negotiated with U.S. Cartridge through industrial relations manager R. V. Rickard, but these discussions quickly hit an impasse and collapsed. After the protests, however, McNeal and Grant secured a promise from the company that one hundred African American women would be hired. This commitment was particularly important because they had largely been shut out of the city’s defense boom and their income was vital to family economies.118 Within four days, slightly fewer than one hundred African American women joined the more than eight thousand females already employed by U.S. Cartridge. All of the newly hired black women were taken on as matrons, where their job required wielding a mop or a broom to clean up after the production workers in the arsenal of democracy. The concentration of black women workers into this one position added stigma to a job whose primary duty was cleaning women’s restrooms.119 Although it is true that this was a new opportunity for dozens of women, low-paying jobs cleaning toilets represented a very small change for a group that, as of 1941, averaged only one-fourth the weekly earnings of their male counterparts.120 The proportion of African American women working in the defense industry gradually increased as the war carried on, but by July 1944 U.S. Cartridge and Curtiss-Wright were the only major defense plants in St. Louis that had any significant number of African American women directly working in defense production.121 In other cities, employers recruited out-of-state workers instead of tapping African American women as an existing underutilized labor pool. A similar situation happened in Detroit, where Ford went out of its way to keep local African American women out of its workforce by recruiting white women from as far away as Texas and New York.122 McNeal knew that the equation for progress was more complicated than the simple arithmetic of street demonstrations and a need for manpower combining to open more job opportunities for African American workers. From the beginning of MOWM’s involvement at U.S. Cartridge, McNeal thought that the aim was “to bring this matter to the attention of the public here, to the Roosevelt administration and particularly to the Fair Employment Practices Committee in Washington.” In response to U.S. Cartridge’s mass layoff in St. Louis MOWM’s formative days, McNeal sent a telegram to the FEPC office in Washington reading, “The St. Louis

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Unit of the march on Washington Committee and thousands of Negro citizens of this community wish to inform you that we protest today’s dismissal of some two hundred Negroes employed at the Small Arms Plant. We urge that you look into this matter immediately, due to the fact that this great defense plant has refused to hire Negro skilled workers, and now fires most of its Negro porters.” Displaying banners and placards “pointing out what we considered the justice of our cause” was not enough to foster meaningful social change, and it took more than snappy slogans and sound logic to get African Americans included throughout all phases of the defense industry. Mass action was essential for protest politics, and St. Louis MOWM constantly tried to get people to come out and press the federal government to enforce EO 8802. The use of protest politics signaled a new sense of urgency, and St. Louis MOWM’s program “spread like a fire” through the city’s African American community.123 St. Louis MOWM did not want its pickets and protests at U.S. Cartridge to be seen as attacking an important factory in the arsenal of democracy, and the organization kept its demonstrations in “abeyance for a short time to determine whether or not the company intends to carry out” its commitment to nondiscrimination. During a period of nearly one year that saw little protest or agitation, David Grant boasted that St. Louis MOWM “worked hand in glove with management.” During this time, St. Louis MOWM functioned as a hybrid of the Urban League and a labor union that drew its power from protest politics. MOWM “is not fighting the War Industries,” wrote the St. Louis American. “It is trying to open the eyes of our fellow Americans that their bigoted attitude is jeopardizing our Republic’s liberty.” A few jobs on the bottom rungs of the occupational ladder had opened, but little else had happened. The slow pace of change caused demonstrations at the bullet factory to resume, and the organization sponsored another rally at Kiel Auditorium to give a “shot in the arm of St. Louis.”124 The stated purpose of the second Kiel rally was to generate support for holding FEPC hearings in the city and to hail the eight thousand African Americans who entered St. Louis’s defense workforce in the past year. Spokespeople told reporters that this event “will be shorter but promises to be even more impressive than the one last August.” Unlike the 1942 rally, when attendance estimates reached over ten thousand, fewer than four thousand came out on May 9, 1943. The small attendance figure is puzzling considering that MOWM’s “masterful, intelligent, and fearless” national leader, A. Philip Randolph, and the “eloquent” David Grant were on the bill. It is optimistic to say that many of the potential attendees could have been occupied at newly gained work, and the smaller number could also be explained by growing disappointment and disillusion with MOWM because its promises of widespread reform remained unfulfilled.125 The St. Louis American cheered Randolph for “leading like a real leader at a time when a real leader is sorely needed,” and it called him “the greatest

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Flyer announcing St. Louis MOWM’s 1943 rally at Kiel Auditorium featuring speeches by A. Philip Randolph and David Grant. (Theodore D. McNeal Papers, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

militant orator in this country since Frederick Douglass.” Randolph gestured toward McNeal’s local organizing by acknowledging him and “fellow marchers” at the opening of his address. Randolph urged listeners to join American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization unions, never cease demanding equal citizenship rights, and pledge unity with “democratic forces against fascism.” He also warned African Americans to eschew radical thirdparty politics, instead advocating for building a “strong political bloc among 15,000,000” African Americans with the capability of influencing Congress like other special interest groups such as farmers and manufacturers. Speaking with “his low-pitched voice and clearly enunciated words” and booming “with thunderbolts as if from the Olympian Jove,” Randolph denounced Republicans and Democrats, whom he called “tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum as far as the Negro is concerned.” Always a bit of an iconoclast, he also criticized Socialists as “too weak” and cautioned about the “handicap” of “being red” when “it’s hard enough being black.” Randolph closed with a salute to winning the war, reminding his audience that an Axis victory was a “negation of all freedoms.” This, in Randolph’s mind, was something that African Americans could ill afford, because they “are not free, never have been free and we have to fight for our freedom at home.”126 Within a day of St. Louis MOWM’s second rally, upwards of two hundred white women, “many of whom have come to work from small towns where Negroes are

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kept in segregation,” staged a “sit-down strike” at U.S. Cartridge.127 Bringing “about 50 Negro floor men” from the nearly all-black Unit 202 to service machines in what was previously an all-white production unit housed in Building 103 sparked this work stoppage.128 The incident began when thirty female machine operators stopped working during the middle of their shift on Monday morning. Fervor spread quickly, and their number grew by sevenfold within hours. Surprisingly, there was only one physical confrontation during this tense moment, and plant security quickly defused it.129 Company spokespeople attributed the hate strike to a “misunderstanding . . . that the white men had been discharged” to make room for black workers, when in reality, “they [black male workers] were promoted.” David Grant blamed company policy for the women’s hate strike, arguing that segregated conditions created this kind of racial animosity. “These women,” Grant told Congress, “would not work with these Negroes in there. So they quit work.”130 U.S. Cartridge apologized for the presence of “the Negroes” and explained that it was “impossible to get white men . . . because of the manpower shortage.” Floormen “merely moved material,” the company reaffirmed, and they had no supervisory authority over the female machine operators.131 That same year, white females waged similar stoppages contesting the introduction of African American women into the workforce at the U.S. Rubber plant in Detroit and at Western Electric in Baltimore. In both of these instances, management’s appeals to patriotism and broader egalitarian values failed to convince thousands of white female workers that they should labor alongside of or share facilities with their African American counterparts.132 In part because of a no-strike pledge taken by unions during the war, the number of man-days lost due to strikes was down during early 1940s, but the fact that racially motivated work stoppages took place at all indicates that divisions in America’s working class did not go away because the nation was at war.133 Hate strikes such as these demonstrate what one historian identifies as “the Rosetta stone of American working class history,” in which “white American workers are race-conscious first and class-conscious second,” an impulse that was famously evidenced in International Brotherhood of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa’s remarks to the FEPC that “no nigger will drive a truck in Detroit.”134 These hate strikes also suggest that racial integration in industrial production was complicated by gender. As such, mixed-sex workplaces grappled with the cultural taboo of miscegenation in ways that male homosocial workforces did not have to deal with.135 This disruption was part of a surge in such activity throughout the United States in 1943. A six-hundred-person hate strike occurred at the Packard Motor Company in Detroit, and a year later roughly six thousand white workers in Philadelphia captured national headlines by virtually shutting down the city for five days in response to eight African Americans taking jobs as streetcar operators.136 Cincinnati experienced similar problems, prompting one defense plant manager to remark, “We have attempted to employ

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additional Negro workers, but have met with resistance on the part of our white workers.”137 The lingering problem of hate strikes in this era is a reminder that the mid-twentieth-century American labor movement was suffused with racism that lasted throughout the war.138 Years of affiliation with the AFL led Randolph to conclude that “the race problem” was “the number one problem” facing America’s labor movement.139 As Bruce Nelson has shown, for much of America’s labor history, “management and white workers acted in tandem” to defend the interests of white workers on the shop floor and maintained an employment structure that benefited whites, both materially and psychologically.140 This pattern proved true in St. Louis, where U.S. Cartridge handled the striking group in a gentle manner that veritably reinforced the effectiveness of shop-floor resistance. Within a day, the company conceded to their demands, announcing it had “abandoned” plans to utilize African American material handlers in previously all-white units. Bussman, a St. Louis defense contractor that refused to hire African American workers in any capacity, raised a similar argument at FEPC hearings in 1944. The company defended its racial restrictions as part of a statewide pattern that the employer had no power to change. “It is not our discrimination,” Bussman’s lawyer argued. “It is community discrimination. . . . It is beyond our power to change or affect it.”141 The differences between how these two companies handled racial issues illustrate the varying degrees of segregation in a city such as St. Louis. The prolific bullet manufacturer offered jobs to African Americans under a segregated workforce, whereas Bussman and other companies excluded black workers altogether. After deciding to make Unit 202 a self-contained and racially segregated workforce, U.S. Cartridge began advertising in St. Louis’s African American newspapers for “men with some experience in machine and metal trades” as well as “housemen, clerks, dishwashers, janitors, porters, elevator operators.” U.S. Cartridge boasted that it not only offered “clean inside work,” but also gave employees an opportunity to help the country by furthering the war effort.142 Race relations remained tumultuous at U.S. Cartridge in the aftermath of the women’s strike. The following month, more than three thousand African American workers from three different shifts walked out to express their fury about “the appointment of a white foreman to supervise them.”143 The foreman in question had a year of experience working in a supervisory capacity with all-black squads at another war plant, but strike leaders complained that “the company had fallen down” on its “promise” to break the white stranglehold on floor-management crews that had been in place since Unit 202 was created in July 1942.144 The wildcat strike began when fifteen hundred African American workers simultaneously sat down on the job without the support of their union, UE Local 825.145 Anger about African Americans being passed over for promotions and the symbolic insult of

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bringing in a white supervisor from another factory spread through the next two shifts, and this labor disruption quickly grew to become “one of the most spectacular ever held in the Mound City.” At its peak, this strike encompassed an estimated thirty-six hundred workers and effectively shut down production in Unit 202 for a full day. St. Louis’s African American newspapers were generally supportive of racial activism, but the local black press was ambivalent about this incident.146 The St. Louis American acknowledged that the controversial strike had little to do with “any innate prejudice against their foreman’s hair, eyes, religion, or color” and was really about gaining better job opportunities for African American workers, but it also criticized the work stoppage as “provincial” and “non-democratic.” 147 The Daily Worker had stronger words to say. As the organ of the Communist Party, this paper denounced strikes such as this one because they impeded the war effort and undermined the strength of Allied forces—including the Soviet Union. It characterized the striking workers as “Fifth Column traitors, or misled dupes who either deliberately or thoughtlessly join in provoking internal strife that disrupts and endangers our war effort.”148 St. Louis MOWM worked hard to secure job opportunities for African Americans at U.S. Cartridge, and it criticized the strike as “unwise, ill-timed, hasty and without outside support of Negro people, your union or the March on Washington Committee.”149 Indeed, UE leader William Sentner had a favorable antiracist record, and the same can be said of local organizers Otto Maschoff and Betty Raab.150 Still, African Americans on the shop floor at U.S. Cartridge thought it necessary to fight their own battles with management. Despite having little outside support from their union, MOWM, or the city’s major African American organizations and newspapers, this strike was one of the nation’s largest black-led wartime labor disruptions. Because the stoppage was so short, the FEPC’s notoriously inefficient bureaucracy did not have enough time to get involved in the affair. In the FEPC’s absence, St. Louis MOWM acted as a liaison between African American workers, their newly installed union, and U.S. Cartridge.151 McNeal and Grant “sped to the Small Arms plant to save an economic opportunity.”152 In less than eighteen hours, an agreement was made “to arbitrate the dispute,” and U.S. Cartridge promised to offer training courses for African American foremen starting on June 7. Within weeks almost three dozen African Americans were employed on Unit 202’s shop floor as foremen.153 Controversy continued to swirl at U.S. Cartridge following the resolution of the wildcat strike. Less than one month later, more than one hundred African Americans were fired in an unannounced mass layoff. Acknowledging that miscreants and rascals were among some of those released, the St. Louis American blasted “every shiftless, drunken, poorly disciplined colored war worker” as a “double saboteur” of racial progress and the war effort. In the same article, however, the American

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also condemned defense contractors for benefiting by taking public money while discriminating against or marginalizing African American workers.154 Interestingly, the St. Louis Argus anticipated the firings and foresaw the racially coded language that explained their dismissals. Championing African American war workers for “making history,” the Argus portrayed them as the beneficiaries of Roosevelt’s momentous executive order and warned the new war workers to be on their best behavior at the job site. “Common sense,” the Argus argued, dictated that “exacting” government work should be done with an eye for perfection, even in personal appearance while in uniform. “If a certain kind of uniform is prescribed for workers, comply with the rule,” the Argus advised. “If hair nets hide your curled or wavy tresses, wear the net anyway on the job. . . . Think, think, think.”155 For commentators and common people who understood race relations in the moral terms typical of that generation, the irreverent and outspoken George Schuyler’s words encapsulated the plight of African American workers. Poorly disciplined and uncouth workers “are in the minority, but they shape white majority opinion, which in turn shapes our lives.”156 In the wake of the wildcat strike at Unit 202, no one, not even St. Louis MOWM, rose to defend those who lost their jobs because of this mass layoff that targeted African American workers. In 1944, after three years of racial animosity and wildcat strikes from both sides of the color line, U.S. Cartridge and UE Local 825 hashed out a method of organizing its workforce that became known as the “St. Louis Plan.” Internal workplace uprisings born of racial hostility undermined the company’s overall efficiency, a problem ultimately weakening America’s defense production. Keeping employees segregated by race was seen as a way to maintain a peaceful workplace environment and provide African Americans with more opportunities for advancement. U.S. Cartridge officially designated this all-black production team as Unit 202, naming this group only formalizing a pattern that had been established ever since the company started utilizing African American workers in any appreciable number. Unskilled and skilled African American assemblers, inspectors, welders, and riveters were accustomed to working in separate buildings; the only difference in this new arrangement was that shop-floor management would also be African American.157 Like Sun Shipyard in Philadelphia, another defense contractor during World War II that employed thousands of African American workers under segregated conditions, Unit 202 would function as a completely segregated and independent unit within the company.158 At its height, five thousand African Americans worked forty-eight-hour weeks in Unit 202 and lunched in segregated but reportedly decent facilities. This plan was in accordance with recommendations from the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce, which called on local defense contractors to hire African Americans whenever separate buildings or segregated toilet and eating facilities could be provided.159

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“The dark cloud of Jim Crow,” William Sentner told the FEPC, “hangs like the sword of Damocles over the whole picture.”160 St. Louis MOWM saw Unit 202 as a compromise “at which we were not over happy,” and it preferred to “prove that whites and Negroes CAN work together peacefully,” but acknowledged that this arrangement was an imperfect solution to the problem of getting African Americans jobs within one of the city’s largest employers.161 St. Louis’s African American organizations were divided in their opinions about a deal that increased job opportunities under the confines of keeping a completely segregated workspace. Executive secretary John T. Clark explained that the St. Louis Urban League would never support the “segregation of Negro workers,” even if it meant greater fortunes in the immediate future, and he criticized segregation “under any circumstances” as a “doubtful expedient.” Clark saw the St. Louis Plan as inherently flawed, and he argued that racial separation “fails to get the best production output from those who are segregated and creates in their minds suspicion and distrust.”162 Philosophical disagreements about Unit 202’s expansion of job opportunities while maintaining racial segregation of the workforce outline the contours of debates about how best to deal with discrimination, but these discussions were of little consequence to the workers in Unit 202. After eight months on the job, they outpaced the rest of U.S. Cartridge’s employees in all of the important measures of production. U.S. Cartridge statistics indicate that Unit 202’s absenteeism rate was 20 percent lower than the rest of its workforce. African Americans in Unit 202 not only showed up more often than their white counterparts, but were also more efficient. Output in Unit 202 was 12 percent higher than the next most productive unit, and they made 6 percent more “Grade A” bullets than the second most accurate group. David Grant interprets this as an example of “just how far the Negro worker will over-compensate, will attempt to make good if given the opportunity.” Speaking before Congress, Grant explained Unit 202’s excellence as what happens “when you deprive a man of the opportunity and he does get it, he over-compensates, he does a little bit better—and I think that is what is happening with the 99th Pursuit Squadron,” popularly known as the Tuskegee Airmen.163 Just as the famous African American messman Dorie Miller “went to town” defending Pearl Harbor, the St. Louis American argued, “We strongly suspect that out at Small Arms . . . Negro employees could step up and do the work of those graded higher, and do a darn good and efficient job. And we don’t need any Jap coercion either to bring it about.”164 The fortunes of Unit 202’s overachievers rose and fell with their employer. As early as November 1943, U.S. Cartridge started laying off workers throughout its Small Arms Plant, including nearly one thousand African Americans. The problem with their work, as with all war industries before the military-industrial complex became entrenched in America’s economy, was that this kind of employment was

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not designed to be long term. An ammunition surplus made workers superfluous, and keeping them on active payroll was a luxury that no business schooled in the Great Depression would advocate.165 St. Louis MOWM fought for the integration of African American workers into an industry that was temporarily surging, but their gains lasted only for the three years that the company was producing ammunition at an exceptionally high output. The rising tide of African American workers at U.S. Cartridge came at the confluence of many currents, including a labor shortage, the threat of federal intervention through EO 8802, and constant grassroots pressure from MOWM. The transitory nature of defense work suggested that more lasting employment gains could be made in public utilities. This sector of the city’s workforce was going to be around after the war, and it was subject to EO 8802’s nondiscrimination clause because utility companies held contracts with the federal government. In this young organization’s next phase, it would seek to address civil rights issues and continue expanding economic opportunities for St. Louis’s African American residents.

5

“These Women Really Did the Work” Marching on More than Defense Plants We get no thrills out of these fights, all we want is to be free from insult just like any other citizen in our pursuit of happiness. —St. Louis Argus, September 8, 1944

S

t. Louis MOWM built on momentum gained from demonstrating at Carter Carburetor and U.S. Cartridge by directing its energies toward gaining jobs in public utilities and municipal services. These were employment opportunities that, unlike defense jobs, were likely to remain steady for years to come. This new strategy put African American women at the center of MOWM’s campaigns.1 Nationally, about one hundred thousand African American women gained whitecollar jobs during the war. One in three white women held wartime jobs such as switchboard operators, sales clerks, and secretaries, but only about one of every thirty women in these fields was African American.2 MOWM sought to address this inequality, causing one newspaper to remark that it was “raising some more hell to get some jobs for Colored women.”3 Breaking employment barriers remained St. Louis MOWM’s core issue, but it also continued a general fight against segregation. Through two campaigns, one pushing for access to employment at Southwestern Bell and the other a series of sit-ins at department-store lunch counters, St. Louis MOWM made addressing the issues facing black women among its primary goals. The Gateway City was not alone as the site of sits-ins or challenges to discrimination in the telephone industry during World War II. The 1944 St. Louis sit-ins were part of a sporadic and unorganized wave of challenges to segregation that occurred in places such as North Carolina, Ohio, and Washington, D.C.4 Some of the agitation was done by freelancing individuals who acted on their own accord, but much of this activity was directed by local protest organizations that arose to

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confront regional challenges. In Cleveland, for example, the Future Outlook League led a campaign for jobs at Ohio Bell Telephone in 1941 that was very similar to the one launched by St. Louis MOWM at Southwestern Bell Telephone. At its crescendo, hundreds of picketers congregated outside of Ohio Bell, waving American flags and carrying banners with slogans that equated racism with fascism while, simultaneously, thousands of African Americans dialed the company’s switchboard operator to register their objections to its discriminatory hiring policies.5 New York MOWM waged a “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work” effort at Metropolitan Life Insurance Corporation, a place that hired no African Americans even though “a number of highly intelligent and adequately prepared colored girls made application.”6 Modernist poet Melvin Tolson, the central character in the 2007 film The Great Debaters, helped on this campaign, and he got “the biggest kick . . . in writing slogans for the March on Washington to use to picket the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.”7 Likewise, a series of sit-ins at local eateries in Washington, D.C., during 1943 and 1944 was organized by MOWM member Pauli Murray and sponsored by the Howard University student chapter of the NAACP. Although it was underreported in newspapers at the time, Murray’s demonstration remains one of the better-known restaurant sit-ins in the years before 1960.8 St. Louis MOWM’s actions at Southwestern Bell telephone were more aggressive than New York MOWM’s campaign at Met Life, and the sit-ins were more organized than those spearheaded by Murray in the capital. Seen alongside the Future Outlook League’s efforts in Cleveland, the Midwest stands out as a center of African American protest during the early 1940s.

Marching on Southwestern Bell Telephone MOWM envisioned a world in which gainful employment was a component of American citizenship, and it saw the denial of equal opportunity as a negation of an “inherent right to employment” that some found implicit in the New Deal.9 “If we cannot work we cannot live as free citizens,” argued a St. Louis MOWM postcard. “No man is free who is economically in slavery.” Because utility companies profited from federal contracts, MOWM’s heightened emphasis on “integrating colored citizens in employment of public utilities” fitted its long-established goal of pressing the implementation of EO 8802. Southwestern Bell stood “in flat refusal . . . to even discuss hiring Negroes,” but there was reason for optimism because telephone companies in cities with similar geography, demographics, and “mores and employment patterns” such as Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, and New York had recently integrated their workforces without incident. Historically, white women operated Southwestern Bell’s switchboards and staffed its local collection offices. This occupation was a coveted pink-collar position that attracted working-

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class women who wanted to avoid factory labor. They were hard to come by, but jobs in public utilities presented one of the more respectable and better-paying options available for working-class African American women, and MOWM wanted to guarantee access in this desirable field. St. Louis MOWM estimated that African Americans collectively paid four thousand dollars per day for telephone service and reasoned that this entitled African American workers to positions within the company.10 For these reasons, Southwestern Bell was an ideal target for what an observer called one of St. Louis MOWM’s “greatest and longest campaigns.”11 As an experienced grassroots strategist, McNeal knew that “the Southwestern Bell Telephone Company is going to be a tough job,” but the promise of secure and comfortable employment appealed to “men and women of color in all walks of life in St. Louis.”12 A boycott was out of the question because, by nature, telephone calls are private. Social and community pressure could not reinforce economic sanctions in this situation, so it was unreasonable to utilize this tactic as a way to leverage power in negotiations with the company. Likewise, voluntarily renouncing telephone service was as inconvenient as it was unrealistic. Instead, McNeal tried reaching across racial lines to enlist supportive whites. “A large number of both colored and white organizations,” McNeal noted, were “fully behind the effort” to integrate Southwestern Bell’s workforce.13 Like many progressives in the generation studied by Gunnar Myrdal in American Dilemma, McNeal thought that white liberals would act as agents of change once they were made aware of an inherently unfair issue.14 A. Philip Randolph noticed a change taking place during the 1940s, writing in the Chicago Defender that the “so-called master white race” was “re-examining their own moral, spiritual and intellectual armament.”15 Looking back a generation later, August Meier and Elliot Rudwick described the era as a “time when growing segments of the white public, stimulated by the ideological concerns of the New Deal for America’s dispossessed citizens and by the irony of fighting the racist Nazis while tolerating domestic racism, were gradually becoming more sensitive to the black man’s plight.”16 These shifting ideological currents suggested to some that this was an opportune time to reach across the racial divide and work together for equality.17 More whites than ever, some thought, would not only be supportive—a few might even help. St. Louis MOWM’s campaign at Southwestern Bell rested on a presumption that, in McNeal’s words, “it is not the will of the St. Louis community . . . to practice such [an] undemocratic, un-American and pro-Hitler employment policy.”18 The experience of Eleanor Green typified that of African American women applying for work at Southwestern Bell. She was one of “a number of local well qualified young Negro women” who, the St. Louis American reported, “have made application to the Telephone Company and that none of these have been given jobs while the company continues to beg for workers.” A former schoolteacher, Green

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was upset but not surprised that the hiring screener seemed impressed with her skills and professional experience but did not extend an offer of employment. She was received graciously and treated courteously throughout the application process “with a diplomacy we would find hard to resent,” but was given the ostensibly specious explanation that all of the advertised positions were filled. Southwestern Bell promised that résumés would be kept on file and carefully reconsidered if an unexpected opening arose, a hollow, ritualistic assurance that countless workingclass applicants heard when they tried to get jobs with employers who simply did not want them. It was hard for “pretty intelligent Colored girls” like Green to “put the Bell telephone Company on the spot” because the company handled discrimination so demurely. After thanking her interviewer, Green reminded her to carefully consider applications such as her own, because “I was qualified for the job and also because Negroes as a race were subscribers to the telephone company and deserved some share in the jobs.” The experience amounted to, in Green’s words, “the run-around” to which African Americans of her generation had uneasily accustomed themselves. Even though “care was exercised to not even mention race,” the St. Louis American reported, “the March Movement takes the position that the only reason none of these young women have been hired is the fact that they are Colored.”19 T. D. McNeal argued that marginalizing talented job seekers impeded the war effort, and he denounced “the pigeon-holing of applications due to race, creed or color” at companies such as Southwestern Bell as “an undemocratic, un-American and pro-Hitler employment policy.”20 To begin the campaign at Southwestern Bell, St. Louis MOWM printed stamps that sold for a penny apiece emblazoned with the slogan “Discrimination in employment is undemocratic. I protest. Hire Negroes now.” Affixed to the envelope of phone bills, the intended effect was to show that paying customers favored integrating the company’s workforce. The armchair tactic allowed ordinary people to articulate their disagreement with Southwestern Bell’s hiring practices. Because envelopes have no discernible race, the stickers suggested that support for integrating the workforce was widespread and across the color line.21 McNeal also urged supporters to “call the company’s business office and register their opposition to the employment policy.”22 These forms of protest allowed people who were busy with work or other affairs to add their voice to a chorus of dissent without having to commit much of a day to picket or risk being identified by powerful people who could make economic reprisals against them. 23 Using the previous year’s gains at U.S. Cartridge as an example of when “hard headed discriminatory policies” were overcome with mass protests, St. Louis MOWM added more pressure by organizing a picket outside of Southwestern Bell.24 On June 12, 1943, a crowd numbering from one to three hundred “from all walks of life and of a wide age range” gathered outside “the jim crow citadel” to “bring this

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St. Louis MOWM’s protests at Southwestern Bell Telephone in 1943 signaled a broadening of the organization’s focus beyond integrating major industrial sites to include agitating for greater access to professional and pink-collar employment opportunities. (540.481, Ernest Calloway Addenda, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

situation to the attention of our fellow St. Louisians dramatically.” T. D. McNeal led the picket line while it marched in single file on “the walls of Jericho,” demanding “decent” jobs. “Following the flag of the United States of America” and “mute in their appeal to be accorded full rights of citizenship,” St. Louis MOWM’s demonstrators attacked the hypocrisy of racial injustice in America while the country fought a noble war against fascism abroad.25 Members of this silent mass carried “appropriate banners and signs” loosely tied around the slogan “Work where we spend our money.” The theme of their message was that “we pay our money to make Bell Telephone a solid institution,” and, therefore, African Americans “are entitled to some of the returns.”26 As at St. Louis MOWM’s previous demonstrations at Carter and U.S. Cartridge, McNeal emphasized decorum and order. The serious countenance of demonstrators at this event symbolized their upright bearing, and the silent propriety minimized the chances for a flare-up between protesters and spectators. Reflective observers might have noticed that the self-controlled demeanor on display showed that African Americans had the personal bearing needed for the kind of level-headed white-collar work that telephone operators and bill collectors performed.27 Through the “politics of respectability,” Evelyn Higginbotham writes,

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many in the Jim Crow era “equated public behavior with self-respect” as part of a case “for the advancement of African Americans as a group.” Particularly among the loosely defined middle class of educated African Americans, stressing their propriety was thought to be a way that individuals could show their virtues and be accorded their rights as full citizens.28 Newspaper coverage of St. Louis MOWM’s action at Southwestern Bell was highly partisan. Not surprisingly, accounts from the African American press and the white-owned mainstream dailies differed. The St. Louis American, one of the city’s black-owned weeklies, reported that “fully 90 percent of the white observers were sympathetic” to the picket and that some of them sent well wishes to St. Louis MOWM’s office. The American depicted white observers as ranging from favorable to curious, with comments from the audience being, “Why shouldn’t they work here, they have telephones!” and “What is it about? I can’t see what the signs say.”29 The white-owned St. Louis Star portrayed white observers as disaffected and uninterested in the spectacle of a crowd “peaceably” marching outside of Southwestern Bell’s building, and the city’s largest newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, reported that the picket elicited only “the casual curiosity of passerby.”30 Knowing that the pages of local newspapers were a critical front on which St. Louis MOWM waged its assault on racial exclusion, Bell Telephone tried to head off protests with an advertisement placed in St. Louis’s most widely circulated African American newspaper, the Argus.31 This full-page ad showed a hand reaching for a phone and a caption reading, “Please, Mister, can this call wait? This is the busy hour.” The message was ostensibly about curbing daytime telephone use in order to free up switchboards, but the advertisement’s placement in an African American newspaper printed a week after MOWM’s protest could be read as suggesting that such agitation was untimely and destructive to the war effort.32 Phone calls should be made at the right time, and the advertisement implied that protests should wait for after the war. Rectifying racial exclusion in the company’s ranks, something St. Louis MOWM’s literature called “an un-American situation,” needed to be “dramatized” with more creative methods.33 Traditional picket lines did not succeed at getting the company to open its workforce, so St. Louis MOWM became more confrontational. More than 200 African Americans were organized to pay their phone bills en masse on Saturday morning, the busiest time of the week in Southwestern Bell’s office. To slow down collections, the demonstrators arrived with exact amounts of unsorted pennies to remunerate the company for that month’s telephone services.34 This unconventional demonstration intended to overwhelm cashiers and hamper the collection process. Symbolically, the mass of pennies would make an impressive visual statement about the power of African American consumer dollars. MOWM’s plans were somehow leaked to the company, and Bell Telephone

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prepared for the protest by stationing additional collectors at the counter. Each of them was equipped with empty change bags, a stack of receipts, and instructions to count the coins after the demonstration subsided. Southwestern Bell hoped that by expediting the collections process, it could get protesters out of the building as quickly as possible and neutralize MOWM’s effort. Still, newspapers reported, “considerable excitement was caused at the Bell Telephone Building” when 205 “irate” MOWM activists and supporters arrived simultaneously.35 Like the pickets earlier that year, the penny-paying protest made headlines but did not yield immediate success. Social movements need results to keep participants interested, and once again the campaign at Bell Telephone failed to generate long-lasting enthusiasm for the kind of continual agitation that was necessary to hasten the pace of corporate change. Three months later, after a series of negotiations involving Bell Telephone and the War Manpower Commission, St. Louis MOWM announced a small victory. Southwestern Bell planned to open a branch office in a predominantly African American neighborhood, at 1047 North Vandeventer Avenue. Interior renovations would commence once the present tenants’ lease expired, and the office would open as soon as possible. This development promised better service to the neighborhood and a small number of jobs staffing the front desk to “receive payment of bills, handle moves and orders for telephone service and perform certain accounting functions.”36 This new facility allowed Southwestern Bell to employ more African American women while also keeping them confined in clerical positions, thus avoiding the potential for confrontations that integrating its switchboard staff created. This was important to the company because operators in the switchboard room worked in close confines with one another, and performing their duties required women to lean over each other in ways that violated cultural taboos about personal space, race, and social integration.37 MOWM cautiously praised the new office as “a step forward” and hailed it as proof that, with enough prodding, Southwestern Bell’s management took “a sympathetic appraisal of the problem.” Though the new facility was only a small gesture and extremely limited in scope, St. Louis MOWM applauded the Vandeventer Avenue branch as a necessary first step toward the “ultimate objective” of “complete integration of Negro workers into all phases” of occupations at Southwestern Bell.38 This advance was limited, and it did not materialize immediately. As late as 1958, only 121 of Southwestern Bell’s more than 7,000 employees were African American. Unlike linemen and meter readers who labored in the public eye and served as career role models for children, ninety-two percent of the company’s black workers were custodians who labored in veritable invisibility. Likewise, anyone calling the operator could be reasonably certain that the voice on the other end was that of a white person. These occupations remained lily-white for another gen-

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eration, a testament to the stranglehold that white workers had on public jobs.39 The modest gains made by protesting at Southwestern Bell encouraged St. Louis MOWM to wage similar campaigns at other public utilities, including the Union Electric Company, Laclede Gas and Light Company, and St. Louis Public Service Company. These were strategically important businesses because the wartime labor shortage offered a momentary window in which African American workers could be integrated into industries and occupations that would remain vital during peacetime.40 Even with FEPC hearings in the city on the horizon in 1944, MOWM’s lobbying efforts were not always successful. T. D. McNeal had separate conferences with the Union Electric Company and Laclede Gas Light in December 1943, “for the purpose of exploring the possibilities of integrating the Negro citizens into all branches of your employment.” They reached an “understanding” that “white-collar jobs” would be integrated, but neither company took steps to honor that agreement.41 The delay tactic worked. McNeal kept applying pressure, but there was little power to force a change. The war was coming to an end, the FEPC was being eviscerated by Congress, and these companies continued to exclude African American workers with impunity.

Citizen’s Civil Rights Committee and a Summer of Sit-ins, 1944 In the summer of 1944, African American women took the lead in holding roughly a dozen sit-ins at the busiest department-store lunch counters in downtown St. Louis. This kind of discrimination, which made African Americans “feel unwholesome and uncomfortable when they appear,” ranked second on a New York–based survey, “Types of Segregation and Jim-Crowism Which are Most Irritating to the Negro Minority.”42 The timing of this direct-action campaign was significant, for as the war waned, so did the possibility of tapping antifascist impulses to further civil rights efforts—and so long as there was a war, African Americans could, in one historian’s words, use “democracy’s rhetoric against itself” to explain why merchants should “give all of our countrymen justice.”43 The sit-ins exemplified the best of MOWM’s plans: unity among grassroots members from a variety of protest organizations, the utilization of nonviolent direct action, and the potential of previously dormant activists to take action. This form of protest also typified a long tradition of women’s activism in consumer movements that emphasized the roles of participants as mothers and homemakers.44 Writing of activism in the postwar years, Thomas Sugrue noted, “Most civil rights and radical organizations . . . had male heads but depended on the energy of a large female rank and file.”45 The same could be said of St. Louis MOWM, and the predominance of women in the 1944 sit-ins represents this tendency.

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The driving force of the sit-ins was the Citizen’s Civil Rights Committee (CCRC), a mostly female arm of the local NAACP that was also virtually synonymous with MOWM because there was so much overlap in membership. Regardless of whose banner the sit-ins were under, in the span of only four months this action led to some improvements in the quality of food service at several department stores. The CCRC and MOWM collaboration was successful largely because of their ability to attract working-class African American women from a multiplicity of other organizations. At its peak, this group consisted of about forty African American women, fifteen “white, courageous, determined and dignified women,” and a small number of men.46 Working together, they helped “hasten the winning of the war and lay the foundation for a lasting peace.”47 Pearl S. Maddox, a prominent NAACP member, was at the forefront of this campaign, and MOWM members Thelma Grant and Ruth Mattie Wheeler were just behind her in public visibility. Dozens of other women took the same risks as these organizational leaders, but many of them are historically anonymous. There is a frustrating absence of documentary sources about women such as Hattie Bobo, Lillian Sawyer, and Evelyn Roberts, but their participation in the St. Louis sit-ins was vital to the limited success that this campaign achieved.48 The fragmented and insufficient information about the lives of these women from the recent past attests to what one writer called the “fleeting presence of women as subjects across a vast landscape of the past . . . because of the comparative lack of archival trace to secure them in the sightlines of history.”49 There is little in the historical record about the biographies of these women, and generalized language from a press release written by St. Louis MOWM describing them as women who “came from all walks of life . . . professional people, office workers, house wives, college students” is among the best information that is available about them—and even that is not without potential inaccuracies or embellishments.50 This depiction of the sit-in participants gave them the appearance of representing a professional middle class and, perhaps intentionally, differentiated their actions from more aggressive blue-collar agitation and grittier working-class culture. More than a year before the St. Louis sit-ins, there was an unsuccessful legislative effort to desegregate public accommodations throughout the state. In 1943 Representative Edwin F. Kenswil, Missouri’s lone African American state legislator and husband of St. Louis NAACP vice president Liza Kenswil, proposed House Bill 47 for “equal privileges in public spaces.” Modeled after other recently approved civil rights acts in Kansas, Illinois, and Iowa, House Bill 47 called for desegregating restaurants, theaters, taverns, hotels, and public conveyances, with violations punishable by a misdemeanor sentence of thirty to ninety days, a three-hundreddollar fine, or both.51 St. Louis branches of MOWM, the NAACP, and the Negro

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Business League all lobbied aggressively in support of the bill. Their efforts culminated in a “mass demonstration” outside of Missouri’s congressional building in Jefferson City on the day that the proposed legislation cleared the Committee on Civil and Criminal Procedure and came to the house floor for discussion and voting.52 Representative Phillips W. Moss, the “Tom Connally” of St. Louis, led an attack on Kenswil’s proposed legislation, likening it to “the old prohibition act—a law that possibly the people were not ready for and would not enforce.” Kenswil defended his position, arguing that he was “no radical” for proposing a law allowing “all citizens [to] enjoy the same privileges.”53 As usual, the powerful symbolism of African American soldiers was used, with proponents arguing that “he is good enough to enjoy the fruits of his sacrifices just like any other citizen.” The St. Louis Argus hailed House Bill 47 as something that would bring Missouri “out of the horse and buggy days,” into a modernity where human rights mattered and citizens participated equally in the daily life of an egalitarian society. Supporters of House Bill 47 knew that there was a disparity between law and implementation—after all, EO 8802 illustrated that point all too well. Still, they recognized that “the law against stealing or robbery does not stop such crimes, but the law is there and has its effect.”54 House Bill 47, of course, did not become law. As the legislative system revealed its limitations, direct action sounded to some like a reasonable option. The political system failed to address the need for social reform at a moment when leadership was critical, and the sit-ins took place only when legislators proved unable to meet the rising expectations of citizens. Kenswil’s push for a statewide public accommodations bill was unsuccessful, but similar local legislation was passed in St. Louis during 1944. St. Louis’s first African American alderman, Jasper Caston, introduced a bill to desegregate all concessions operating on city property, enforceable with fines of twenty-five to five hundred dollars. Future sit-in participants and supporters Pearl Maddox, Birdie Beal Anderson, and Henry Winfred Wheeler observed the proceedings, as did ten African American pastors, a group of students from the local high school, and other “interested citizens.” After a vote of twenty-two to four that took place one month before the first department-store lunch-counter sit-in, Caston’s bill legally desegregated the lunchrooms at city hall and the Municipal Courts Building.55 Repealing the segregation policy was the culmination of a campaign begun in 1942 by local NAACP president Sidney Redmond, but it did not alter the culture of a racist workplace.56 Social stigma and the underlying racial animosity at the foundation of segregation hardly made the cafeteria a welcome or likely place for interracial dining. A St. Louis Argus investigation revealed that some division heads were “angry with the Negro employees for eating” in previously forbidden areas, a statement that suggests some African American employees tested the boundaries of where they could actually dine. The investigation also found that

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at least one African American employee claimed that he was asked to “take a cup of coffee in the kitchen.” Already tense, the situation at city hall was exacerbated by a rumor that one African American worker was fired for eating in the recently desegregated lunchroom. Argus reporters found that this employee was away on personal vacation, not fired. The existence of rumors such as this and fabrications such as “Push Day” or the Eleanor Clubs suggest that uneasiness and animosity about race relations were high during the war.57 Because MOWM identified itself as “a mass action movement . . . fighting for justice for the American Negro,” it had to develop a program that applied throughout the United States. Recognizing that “different parts of the country are ready for different kinds of action,” MOWM’s national office urged local branches to utilize nonviolent direct action to desegregate buses in Richmond, open lily-white YMCA hotels in New York to all patrons, and repeal restrictive covenants in Chicago. Regardless of the target or the region, MOWM viewed protests as a way to enhance negotiating leverage in conferences with municipal authorities and corporate entities. Bold agitation was the foundation of MOWM’s organizational identity, but it was also concerned with bigger issues such as shaping how Americans thought about race and offering pragmatic solutions to local forms of discrimination.58 Many believed that public opinion could be swayed by the discipline and dignity of individuals participating in MOWM’s actions. To accomplish this, MOWM’s national office did its best to inform local branches about how to best utilize nonviolent goodwill direct action.59 E. Pauline Myers presented the aggressive use of this tactic as the technique for creating substantive change. She asserted, “The old method of conferences, round table discussions, pink tea parties, luncheons and Black Cabinets has been exploded. The patience of Negro America is sorely tired.” Myers continued, “The Negro has experimented for seventy-eight years with the education formula showing the white man why he should be free. He is not asking for a hand out. The Negro American has come to maturity and he wants to be free to walk as a man. . . . He is tired of being the white man’s burden.”60 To advance awareness about using nonviolent direct action, MOWM and the Fellowship of Reconciliation jointly sponsored the St. Louis Race Relations Institute’s three-day program that was attended by an estimated four hundred people.61 E. Pauline Myers’s visit to St. Louis was paid for by FOR as part of a broader national strategy to instruct and train MOWM activists in how to confront racism through what amounted to a combination of Thoreauvian noncooperation with Gandhian spiritual solidarity.62 Myers tried to demystify nonviolent goodwill direct action as something that “seems like a really long hard name but it is really simple and easy to understand.”63 This weekend program was a step toward clarifying MOWM’s new direction for grassroots activists. The most significant panel, “Non-violent Good Will Direct Action in St. Louis,” featured Myers, James Farmer of FOR and

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CORE, sociologist Ira De Reid, and pacifist author Krishnalal Shridharani.64 Many of FOR’s members were white, but their appearance in the program was not unusual because MOWM’s national office had already been schooling its members in nonviolence by sponsoring training sessions led by Bayard Rustin and A. J. Muste at the Harlem Ashram.65 A charismatic but controversial cleric named the “No. 1 U.S. Pacifist” by Time, Muste was associated with Randolph since the two appeared together in 1927 on a “symposium on the Negro in industry.” Although MOWM was very public about being an all-black organization, its leader understood the importance of utilizing white supporters. Although Muste did not work very closely with MOWM, his young colleague Bayard Rustin did.66 After two days of speeches and panels, Rustin split the mixed-race audience into groups “to study amicable solutions to racial questions involving social, political and economic conditions” through conducting a yearlong poll of public opinion about integrated workforces.67 The ultimate purpose of the survey was to quantifiably discredit the rationale that white workers would inevitably protest working alongside African Americans. MOWM and FOR canvassed white neighborhoods in St. Louis, gathering 1,405 responses to questions such as, “Do you favor the employment of blacks in St. Louis public utilities in positions for which they have the necessary qualifications and abilities?”68 White FOR members worked in white neighborhoods, and Nita Blackwell led a contingent of fifteen MOWM canvassers who polled more than 300 respondents at shopping centers and other public venues.69 The St. Louis Race Relations Institute and the survey project gave Gateway City activists from a variety of organizations a venue to interact and build networks with one another. This collaboration primed some for what became a summerlong wave of sit-ins aimed at integrating lunch counters and getting retail jobs. These efforts were waged by a coalition of people with ties, often simultaneously, to local branches of MOWM, FOR, and NAACP. Prior to formally launching the sit-ins, MOWM led a fund-raising appeal that collected more than one thousand dollars, and A. Philip Randolph came to town to espouse the tactic at a MOWM rally. “Promulgated by the National March on Washington Movement and the Fellowship of Reconciliation” but originally organized under the auspices of the St. Louis NAACP’s Citizen’s Civil Rights Committee, the sit-ins were the product of collaboration between members of all three organizations. In a misleading characterization that speaks to MOWM’s reputation as a leader in militant agitation, local newspaper coverage sometimes credited it as the wellspring of the sit-ins. Behind the misnaming was the fact that women in the St. Louis chapters of the NAACP and MOWM found a place where their leadership could thrive through the CCRC. Not fully beholden to the NAACP or MOWM, this group was something of a joint committee controlled by women with ties to both organizations, as well as to others such as the Postal Alliance Auxiliary and the Civil Liberties Committee.70

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MOWM inherited visible leadership of the sit-ins from longtime NAACP member Pearl Maddox. Maddox was the primary strategist behind the sit-ins, and she often personally participated in them. After the bank threatened to recall her mortgage, she shied away from public visibility and approached T. D. McNeal to assume leadership of the movement that she nurtured. McNeal’s reputation as a leading organizer in the city made him an obvious choice to be a spokesperson for the sitins. Better yet, employment with the BSCP insulated him from economic reprisals, and he lived in “a little apartment” so he did not have to be afraid of banks retaliating as they did to Maddox.71 Because Maddox essentially appointed McNeal to be a figurehead of a movement that she had built, the sit-ins were “not really a March on Washington project, not a project headed by McNeal.” McNeal was the public face of the sit-ins, and he was reported as being “in charge,” but he deflected these accolades and openly acknowledged, “The women were still calling the shots. . . . These women really did the work.”72 Thelma McNeal, Vora Thompson, Shermine Smith, Rosie Johnson, and Ruth Mattie Wheeler were the most active MOWM members during the sit-ins, and they understood that “certain possible dangers” came along with implementing the techniques of “non-violent direct action.”73 St. Louis MOWM’s members were familiar with the theoretical and philosophical foundations of this technique because several of them were present when it was taught at the Race Relations Institute workshop.74 Women who were involved in St. Louis’s sit-ins described their activism as the result of a belief that they were responsible for making the home front a better place for soldiers to return. They could not serve their country by bearing arms, but these women expressed their patriotism by questioning racism and agitating for equitable access to public space. Describing themselves as “lay[ing] the foundation for a lasting peace” by making a “safe place” for “our sons, husbands, and sweethearts” returning from war, they harnessed powerful rhetoric about the role of women in wartime that accentuated their willingness to sacrifice loved ones for the national good.75 This enlarged conception of the home sphere was expressed in religious discourse, with women saying that they were “praying that the Hitlers over here see the light before our boys return from over there.”76 In Mary McLeod Bethune’s words, women such as these were doing something to “make democracy worth fighting for.”77 African American newspapers denounced public segregation as “fascism, pure and simple,” and MOWM’s organizational literature explained the sit-ins as a Gandhian method of fulfilling the egalitarian American promise.78 The sit-in participants gave a more personal explanation for their actions: they had simply “reached the limit of human endurance in accepting the yoke of fascism in America.”79 “The further denial of service” at department-store lunch counters, another explained, “affects us more than can be expressed in decent words.”80 These women connected human rights to consumer rights, asserting that dignity in a

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consumer economy was contingent upon unrestricted participation in the marketplace. Whatever their motives, women of the CCRC demonstrated “devotion to the cause and moral stamina that will not quit them when the going gets tough.”81 These women acted independently and on their own behalf; they did not wait for national organizations to bring campaigns to them. In doing so, they must have surprised MOWM’s national executive committee. Indeed, St. Louis did not even appear on its list of potential locales for nonviolent direct action to be implemented.82 MOWM’s campaigns to desegregate lunch counters usually began with letters and telephone calls to store management “protesting this humiliating pattern.”83 In a letter sent to Famous-Barr and Scruggs to “denote the complete absence of Negroes as workers in your store and no facilities whatsoever for Negro patrons to eat in your cafeteria or dining room,” Leyton Weston of MOWM wrote, “We would appreciate knowing whether or not this condition is an oversight on your part or whether you are deliberately discriminating against American citizens because of color.”84 The fact that MOWM wrote before taking action shows that it saw discussion as an essential method of fostering change. With correspondence ignored, direct action was seen as necessary to force open channels of communication. Changing a racist culture was just as necessary as repealing racist policies, and genuine communication as equals was a vital step in this process.85 St. Louis’s first wartime sit-in occurred on Monday evening, May 15, 1944, at Stix, Baer, and Fuller. This store had a highly visible lunch counter that made it prone to civil rights activism and was “chosen because that store was more friendly toward colored people.” Because the store “enjoyed” sizable patronage from St. Louis’s African American shoppers, boycott tactics could also be added to compound the pressure.86 NAACP members Pearl S. Maddox and Birdie Beal Anderson took a seat at the lunch counter flanked by a “valiant” group of “three young American pretty brown college girls” affiliated with MOWM: Vora Thompson, Shermine Smith, and Ruth Mattie Wheeler.87 At around seven o’clock that evening, they occupied a small corner of the food counter and calmly placed an order without “fear” or “excitement.” A firsthand account of the incident depicts the women as stoic and poised, starkly contrasting them to the shocked waitress, who “stammered . . . incoherently.” In a short time, Thompson was invited into a private office for a conference with store management. Mr. Hyatt, the manager, explained that “revolutionary change” would “create a disturbance” and reminded Thompson that racially integrated dining services were “against the traditions of this state.” She “intelligently explained” that “our brothers, and our sweethearts are suffering and dying all over the world, to destroy Fascism and you and I must get rid of it at home.”88 While Thompson was away with Hyatt, Hugh Gilmartin stepped into the scene. Described as a “true conscientious” Catholic, this white U.S. Cartridge employee who had unsuccessfully volunteered for service in a mixed-race army

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division earlier that year nonchalantly ordered a soda and sandwich—and then passed both items on to Shermine Smith and Ruth Mattie Wheeler.89 They ate “leisurely” and were “unmolested” while “hundreds of curious persons gazed” at the spectacle of two African American women casually doing what white customers took for granted as a basic right. Upon Thompson’s return, the group started prodding Hyatt about whether the store discriminated against any other groups. He admitted that “other races including Japanese and Germans” were served, and he eventually stated that African Americans were the only group restricted from dining at the store.90 Famous-Barr, a store that donated to the NAACP’s 1940 fund drive, was another favorite target of the CCRC.91 In an account of a sit-in there from the St. Louis American, the store’s workers included a “cute little illiterate waitress” and “some kind of a nut” who shoved Modestine Crute Thornton for participating. In retaliation, angry demonstrators chased off the unnamed assailant while quoting the United States Constitution in their pursuit of the offender. During this uproar, thirteen African American women and one white friend remained resolutely perched at Famous-Barr’s counter, waiting to be served.92 Incidents such as these caught the attention of St. Louis’s police, who treated the sit-ins as a threat to public safety and began stationing undercover officers at department stores to observe the action. MOWM member David Grant recognized many of these men because of his work in the circuit attorney’s office, and he reported that the stores were “honeycombed with cops, plainclothes cops,” that summer.93 This “dauntless band of well-trained young colored women” continued their protests throughout the summer, strategizing in a piecemeal manner and staffing sit-ins with whatever possible demonstrators were free on a given afternoon. Their acumen as organizers developed as the campaign continued. For example, the date for direct action was switched from Mondays to the busier lunch hours of Saturdays because management would see more significant economic losses if they closed the shop at that time. They also learned to prolong protests and delay law enforcement’s response time by choreographing simultaneous campaigns at several stores. Sometimes they stayed put after the lunch counter closed, choosing “to sit and enjoy the scenery” long after stores “discontinued all service” for the day. To enlarge attendance at the sit-ins, the CCRC appealed to students and faculty at nearby colleges and universities. Students and clerics from Eden Seminary, a school that had a FOR contingent of about thirty members, printed and distributed “several thousand” handbills explaining the sit-ins in patriotic and Christian terminology that portrayed desegregation as the natural democratic extension of a war against Nazi Germany’s fascist extremes.94 By July, the third month of these demonstrations, participants at these “silent protests” were carrying or wearing placards inscribed with patriotic and antiracist slogans.95 A

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photograph of one from the St. Louis Argus shows Hattie Thomas’s sign reading “in christ there is no black and white.” Jessie McMillan sat to her left, with a sign reading “a nazis bullet knows no prejudice.”96 Perhaps most dramatically, Hattie Duvall went to a sit-in with a sign that simply declared, “I invested five sons in the Invasion.”97 Perhaps the most significant development during the sit-ins was the greater utilization of white allies, the presence of whom demonstrated that at least some white residents supported desegregating the lunch counters.98 The involvement of white allies such as Gilmartin was symbolically powerful, and having them order food for the demonstrators made for a theatrically dramatic way to portray the injustice of the racial status quo. Of course, not all who appeared white really were. At a Scruggs Vandervoort’s sit-in on June 10, some light-skinned African Americans passing for white successfully ordered food, proving to observers that “only persons who seemed white” were treated with respect. The St. Louis Argus argued that such a strong commitment to the myth of white supremacy was akin to “hanging a Millstone around the neck of America that will drag her down to hell.”99 White allies became increasingly noticeable at the sit-ins. By July, when concurrent campaigns were held at Stix, Famous, and Grand Leader, fifteen white women helped the forty “courageous, determined, and dignified women” of the CCRC by purchasing and distributing ice cream.100 All three of the white males who supported the sit-ins were Catholic, and two of them were clerics. Women were a majority of the white supporters, and all of them made public their affiliations with Christian denominations.101 The St. Louis sit-ins stand out in MOWM’s history because of the presence of whites and the predominance of women. This incident shows that MOWM’s allblack membership policy did not exclude collaboration with white allies; it only meant that sympathetic whites were permitted to join existing campaigns that germinated from within African American communities. This was the first time that whites were involved in a St. Louis MOWM campaign, and their place in this protest did not instigate much dissent from African Americans who were in this organization. The presence of these important allies reveals that St. Louis MOWM took a pragmatic approach toward facilitating protests. Including whites was strategically sound: not only could they procure food, but their presence showed that white supremacy was not an indomitable ideological monolith.102 Hostility and animosity accompanied the color line, but St. Louis was a long way from places such as Birmingham, which had a reputation for vigilante violence targeting those who worked against segregation. With rare exceptions, eyewitness accounts of the sit-ins make little mention of police or private citizens threatening or accosting any of the demonstrators.103 At the first sit-ins, the St. Louis American reported that the only suggestion of dissension was that “heads turned and people

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mumbled.” A week later, the paper claimed, “not one angry word was spoken,” and there was “no unkind attitude shown by anyone present” other than stubborn managers who refused to accommodate African American patrons.104 According to T. D. McNeal, it was ordinary for “large crowds” of curious white patrons to congregate and observe what must have been an unusual sight, but “few comments” expressing opposition were ever uttered. In fact, McNeal claims that most white spectators who did speak up “expressed the belief that the demonstrators were well within their rights” and offered a “sad commentary on our democracy” because “such demonstrations are necessary.”105 Reports of the sit-ins suggest that most white opposition came from store employees and managers, not customers. “Close observation disclosed the fact that not a single white customer at the lunch counters left before finishing his food or refused to take a seat because of our presence,” wrote the CCRC in an official statement. “On all occasions sympathetic expressions in our favor were made by white customers. . . . In addition, we have received numerous letters and telephone calls from white citizens encouraging us to carry on. In the meantime management took the position that white customers would not permit lifting of the ban.”106 Muted resistance does not necessarily mean that customers were complacent with this bold challenge to the color line. Although not physically confrontational or verbally hostile, efforts to counter the sit-ins were often successful. For instance, at three sit-ins staged at Stix, Famous-Barr, and Scruggs Vandervoort’s, the demonstrators met the same response. Waitresses followed management’s orders and declined service, white customers grumbled and fled, and the lunch counters closed for the day.107 The fact that these stores closed their grills to ward off a threat to segregation reveals how invested the owners and managers of these stores were in maintaining rigid racial lines, even if it cost them an afternoon’s earnings. MOWM’s 1944 sit-ins, much like CORE’s sit-ins after the war, went underreported in St. Louis’s daily newspapers. The city’s most widely circulated newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, ignored the sit-ins through much of the summer, finally reporting on them with a three-inch column in July. White-owned mainstream media outlets maintained a code of silence designed to minimize the publicity that the direct-action campaign could generate. This silence could have been an intentional form of resistance to covering antiracist activism or a practical decision to avoid triggering a potentially violent backlash, but whatever its motivations, St. Louis’s white-owned press contributed to the illusion that the city was not an epicenter of struggles against white supremacy.108 African American newspapers gave favorable coverage to the sit-ins, and they often portrayed the action as part of a complementary struggle for consumer rights and civil rights. St. Louis American columnist and local postal worker Henry Winfield Wheeler was arguably the most supportive local journalist.109 Wheeler was

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a MOWM member since the St. Louis chapter organized, and his daughter, Ruth Mattie Wheeler, was one of the most committed participants of sit-ins. He charged Famous-Barr with “Sabotage!” and argued that the store’s refusal to integrate its lunch counters was undermining “President Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie.” In Wheeler’s weekly column, he made a case “that you cannot be happy as long as any group of human beings are being denied food or drink or civil rights and economic justice.” African American women in the CCRC were “looking for a new world after the war,” but Wheeler found his inspiration in the past. He saw progressive white Christians collaborating with MOWM as heirs to a tradition established by abolitionists such as “Elijah Parrish Lovejoy, Chauncey I. Filley, James Broadhead, Francis Blair, Judge Roswell Field and Carl Shurz” because they “spoke out fearlessly . . . in those dark days.” By locating the historical inspiration of desegregation efforts in the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement, Wheeler implied that the Second World War was just as significant for race relations as the Civil War. In his columns, Wheeler also presented females at the sit-ins as nonthreatening collegetrained “pretty young colored girls,” who only sought “nourishment like ice cream, soda, sandwich or malted milk” while they were out shopping at the same department stores where they freely purchased other consumer items. Wheeler and other journalists reinforced the image of these activist women as properly bourgeois and thoroughly respectable. He described them as “cultured” and “refined” individuals who “gracefully” took seats at the lunch counter. As Wheeler depicted it, the privilege of unbridled consumer rights for educated middle-class black women was being undermined by “the cute little illiterate waitress at Famous-Barr” and others like her who refused to take their orders.110 The St. Louis sit-ins occurred throughout the summer of 1944 and were abated only by a two-week moratorium during which the Mayor’s Race Relations Committee sought a solution. Formed shortly before Mayor William Becker’s untimely death in an aviation accident, this committee was one of 1,350 such bodies in the United States by 1950 that were concerned with improving intergroup relations.111 Although municipal authorities usually sponsored committees such as this, they lacked any legal powers. Though certainly well intended, their existence gave the illusion of progressive action, when in reality little was actually being done. Mayor Aloys P. Kauffman used the committee to proactively prevent a wartime race riot akin to the one in Detroit, but his leadership style was marked by a penchant for utilizing committees such as this one to distance himself from unpopular or controversial decisions.112 Kauffman’s political capital among African Americans in St. Louis was already in decline before the Mayor’s Race Relations Committee announced its unpopular compromise regarding the city’s department-store lunch counters. Less than a month earlier, Kauffman was criticized for creating a thirtysix-member committee to nominate an appointee for a recently vacated position

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on the school board. There were four African Americans on this committee, but they were disregarded as “window dressing” because their numbers were not significant enough to make an impact in determining who the new official would be. Local African American newspapers accused Kauffman of “committee packing” and using an “Italian hand” to undermine the influence of African Americans in city politics.113 The upsurge of militant activism prodded the Mayor’s Race Relations Committee out of its inertia. T. D. McNeal and David Grant were long-standing members of this group, as were eight others who had participated in MOWM events.114 There was reason for optimism in the fact that the committee got involved at all. Arbitrating a deal between the city’s biggest retailers and working-class African American activists was well beyond the usual scope of this group, especially considering that its typical activities included sponsoring the National Negro Music Festival at Sportsman’s Park and initiating nonbinding informal discussions with the Real Estate Exchange to open racially restricted housing blocks.115 MOWM’s principal spokesperson, David Grant, believed that “a march should never be staged during attempts at negotiation,” but women from the CCRC had less faith in the ability of bureaucratic channels to generate meaningful reforms.116 The city’s African American press depicted these women as demure, but individuals such as CCRC leader and MOWM member Thelma McNeal had enough political acumen to question whether “bedtime stories” and “phony conferences” could sufficiently address their concerns.117 Sit-in participants wanted to fulfill a democratic ideal that “our boys are fighting and dying for, and what we are paying taxes and buying bonds and saving stamps for, and preaching to the world about,” but the Mayor’s Committee was more interested in negotiating a way “to amicably settle the demand for equal treatment at all lunch counters.”118 Women in the CCRC thought that committees such as this one had a tendency to discourage sensational headlines and undercut militancy, but they also believed that confrontation without negotiation was unfruitful. Distrustful of a comparatively moderate and politically weak committee, the CCRC “remained busy from day to day getting ready for future demonstrations” and recruiting more “liberal minded citizens” during the agreed-upon two-week moratorium.119 City officials sought to settle the unrest as quickly as possible, and they were eager to quell the direct-action campaign. In autumn the Mayor’s Race Relations Committee proposed a compromise that called for department-store lunch counters to sell African American patrons food of equal quality that would be served in designated basement spaces. To the CCRC, the sit-ins were not just about access to food—they were also about desegregating public space and affirming the dignity of African American dollars. These contrasting visions of what the sit-ins sought to accomplish fed into the CCRC’s “disappointment that department

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store owners should even suggest that American citizens be confined to eating in basements.” McNeal “voiced the opinion that to accept the proposal to eat in basement cafeterias would be to dig another pit of segregation for Negroes who were already burdened to the breaking point in St. Louis.”120 The inability of activist-oriented and reform-minded African Americans such as McNeal and Grant to direct the Mayor’s Race Relations Committee toward a more progressive bargain illustrates the fundamentally resistant nature of municipal politics to racial reforms.121 There was a place for MOWM leaders such as McNeal and Grant on the Mayor’s Committee, but the segregationist members whom they served alongside diluted their influence. In one instance, a member of the committee accidentally used a racial slur instead of “Negro” when reporting from the City Plan Commission.122 McNeal described the Mayor’s Committee chairman, Edwin Meissner, as “one of the worst offenders” against EO 8802 and “one of the principal causes of racial tension and ill will” in St. Louis.123 This high-sounding post did not sensitize Meissner to racial injustice or improve his reputation among African Americans. His company, the St. Louis Car Company, restricted African Americans to low-paying and degrading work until the threat of an impending FEPC investigation and an unsolicited home visit by a few of the company’s black workers prodded him to make a few changes.124 Through it all, Meissner remained so antagonistic to African Americans that a Chicago Defender columnist called him “a first class you know what.”125 Somehow, a rumor spread that the CCRC and MOWM accepted an offer from Scruggs for a basement cafeteria that catered exclusively to African American patrons. The CCRC responded that it rejected this arrangement, promising that it “will not make any compromise in . . . non-violent resistant action for the same treatment in cafeteria and fountain services as all other Americans.”126 While the CCRC tried to defend its militant reputation, Scruggs quietly started offering meals to those who were willing to dine in a segregated room.127 Few seemed eager to sample this new dining opportunity, but some saw it as a breakthrough that initiated the “process of getting white persons used to seeing us . . . in places frequented by them, that is important. . . . [S]uch temporary acceptance, by well behaved, neatly dressed individuals . . . will certainly result in the opening of other doors to our people.” Those who ate at Scruggs reported being treated courteously. Better yet, some said, the facilities, product, and service at this restaurant were superior to those of other establishments targeted by the CCRC for integration.128 Famous-Barr followed Scruggs’s lead and opened a separate cafeteria, but none of the city’s lunch counters completely desegregated.129 Stix proved more resistant to change, and it was again targeted for sit-ins by a new contingent of CORE activists in 1949.130 A few saw making separate become equal as progress, but the CCRC

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expressed concern that “the spirit of Hitler” was emboldened when compromises such as this were accepted.131 The sit-ins established a model for interorganizational, interracial protest that demonstrated the capacity of creative nonviolent agitation to generate reforms. Activists in St. Louis looked beyond organizational boundaries and worked together to challenge segregated dining at the city’s most prominent lunch counters. To those whose primary concern was making their city a better place to live, supporting MOWM did not mean that one renounced the NAACP. This was the kind of cross-organizational cooperation that Randolph envisioned when he created MOWM, but national officials in other groups grew increasingly wary of working alongside what they saw as a potentially rival organization. The 1944 St. Louis sit-ins show that grassroots protest is sometimes marked by an intense localism. Autonomous activists defined their own programs and utilized the tactics that they thought worked best to suit the immediate needs of their community. If anything united them, it was a shared commitment to a cause and a common sense of decorum. These were the kind of women that Pauli Murray wrote about in the Crisis a few months later when arguing that those most capable of leading the race had “good taste, poise, co-operativeness, firmness, personal neatness and cleanliness, and ordinary human decency.”132 Of course, there were limits to the reforms that MOWM achieved in St. Louis. The sit-ins underscore the practical shortcomings of any protest undertaken by small but zealous groups of activists. For all their efforts, MOWM and the CCRC did not succeed in their push to integrate food service or public accommodations throughout St. Louis. Local lawmakers made reforms in municipal cafeterias, but they remained reluctant to interfere with private business practices. The sit-ins might have increased the sensitivity of some to the hypocrisy of racial discrimination, but their shortcomings reveal how deeply embedded racial segregation was in the city’s culture. St. Louis native Wendell Pruitt, a Tuskegee Airman who destroyed nearly a dozen Nazi planes and flew seventy missions in Italy, was to be feted with a parade led by Mayor Kauffman. David Grant questioned Kauffman’s sincerity in championing an African American war hero, and he threatened to station MOWM protesters at “all three of the department stores” on the parade route with placards reading “Pruitt may be a hero, but he can’t get a sandwich in this joint.” Rather than force an ordinance desegregating food service, Kauffman called off the parade.133 The will to challenge racism was strong, but so was the attachment to the color line.

6

“An Economic D-Day for Negro Americans” MOWM’s Transition and Dissolution, 1944–46 It is not the will of the St. Louis community . . . to practice such undemocratic, un-American and pro-Hitler employment policy.

A

—“St. Louis MOWM Pamphlet”

s the war wound down after the D-Day landings and V-J Day, MOWM spent much of 1944 searching for ways to help African American workers obtain jobs in industries that were expected to thrive in the postwar economy. By the war’s end, manpower shortages, efforts of pressure groups such as MOWM, and the FEPC’s increasing visibility all combined to result in an “all-time high” of 6 million African Americans being gainfully employed throughout the United States.1 Conversely, the number of unemployed African Americans plummeted from nearly 1 million in 1940 to around 150,000 in 1944.2 To secure these gains, the Chicago Defender urged “a new all-out offensive against job discrimination . . . in a new campaign for peace jobs” that could keep people employed once the war was over.3 With St. Louis MOWM’s small victory at Southwestern Bell as a model for incorporating African Americans into the utility industry, a stronger emphasis was put on campaigning for positions in municipal services. One possible target was the Public Service Company, which counted only 250 African Americans as part of its 4,200-person workforce. This company, which ran the city’s buses, restricted African Americans to jobs with little upward mobility such as maintenance workers, bus washers, and porters.4 With much contention, the NAACP waged a similar campaign in Philadelphia during 1944.5 Closer to St. Louis, a decadelong battle for jobs with the Chicago City Transit Corporation proved successful when it resulted in 161 African Americans being hired in skilled positions between 1943 and 1945.6

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Activists in these cities sought to break occupational barriers by getting jobs for African Americans as bus drivers. Similar to Pullman porters, an occupation that was dominated by African Americans, driving a bus offered a steady income and carried a small amount of social prestige within black communities. Working on public transit such as trains and buses put supposedly respectable and dignified African Americans in contact with white passengers—a simple gesture that had the potential to break racial boundaries.7 “The fight that we put up between now and the post-war period,” many understood, “will determine whether we will be found in the bread lines, pushing apple carts, or on good paying jobs when the war ends.”8 St. Louis MOWM’s increasing sensitivity to postwar employment was consistent with A. Philip Randolph’s views about the postwar economy. At the BSCP’s 1944 annual convention, he predicted that African American workers would be subject to the “old rule” of being the “last hired and first fired” once “the shooting ends.”9 Making the FEPC a permanent agency within the federal government was thought to be key to keeping the precarious inroads made by black workers during the war and avoiding another round of hardship that mirrored the Great Depression. A leaflet distributed by MOWM summed this idea: “And Brother if you’ve had it tough, wait until after the war.”10 The employment situation across Missouri showed that there was reason for alarm. Local investigations in Kansas City, for example, found that 6,000 of the area’s 7,800 African Americans working in war industries were performing labor that had no relevance to a peacetime economy.11 Developments such as this mirrored a national trend precipitated by the canceling of twenty-four billion dollars in war contracts, the immediate result of which was a jump in unemployment from 800,000 in August 1945 to 2.7 million in March 1946.12 By 1949 it was clear that predictions of massive postwar job losses were tragically accurate. Reconversion to a peacetime economy proved disastrous for African American workers, and they lost jobs at a rate triple that of their white counterparts. Carter Carburetor’s plant in St. Louis employed only 60 African American women, and all but 6 were let go because “the average peace time operation is too heavy for women.”13 Jeanetta Welch Brown, leader of the National Council of Negro Women, identified African American women as “the most vulnerable group in America with regard to postwar layoffs.”14 Most African American women had little choice but to return to traditional women’s occupations, and they eked out a living as domestic help.15 Newly gained employment in the garment industry or as a telephone operator paid more and was preferable to personal service, but domestic labor remained the most common job for African American women as late as 1950.16 It seemed as if securing a federal fair employment law was the most effective way to safeguard the dwindling opportunities for gainful work, so the push

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for a Permanent FEPC became the centerpiece of A. Philip Randolph’s program. The National Council for a Permanent FEPC brought together a conglomeration of labor unions and special interest groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, the Catholic Interracial Council, and the Association of Reform Rabbis in order to save what one commentator called “one of the most significant and one of the frailest” agencies created during Roosevelt’s lengthy tenure. 17 Weak as it was, the FEPC functioned at its best when it did not act unilaterally.18 In Detroit, for example, local civil rights groups and labor organizations agitated and lobbied to make that city’s war industries among the nation’s most integrated.19 Coalition politics helped make the FEPC operate at its best, and these same organizations came together in an attempt to save the agency. Rather than lead pickets, St. Louis MOWM did the groundwork to “make FEPC a permanent governmental agency” that was in touch with local employment conditions and strong enough to confront discriminatory practices by America’s largest manufacturers. David Grant advanced his lobbying to the national level by traveling to Capitol Hill in support the Dawson-Scanlon-LaFollette Bill, known popularly as the Fair Employment Practices Act. If passed, this legislation would ensure adequate staffing, sufficient funding, and bureaucratic institutionalization of the FEPC as a fixture in the federal government. In a hearing before the House Committee on Labor on June 6, 1944, Grant testified, “Thousands of Negroes in and around St. Louis have been refused employment by war factories, despite the need of workers.”20 Mary Norton, chairperson of the House Committee of Labor, introduced Grant as representing the Mayor’s Interracial Conference, the Committee for a Permanent FEPC, and St. Louis MOWM. As an ambassador for each organization, Grant’s involvement with this multiplicity of interests amplified his credibility as a spokesperson before Congress. Grant explained that St. Louis MOWM’s pickets and marches were necessary because federal channels for redressing discrimination complaints were blocked or perceived to be ineffective. With no other recourse “for the purpose of showing how far we had to go to become employed . . . because there was no responsible agency to which we could look with any degree of confidence,” Grant explained, activism was an outlet for frustrated citizens to confront the employers who operated in violation of EO 8802.21 Grant told Congress that he preferred a world in which protest was unnecessary, and he pointed toward a permanent FEPC as a way to ensure postwar tranquillity. Demonstrations would be curtailed, Grant argued, if disaffection could be effectively channeled through a bureaucratic outlet. “Negroes in the Armed Services,” he said, “would not take the closed-door policy with the same trust in the paternalistic policy that happened in 1918.” The possibility that African American veterans would come home to a rigidly segregated United States made Grant “shudder to think of their resentment, their justifiable resentment, which must well up in

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their hearts,” if they have no “governmental authority to which they can state their case.”22 For some, this is exactly what happened. “I was really disgusted with this country,” remarked one elderly veteran. “I was angry and I stayed angry for years.” 23 Though he never bluntly stated it, Grant implied that turmoil and tragedy loomed if the government did not take action by funding agencies such as the FEPC. While recognizing the right of employers to hire and fire at will, Grant cited existing child labor laws as an example of when it was necessary to restrain private industry from having complete liberty in choosing its workforce. “The mere fact that employers have at times used up the best years of employees’ lives,” Grant argued in a case for protecting workers from business interests, “has brought about social security legislation and unemployment compensation assistance . . . in order to have safeguards against unscrupulous employers.”24 As Grant described it, even the freedom of employers to buy labor necessitated restrictions, and free labor could not exist in an unregulated market. Clare Hoffman, a Republican representative from Michigan, questioned Grant on whether he thought that an independent farmer would be forced to hire a Mexican, but Grant reminded Hoffman that the proposed legislation did not apply to small businesses such as the one being hypothetically discussed. As it was written, the proposed legislation targeted only businesses with federal contracts that were engaged in interstate or foreign trade and had a workforce of five or more people.25 Fair employment practices laws were crafted to intentionally exclude small independent businesses, but Hoffman and others raised the specter of big-government intrusion to oppose attempts at regulating labor markets. Grant steered the questioning back to his district, where the issue was not that Missouri’s farmers refused to hire and live with African American stable hands, but that large businesses holding multimillion-dollar federal contracts such as Carter Carburetor, McDonald Aircraft, and American Torpedo still offered limited, if any, employment opportunities to African Americans. A similar line of attack against fair employment laws arose in New York. Although the bill would eventually pass and led to the creation of a state FEPC, opponents of the Ives-Quinn Bill in 1945 raised the bogey of big-government intrusion in private enterprise. The Commerce and Industry Association, for example, warned that fair employment laws would force kosher butchers to hire Gentiles and “work against those whom it was intended to benefit.”26 New York’s fair employment practices bill faced similar ideological and philosophical challenges as the national version of this legislation, but in New York a multicultural coalition of African Americans, Catholics, and Jewish Americans ensured that this statewide protection of working-class racial and ethnic minorities passed.27 The sanctity of small business was wielded as a foil to argue against fair employment legislation—even though the proposed laws, both state and federal, did not apply to it.

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Labor Unrest and the FEPC in St. Louis, 1944 The summer of 1944 brought grassroots protest such as the CCRC sit-ins and topdown federal action through an FEPC hearing to St. Louis. Progressive organizers knew that public hearings in major manufacturing cities were fundamental to the FEPC’s operations.28 Publicly airing grievances raised awareness about the extent of discrimination, but, “on a certain sense, these hearings are ritualistic,” wrote the Washington Post, as they provided “evidence of discrimination against Negroes [that was] apparent to the naked eye of anyone who has ever traveled on the railroads of the United States.”29 As was the pattern seen in similar hearings held in the industrial heartland, the 1944 session at a federal courtroom in St. Louis was the product of persistent recalcitrance from discriminatory employers and prolonged protest from vocal minority groups and labor unions.30 In other words, the FEPC came only to cities where its presence was demanded. Even though the FEPC’s authority was limited and its impact debatable, St. Louis MOWM’s leadership saw this agency as an ally whose intervention could increase the number of African Americans working in the city’s defense industries. As early as August 1942, T. D. McNeal was urging FEPC officials to investigate unfair hiring practices at four defense factories: U.S. Cartridge, McQuay-Norris, Carter Carburetor, and Curtiss-Wright.31 The FEPC rarely acted unilaterally, and implementing federal fair employment guidelines necessitated the combined efforts of civil rights and labor groups such as MOWM and the CIO. Perennially short staffed, the FEPC relied on support from local organizations to help with enforcing the president’s antidiscrimination order.32 MOWM remained relevant long after the march itself was canceled, in part because the FEPC was unable to foster change on its own. Even though St. Louis had hundreds of millions of dollars in defense contracts, the FEPC was not a powerful presence there for most of the war years. Because “the FEPC is such a small group,” St. Louis MOWM understood that it could not effectively “investigate conditions in every town and city.” MOWM activists in St. Louis took it upon themselves to investigate and document the extent of racial discrimination in defense plants and to monitor the general employment situation of African Americans in the city. Individuals “must help to enforce” EO 8802, St. Louis MOWM urged. “It is necessary for the people in each community to report any violation” that might fall under the FEPC’s jurisdiction.33 This tactic sought to make St. Louis MOWM a constructive outlet that directed activism toward soliciting, investigating, and quantifying complaints of industrial discrimination. The fact that any progress was made through an FEPC that was financially hamstrung and legally hog-tied was somewhat of a miracle, but it was an accomplishment that affirmed the federal government’s ultimate need to cobble together a productive workforce during the war.

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Throughout the nation, African American activists fought against “the complete emasculation of the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice” by helping individuals file complaints and lobbying for the agency to have greater appropriations.34 In New York City, this contributed to the local FEPC office being flooded by more than fifty complaints per week, a stunningly high number considering that its staff could handle only fifteen cases in a normal workweek.35 African American activists in St. Louis were convinced that grassroots participation and mass pressure were necessary to ensure that the FEPC’s presence was not reduced to conducting “fruitless investigations” that simply confirmed the grim facts that people knew all too well.36 Until St. Louis hosted its own FEPC hearings and opened a subregional office in that city, MOWM acted as instigator of protest and investigator of racial discrimination. “It is the intent of the March,” noted the St. Louis American, “to prosecute with vigor all cases of discrimination which this Committee [FEPC] will have jurisdiction on.”37 As it did in the shipyards on the West Coast and in the South, the militancy of African American workers in St. Louis forced the FEPC to act on grievances. Whether submitted on an individual basis or through the offices of organizations such as MOWM, the discrimination claims that African American workers filed showed that in their minds, the FEPC was far from a useless agency.38 St. Louis MOWM’s version of pressure politics relied on community members playing a role in making EO 8802 more than a dead legal letter. Those who did not directly experience employment discrimination but “believe that orderly procedure is the only permanent solution” were encouraged to attend the public hearing and help ensure that “the intent of the Executive Order” was fulfilled so that “the security of America and the United Nations may be guaranteed by full production.”39 To support its cause with empirical data, St. Louis MOWM urged local residents to visit its office during business hours for an interview, explaining that reporting and documenting discrimination were “the most important thing you can do for your race at this time.” Several months of accumulated facts equipped St. Louis MOWM with what was thought to be sufficient information to all but force the FEPC to act and “open the way for new jobs for the race.”40 African American women were especially sought out, as MOWM officials urged them “to actually make application to the war plants now barring them” so that a stronger case could be presented to the FEPC. In the Chicago Defender’s approximation, the times were “over ripe,” because “local war plants are daily turning down hundreds of colored women applicants.”41 Budgetary restrictions and other limitations plagued the FEPC throughout its existence, and the agency’s brief time in St. Louis was no exception. Public hearings were supposed to take place there in 1943, but they were rescheduled twice in order to save on travel expenses and were not actually held until August 1, 1944.42

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“MOW and other agencies” capitalized on the FEPC’s “administrative difficulties” by using the additional time “to prepare and process cases [that] expose local discriminatory employment policies.”43 It was no secret that the FEPC was “living a hand-to-mouth existence” with little resources and few full-time field staff.44 St. Louis MOWM urged “every Negro who has been refused employment . . . because of his or her color” to visit its Jefferson Avenue headquarters to discuss the matter with David Grant and other volunteers. Once the paperwork was “in proper form,” this team “submitted [documentation] directly to the Fair Employment Practices Committee” for federal investigation and resolution.45 The St. Louis Argus publicized this service, reminding readers that St. Louis MOWM “asked that all local Negroes who have been discriminated against” file a complaint in time for the anticipated FEPC hearings.46 The reports that St. Louis MOWM prepared for the FEPC are filled with accusations of racially discriminatory hiring and job placement practices, unsafe and unsanitary working conditions, and racially based wage scales hidden by job titles that obscured the fact that the same work was being done for less pay.47 Preferring white-collar office work to factory labor, Valeria Sarilla Brooles wrote MOWM, “I don’t want a job in a war plant, I desire a job as a receptionist.” Brooles, a recent graduate of Lincoln High School, explained, “The reason I didn’t come in person” was that she worked until midafternoon and could not make an appointment during office hours.48 Christine Berry Morgan, an employee at the International Shoe Company, wrote St. Louis MOWM “in the interest of others and myself,” asking for “several members of your organization to visit the factory” to observe the working conditions. Morgan was particularly concerned about “the sanitary conditions where colored girls work, especially the fifth floor,” and unequal “work and salary compared to others in the same building.” Morgan also asked St. Louis MOWM’s advice on forming a union, and she sought an opinion on whether a strike might rectify the problems that she described.49 One woman could not make it to MOWM’s office, but she corresponded through mail “because my job doesn’t allow me to come in person.” After completing a welding course through the National Youth Administration, she “was not fortunate enough to get a job.” Kaiser Shipyard recently advertised openings for welders, prompting her to visit company headquarters. Even though she claimed, “I could weld anything including cast iron. I can weld vertical, horizontal . . . and overhead welding . . . I could weld like a machine,” this on-site visit was to no avail, and she asked MOWM to intervene on her behalf.50 Another anonymous author identified only as “A General Cable Employee” petitioned MOWM to not “forget to mention General Cable Corporation” at the FEPC hearings. The disgruntled employee complained, “That place is the most outstanding in discrimination against Negroes in employment” and accused the

“An Economic D-Day for Negro Americans”   • 157

company of hiring African American workers only “to keep on the safe side of the F.E.P.C.” The writer portrayed conflicts with management as marred by racial bias and discrimination, claiming that supervisors “treat all their negro employees as if they don’t give a damn if you work there or not.” In subsequent investigations, MOWM affirmed the writer’s claim that General Cable offered lateral mobility to African American workers but limited job opportunities to “janitors, maids, and kitchen supply clerks.” Discrimination and protests at Carter Carburetor and the Small Arms Plant at U.S. Cartridge drew headlines in St. Louis’s African American press, but countless companies such as General Cable continued their racially exclusive practices as if there were no FEPC. It was, in the plaintiff’s words, “the worst place of discrimination against negroes in employment I have ever seen.”51 Anonymous reports about racial discrimination and bias in defense industries extended beyond St. Louis. On the East and West Coasts, the FEPC received numerous envelopes without return addresses containing unsigned letters describing these same kinds of issues.52 MOWM supplied the FEPC with so much information that the agency needed to extend its 1944 hearings in St. Louis for an additional day. During two ten-hour sessions in a “crowded courtroom with white and Negro spectators,” eight companies were charged with racial bias in selecting the composition of their workforces and in the promotion of existing employees. Seven of these companies were charged with, in FEPC chairman Malcolm Ross’s words, “the alleged refusal . . . to hire needed and available Negro women war workers and the refusal to upgrade Negro workers to jobs utilizing their highest skills.” U.S. Cartridge set a tone that would be reiterated by other companies, claiming innocence of discrimination and showing evidence that it “made a sincere effort to integrate Negroes into industry and provide them with the same opportunities offered whites.” U.S. Cartridge’s case was unique because the company had a relatively long record of employing African American war workers by the thousands in the all-black Unit 202. The allegations against U.S. Cartridge were that it discharged a greater proportion of senior African American workers before it let go of white counterparts with less experience and that white men received preference when being assessed for rehire.53 This was a typical problem facing African American workers who labored in racially exclusive crews during the war. Although they temporarily benefited from expanded employment opportunities, they were also easily phased out or terminated en masse when production returned to prewar levels.54 MOWM’s most diehard activists and the stodgy members of the St. Louis Race Relations Committee agreed that the FEPC needed a bigger presence in the city, and the local hearings led to the opening of a subregional office staffed by former Chicago BSCP member and Northwestern University graduate Theodore Brown.55 More than one hundred complaints were filed on its opening day in October 1944,

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making St. Louis among the busiest offices in Region IX—an area that covered Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Brown attributed this remarkable volume to St. Louis’s location on the borderlands of North and South. In his view, it was the kind of city where discrimination existed but local African Americans were courageous enough to challenge it. Geography was certainly a factor, but the sustained efforts of groups such as MOWM to solicit, investigate, and analyze complaints prior to the office’s opening should not be overlooked. MOWM’s efforts to cooperate with the FEPC were an evolution from its previous reliance on mass pressure and agitation. Instead of picket lines and marches, its members were urged to confront racial discrimination by filing discrimination charges—effectively taking protest from the streets and directing it toward bureaucratic channels. The result was that more than one hundred complaints, “mostly from the failure of qualified Negro women to be employed,” were filed against St. Louis–area employers.56 Most realized that defense jobs were temporary, but the presence of African American workers still provoked aggressive responses from many among the white working class. In St. Louis, the fear of racial displacement coincided with the FEPC hearings to create an upsurge of labor unrest during the summer of 1944. Several hundred white workers staged a daylong wildcat strike instigated by General Cable’s hiring of a few African Americans. Two months later, a similar flare-up occurred at the St. Louis Car Company, a business managed by the Mayor’s Race Relations Committee chairman, Edwin Meissner. This time, the incident was provoked by the local United Auto Workers–CIO’s proposal of inserting a nondiscrimination clause in the union contract.57 Just as had happened at U.S. Cartridge, labor disruptions occurred on both sides of the color line. In July 160 African Americans at National Lead Company’s titanium plant went on a wildcat strike without support from their union, Local 12 of CIO United Gas, Coke, and Chemical Workers. Newspaper accounts do not indicate specific demands from the striking workers, but reporters noted that 10 white employees joined their picket line and supported the complaint of “unfair discrimination against Negroes.”58 The wildcat nature of this CIO local’s action and the regional African American press’s silence on the event are all notable, but the strike’s timing less than one week before the FEPC arrived makes this incident particularly salient because it suggests that people believed the FEPC mattered. Unauthorized autonomous militancy among African American workers occurred in other Missouri locations as well. Earlier that July, Granite City witnessed 290 African American chippers go on strike at the General Steel Casting Corporation, a company that made locomotive beds, tank parts, and gun mounts. In this instance, shop-floor tensions were seen through a prism of race. Personal grievances had a racial connotation, and the strike began “because a white foreman to whom the

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chippers objected had not been discharged or transferred by the management.” Because this factory was subject to federal intervention, African American workers thought the FEPC’s presence in Missouri could get this unpopular white foreman dismissed altogether or transferred to a different division. The midday strike was cut short after only five hours because CIO officials coaxed many of the striking workers away from the picket with a promise that negotiations between the union and management were under way and that their unauthorized shutdown would not aid these discussions. Even with a good-faith commitment from company management and the union, it took representatives from the War Labor Board to step in with the threat of suspending and discharging the roughly 200 African American workers who remained on the picket line to settle the conflict. As articulated by shop steward J. C. Cole, their chief greivance was that African Americans were systematically barred from four of the company’s seven units and that they were routinely overlooked for upgrading and promotion.59 Both of these strikes happened close to the date of the FEPC hearings. If not coincidental, this suggests that African American war workers were frustrated with the pace of changes in their industry and that they acted to draw federal attention to their plight. Not content with being pigeonholed into menial work and practically excluded from promotions, African American workers, particularly women who entered war industries, must have felt that the ceiling on their careers was not one of glass but of reinforced concrete and that the floor underneath them, their very employment, was unreliable. Curtiss-Wright, an aircraft plant with a sixteen-million-dollar federal contract, was the most publicized example of a workplace in St. Louis that increased its opportunities for African American women. As early as 1942, it was employing and training African American workers at a plant in Buffalo, New York, and by 1944 this company was among the first in St. Louis to offer, free of charge, five-week training sessions for 24 black women willing to join its 13,000-person workforce. The small figure is easily dismissed as tokenism, but it is worth pointing out that they earned “the same rate of pay as other workers in like jobs” and benefited from on-the-job training for riveting, drilling, and “skilled jobs” in defense production.60 A survey of the employment profiles of applicants for Curtiss-Wright’s training program illuminates the difficulty that otherwise qualified African American women had securing ordinary white-collar jobs. The premier class of trainees at Curtiss-Wright included four college graduates, a social worker, a postal worker, a swimming instructor, and two recent high school graduates—hardly the backgrounds one would expect for a group of applicants seeking work on warplane assembly lines.61 The limited inclusion of two dozen African American women hardly heralded a new era of workplace equity, but their employment at Curtiss-Wright was a small landmark in the protracted fight for access to well-paying jobs. The fact that this incident made local headlines demonstrates how resistant much of

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St. Louis’s defense industry was to breaking from the entrenched racial and gender barriers that shaped the workforce. The belated and disproportional presence of professional African American women seeking work in blue-collar manufacturing during the war speaks to the urgency of Jeanetta Welch Brown’s 1944 observation that “the employment of Negro women is not a social experiment but an economic necessity,” which she predicted would exacerbate after the war because “many of the men will not return.”62

Ripples of Reform: School and Stadium Desegregation in St. Louis Social and political movements sometimes effect change in places that were not directly targeted as a site of struggle. The agitation spawned by St. Louis MOWM caused a ripple throughout the city, and discriminatory barriers broke down in locations that MOWM never directly challenged. Protesting at defense plants, restaurant sit-ins, and pickets at the phone company created a climate of reform that swept through other institutions, and during the Second World War parochial schools and a baseball stadium in St. Louis quietly desegregated on their own.63 Although MOWM never targeted these sites directly, its protests at a defense factory near Sportsman’s Park and its challenges to Lincoln University undoubtedly made the organization known to stadium management and university administration. St. Louis MOWM’s actions against segregated and inequitable higher education answered A. Philip Randolph’s 1943 advice to expose “the myth of equal but separate” permeating American educational institutions at all levels. Evidence of racism and inequality was everywhere, said Randolph, from the textbooks used in early childhood that “paint the Negro as a happy slave, a buffoon, or a corrupt citizen” to the underdevelopment of educational and professional opportunities available to African American students, faculty, and administrators.64 In 1944 St. Louis University announced plans to admit African American students during the upcoming summer session. The decision was momentous because St. Louis University was a traditionally Catholic institution in a city where more than half of the residents shared the faith. As was the pattern in many pathbreaking “firsts,” the university took a gradualist approach. It started by integrating the graduate school, and then it slowly began desegregating the general body of undergraduate students. All of the first three African American pioneers who matriculated into the graduate school were women, and each of them had a history of work as public school teachers. Shortly thereafter, two African American males enrolled as undergraduates, followed by eight more women entering the School of Social Work.65 St. Louis University’s voluntary but limited removal of racial barriers made it the first university in a former slave state to integrate its student body, and it led the way for all of the city’s parochial schools to be desegregated years before the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.66

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The small steps toward progress that were made in the formerly all-white university owed something to St. Louis MOWM’s push for reforms at Lincoln University. This university, dubbed by one historian as “the crown jewel of the state’s segregated schools,” was beset with the usual problems of higher education in the Jim Crow South.67 Under the subterfuge of separate but equal, its facilities were inadequate, full-time faculty had incredibly high teaching loads, course offerings were curtailed, its record of meaningful research was scant, and it had difficulty retaining faculty.68 Other than its respected program for training educators, one observer complained, “Education on a college level . . . is virtually impossible.” Not surprisingly, opportunities for African Americans to pursue postbaccalaureate schooling in Missouri were extremely limited, causing some to complain that Lincoln was “neither equipped, organized, nor financed on a basis which permits real college work. . . . [Lincoln is a] University in name only.”69 Desegregation of higher education in Second World War–era St. Louis demonstrates that there were a variety of models for improving the access and quality of higher education for African Americans in the pre-Brown years. The breaking of racial barriers at St. Louis University occurred primarily because a faculty member and a contingent of students demanded an end to racial exclusion. At Lincoln University, a group of activists who had little direct association to the institution demanded that it keep with the “equal” component of Plessy by offering programs to African Americans that were comparable to those found at exclusively white public institutions. St. Louis MOWM was directly involved in affairs at Lincoln, but the organization’s foray into educational reform contributed to the building of a progressive atmosphere that was favorable to change at institutions such as St. Louis University. The president of St. Louis University, Father Patrick Hollohan, initiated desegregation of the student body only after being pushed in that direction by faculty member Claude Heithaus. Hollohan denounced racial segregation as “undemocratic” and “un-Christian,” and he characterized desegregation as the extension of “the evident duty of all Catholics to receive a Catholic education . . . not restricted to grade school or even high school.” As the only Catholic institution of higher education in the city, Hollohan argued, St. Louis University was morally obligated to admit qualified African American applicants who otherwise had no alternative for Catholic higher education. Because the Catholic Church did not have the facilities or the will to offer truly separate and equal schooling, Hollohan maintained, desegregation was necessary. This administrator’s position is remarkable considering that only one year earlier, white students were expelled for complaining about the school’s racial restrictions.70 Father Claude Heithaus, a professor of classical art and archaeology, was St. Louis University’s most outspoken proponent of desegregation. Heithaus grew up in South St. Louis, where as a boy from 1904 until 1912 he lived, played, and

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went to school at St. Francis de Sales alongside African American children. As a theologian, Heithaus explained his position as one of “paternal affection,” ensuring “Christian justice and charity for the Negroes.” Described by one historian as “big, gruff . . . with the booming voice of an Old Testament prophet,” Heithaus grounded his appeal for integration in a legalistic philosophy, arguing, “The law demands that they fulfill their civic duties. . . . They are required to pay taxes, to serve in the armed forces, and to observe the law. Therefore the state is bound in return to see that they get their rights.” Heithaus spoke with blunt clarity about the “red herring” of miscegenation being used as a bogey to block integration, but he also discouraged interracial marriage out of prudence and practicality. “The Negroes,” argued Heithaus, “are asking for their rights as American citizens, human beings, and Christians. They are not asking for the privilege of marrying your daughter.”71 To liberal Catholics such as Heithaus, racial segregation was a contradiction in Christianity that “could not be reconciled” and, in Heithaus’s view, forced a hundred thousand African Americans to “turn in despair to the followers of Lenin.”72 Heithaus used his standing as a leader in the local Catholic Church to give a “surprise sermon . . . against race prejudice.” His message was well received among the student body, which had already staged a five-hundred-person demonstration demanding that their school integrate.73 Hundreds of students joined the priest in a prayer of penitence and “reparation for the suffering which prejudice has inflicted” and for forgiveness of “the wrongs that white men have done to Negroes.” In this prayer, Heithaus asked the students to recite: “Lord Jesus, we are sorry and ashamed for all the wrongs that white men have done to your Colored children. We are firmly resolved never again to have any part in propagating or abetting racism. Just as “Jesus denounced injustice in the highest places,” Heithaus used his pulpit to chastise “snobbery against Negroes” as a “diabolical prejudice.” Henry Wheeler praised this remarkable sermon as “the most courageous, the most direct and the only test of real Christianity of a white group that has ever been made in the history of our city.”74 Likewise, William Sentner personally wrote Heithaus to praise his “eloquent speech and prayer against racial prejudice and intolerance.”75 David Grant saw advances such as this as evidence that “doors are opening up,” and the St. Louis American cheered St. Louis University’s self-directed desegregation as an action that gave “all true Americans” a reason to believe in “the greatness of our Country.” This was something that created “a fine feeling within the Negro citizenry . . . not a feeling of celebration or overt jubilation, but one in welling respect for a deed done in the cause of [Christian] brotherhood.”76 St. Louis University established a standard for initiating institutional desegregation, but it was a precedent that took most institutions several years to follow. The University of Missouri monitored the situation, and by mid-June 1944 it began interviewing its exclusively white student body “to determine the students’ attitude in regard

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to the admitting of Negroes to the University”—something it would not actually accomplish until Gus T. Ridgel broke the color line in 1950 and started working on his master’s degree in economics.77 Lincoln University was Missouri’s only publicly funded institution of higher education open to African Americans, and its administration became the target of criticism during the war years. To comply with the “equal” component of Plessy, the School of Journalism maintained a graduate program that existed only on paper. If students were enrolled, Lincoln would have to make costly academic programs such as this exist in reality. This subterfuge for separate but equal meant that the journalism program was listed in university catalogs, but it had no scheduled courses, no faculty, and no research resources.78 The evasiveness of Lincoln’s “Missouri Compromise” resembled many other colleges and universities in the South. Establishing an extension course at a satellite campus allowed the State of Missouri to dodge funding a separate and equal School of Journalism at Lincoln while also avoiding the integration of its flagship state university.79 In 1941, three years after the Gaines v. Canada Supreme Court decision prompted the creation of the Lincoln University School of Law, the Chicago Defender reported that most of the fifteen states with segregated systems of higher education simply ignored the Supreme Court’s demand to make equitable the opportunities and resources available to students and faculty.80 At Lincoln University, this pattern led to the creation of shadow programs in the graduate school. These existed in the catalog, but applicants were refused admission because if they enrolled, the courses would actually have to be held. The School of Law was so poorly equipped that the St. Louis American referred to Dean William Taylor as “Judas” and a two-faced “Janus” who was running a “Jim Crow Law School” that constituted “a ridiculous insult to all fair-minded Missourians.” Because this mock law school was already “dead,” the American recommended that it be “buried without benefit of the clergy.”81 Insufficient enrollment put Lincoln’s School of Law and its School of Journalism on the verge of closing in 1944. MOWM and the NAACP attributed this to Lincoln discouraging prospective students from these courses of study, a development that some thought was part of a deliberate plan by the State of Missouri to dissolve the integrated law program that the Supreme Court ordered in 1938. Established in Gaines’s aftermath, the School of Journalism was an extension school, with a small campus to call home but no faculty to call its own.82 To maintain the segregated system, “white teachers from Missouri University are to be sent to Lincoln University’s School of Journalism to teach the single Negro girl, Miss Massey.”83 Because the journalism program at Lincoln was clearly inferior, Edith Massey applied for admission to study at the University of Missouri. In a public letter denouncing this subterfuge of equality, William Green, president of Lincoln’s Alumni Association, outlined what would be the crux of the NAACP and MOWM’s argument: “If the

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state desires to preserve its dual educational system, let it pay for it.”84 The legalese was clear: follow the letter of Plessy by supporting equitable and parallel programs or desegregate the existing inequitably funded state-supported institutions of higher education. In the aftermath of a failed bid to amend the Missouri Constitution and eliminate the requirement for separate schools, St. Louis MOWM repeatedly charged that Missouri’s system of public higher education violated Gaines.85 At a five-hundred-person rally hosted by Washington Tabernacle Baptist Church, T. D. McNeal denounced the “sneak-plan of shifting teachers from Missouri U. over to Lincoln” as a practice in deception that was done “in order to keep democracy out of education in Missouri.” About two months after this rally, and four months before she got involved in the sit-ins, MOWM member Thelma McNeal stepped forward as a test case and applied to study in the Lincoln University School of Law. McNeal claimed that Dean William E. Taylor “would not allow her to register.” In testimony before the Lincoln University Board of Curators, Taylor defended McNeal’s rejection, arguing that his office did not accept McNeal’s application because the Law School was deactivated in February 1944. David Grant took on McNeal’s case, arguing that Lincoln’s administrators were “shoving around” students and blatantly “ignored” the Gaines decision. At around this time, Charles Hamilton Houston was working on similar litigation regarding college admissions before the U.S. District Court. In this case, Bluford v. Canada, the court ruled that the university’s registrar was not responsible for ten thousand dollars in damages associated with the wrongful refusal of the plaintiff, but it mandated the University of Missouri must open a journalism program at Lincoln. Incidents such as these seemed to prove that rudimentary programs such as Lincoln’s law school existed only so that the University of Missouri system could dodge integration and “avoid the necessity of opening the doors” to African American law students.86 As MOWM’s battle with Dean Taylor escalated, David Grant and Thelma McNeal publicly questioned Taylor’s administrative competence and insinuated that he used institutional resources for personal gain. Taylor discouraged McNeal from applying to one of the university’s phantom programs, something that no sensible college or university official would do if courses were legitimately ready to be offered. Wanting to depose the administrator, MOWM alleged that Taylor used university funds to gain control of the Poro Hotel for his private lodging and that he converted a university telephone into a line for personal calls. The Board of Curators exonerated Taylor of any wrongdoing, and he remained in control of Lincoln. The campaign waged by MOWM and the NAACP against Lincoln University led to a stalemate in the maintenance of a “scholarless school,” but it exposed university administrators as career-minded people who unethically compromised with “Jim Crow politicians to perpetuate their bad acts of faith.”87 MOWM tried to use Gaines

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as leverage to improve local educational resources, but these efforts did not excite mass protests comparable to previous actions around employment opportunities and civil rights. Just as St. Louis University never publicly mentioned the surge of African American protest in the city as a reason for changing its admissions policies, St. Louis Cardinals owner Sam Breadon and St. Louis Browns owner Don Barnes did not acknowledge that wartime protests by groups such as MOWM factored into their decision to desegregate grandstand seating at Sportsman’s Park.88 Even though two big-league franchises called this stadium home, there was little fanfare leading up to or following this new seating policy at a place called “the last outpost of Jim Crow seating in the majors.” Interestingly, in 1944, the year that the stadium began desegregating its seating, both teams that called Sportsman’s Park home played each other in the World Series. Stan Musial, a star ballplayer who in later years was supportive of Jackie Robinson’s position on the Brooklyn Dodgers, led the Cardinals to a championship over the Browns in six games.89 Breaking the color line in baseball was largely a symbolic act, but it was on the agenda of many 1940s civil rights activists, who saw it as just below desegregating the military and establishing a permanent FEPC in importance.90 Local African American protest organizations such as MOWM never staged a picket at this site—although they did come close in the 1942 march on Carter Carburetor. This demonstration caught the attention of onlookers at the nearby St. Louis Cardinals game, where some of the 1,865 spectators caught glimpses of the protest while watching a 5–2 Cardinals victory against the hapless Phillies.91 Voluntary top-down desegregation at places such as Sportsman’s Park and St. Louis University were progressive changes that David Grant interpreted as indicators that “pointed toward a truly integrated democracy” in the postwar world.92 Protests were never held at these sites, but the atmosphere of unrest and a current of antiracism in the city cannot be ignored as factors in explaining why these reforms occurred when they did. Agitation contributed to creating a progressive climate in St. Louis and made some institutions question their segregationist policies. This ripple effect makes gauging the potency of protest activities more difficult to quantify, but these incidents suggest that movements for social change sometimes have an effect on institutions that were not directly targeted as sites for reform.

National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission Randolph drew criticism for unequivocally calling off the march in the summer of 1941, and detractors pointed out that the FEPC did not have the power to force defense contractors into obeying the president’s antidiscrimination policy. Without legal authority and no history of a contract ever being revoked from a company

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that openly violated Executive Order 8802, the FEPC relied on being a pragmatic voice of moral suasion within the federal government. Despite this, historian Toure Reed points out, “Most of the companies it investigated followed through, to varying degrees, with pledges to comply with the executive order.”93 In many locales, Roosevelt’s edict was implemented only because of pressure from grassroots activists and progressive unions. What little power the FEPC had was built because it galvanized labor, religious organizations, progressives, and civil rights groups. As the war neared an end, this coalition led the fight to make the agency become a permanent arm of the federal government.94 African American newspapers across the United States lifted their pens in defense of the beleaguered agency whenever Dixiecrats attacked its authority or undercut its appropriations. In St. Louis, the Argus cheered the FEPC for “giving the Negro a man’s chance to work and earn a living” and warned that African Americans would be set back “for years—or maybe generations” without a federal policy against racial discrimination in employment. “If we do not get integrated into industry now,” the Argus predicted, “our future in the industrial life of the nation is too dismal to think about.” Weak as it was, the FEPC symbolized that there was at least nominal support for equal opportunity, and without it “there is little hope for the future.”95 The threat of “extreme job displacement” awaited newly integrated African American war workers when the armaments silenced and the economy reverted to traditional levels of production.96 In Los Angeles, more than 5,000 African Americans entered war industries in a single year, and at one point during the war the proportion of African Americans working for defense contractors closely matched their proportion of the regional population.97 In Milwaukee a plant with a forty-year history of racial exclusion now had nearly 500 African Americans on its payroll, and another company that originally had only 2 African American workers among its 2,140 employees hired 1,440 African Americans in just eight months.98 The FEPC was an ingredient in the recipe that brought the number of gainfully employed African Americans to a record high of 6 million workers, veritably wiping out unemployment among African Americans in urban centers.99 Gains such as these, the St. Louis Argus feared, were threatened by the imminent conversion to a peacetime economy.100 To safeguard the FEPC and protect advances made by African Americans in the industrial labor force, A. Philip Randolph spearheaded the National Council for a Permanent FEPC. Disappointed with institutional weaknesses built into the FEPC, Randolph admitted that the “success of this committee” was astonishing considering that it was “hampered by insufficient funds and lack of authority to enforce its orders.”101 Over the span of five years, the FEPC logged an annual average of five thousand complaints and helped settle forty workplace disturbances that arose because of “racial differences.”102 The volume of grievances filed speaks

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to the pervasiveness of employment discrimination in the United States during the war, as well as to the growing sensibility of thousands of workers that the federal government could help in securing a better job. The FEPC was “wracked with dissension” internally, notes one historian, and attacked by “right-wing obstruction” whenever discussions of appropriations and enforcement powers came before Congress.103 “When the war ends,” wrote the Courier, “the Fair Employment Practices Committee . . . will also end, because war contracts will end and the national emergency requiring tremendous war production will also terminate.”104 This gloomy forecast was correct. By mandating that the president could not allocate money to executive agencies whose budgets had not been previously approved by Congress, the Russell Amendment made sure that even a sympathetic Oval Office could not revive the dying agency. This congressional maneuver was a veritable death knell to the FEPC, and it occurred in spite of Randolph’s empty promise to march on Washington if southern senators stopped appropriations for the FEPC.105 Eulogized in the Argus as having “done more to advance the Negro in employment than any other legislation in the history of the country,” the FEPC could not withstand perennially diminishing budgetary appropriations and the loss of urgency that accompanied wartime production.106 “Born of guilt, undernourished as a child, and dead at the age of five,” historian Kevin Schultz argues, the FEPC was “battered” by limited appropriations and hobbled by the inability of organizers to galvanize widespread grassroots support from the multiethnic constituency that it served.107 With the anticlimactic dissolution of this federal agency, the most important national gain wrought by MOWM was now gone. Some African Americans were wary of Harry Truman, but Roosevelt’s heir at least made gestures to keeping something like the FEPC around.108 Without congressional support, however, the President’s Committee on Government Contract Compliance hobbled on for only a year before quietly disappearing from the federal bureaucracy. The FEPC was now officially dead.109 Democrats such as New Yorker Vito Marcantonio and New Mexico senator Dennis Chaves were the most vocal political supporters of making the FEPC permanent. Not surprisingly, both of these politicians represented especially diverse multiethnic constituencies. When this battle was lost, they were at the forefront of the push to create fair employment commissions in their respective states.110 New York led the way in 1945, when Governor Thomas Dewey signed the Ives-Quinn Act, making it the first state to enact legislation curtailing job discrimination.111 More than a dozen individual states followed by creating their own fair employment commissions in the years immediately after the war, and these state commissions were usually better funded and had more legal authority than their federal counterpart ever did.112 MOWM is part of the genealogy of the postwar state fair employment practices laws because legislation of this nature developed in response

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to the dissolution of the federal FEPC, and that agency came about only because of Randolph’s threat to march. MOWM’s impact outlasted the organization itself because it was partly responsible for reforms transpired long after its time in the limelight expired. Randolph was unable to build a strong showing in support of a permanent FEPC through MOWM. In part, this was because the BSCP was tiring of underwriting the efforts of other organizations that advanced campaigns outside the immediate scope of representing railroad workers. Milton Webster wrote Randolph advising, “We ought to slow down on handing out money in big chunks to that crowd,” because if the campaign is successful, “everybody is going to get credit for it but us.”113 Without unilateral support from the BSCP, Randolph had to look elsewhere for an ally. He found one in Allan Knight Chalmers, a New York minister that Anna Arnold Hedgeman called “one of about a dozen whites whom I had come to believe was really Christian” and whom Martin Luther King complimented in his 1958 book, Stride toward Freedom.114 In 1943 Randolph and Chalmers founded the National Council for a Fair Employment Practices Committee as a single-issue special interest group that tried to build alliances between the predominantly white labor movement and America’s racial and ethnic minorities.115 The avowedly interracial National Council for a Fair Employment Practices Committee depended almost exclusively on lobbying as a form of pressure politics. Unlike MOWM, this organization did not have a committed base of grassroots activists or sponsor public protests and demonstrations.116 The irony of MOWM’s “lily-black” leader supporting a racially mixed push for a permanent FEPC was not lost on African American columnists, who wrote with bemusement at what they saw as an about-face by Randolph.117 Anna Arnold Hedgeman was a bridge figure between MOWM and the National Council for a Fair Employment Practices Committee. Hedgeman participated in New York MOWM’s marches, and she served as executive secretary of the national council from 1944 to 1946.118 “A big fight” between Hedgeman and Randolph resulted in her departure. Patriarchal gender dynamics were likely a factor in this incident because, as in MOWM, women did much of the organizing, while men received nearly all of the recognition for the organization’s accomplishments.119 As it often does, a shortage of money exacerbated these problems. Sidney Wilkerson, Hedgeman’s assistant, complained that the National Council for a Permanent FEPC had no money for stamps to address a seven-thousand-person mailing list, could not meet payroll, and did not reimburse employees for small operating expenses such as taxi fare to Capitol Hill for meetings with legislators.120 Not paid on time for months, Hedgeman wrote Randolph, “I have no alternative but to resign,” because of “your total disregard of our continuous notification of impending financial crisis.”121 Frustrated with Randolph’s notoriously poor management skills, Hedgeman left the organization in the midst of incurable financial distress.122 Hedgeman kept

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quiet the fact that “staff has used every reasonable means of calling your attention to back salaries, expenses, earned vacation, and loans to the National Council due us for one year” because she knew that publicly airing these problems was a disservice to a cause she believed in. This kind of tact is a reason Hedgeman would go on to have a two-decade working relationship with Randolph.123 Rather than criticize Randolph, Hedgeman simply resigned and let others accuse Randolph and Chalmers of being ineffective leaders. Their words were just as salient as hers would be, but Hedgeman remained out of the fray and let others fire potshots at the collapsing organization.124 Arnold Aronson, a white Chicagoan and MOWM booster who worked alongside Charles Wesley Burton to prepare for the 1941 march, succeeded Hedgeman at the position, but trying to “surmount the financial problems inherited from Ann Hedgeman” flustered him.125 Without steady financial backing from labor or civil rights groups and lacking strong grassroots support, Randolph’s vision of creating a permanent FEPC was doomed. Operating from the AFL’s margins as the leader of a black labor union, Randolph had less influence in racially mixed or predominantly white organizations. Because Randolph was seen as representing African American interests, many held the faulty view that the FEPC addressed the discrimination complaints of only African Americans—a group that, in reality, constituted 78 percent of the FEPC’s cases. Randolph was viewed as a black leader, not a labor leader or a champion of egalitarian values. This perception made it difficult for him to develop an institutional platform for progressive interracial alliances, but these were the kinds of interests that he needed to attract in order to try to make the FEPC a permanent federal agency.126 Creating a new federal agency to oversee fair employment guidelines was political dynamite in the capital, and it garnered national headlines, but it was not an issue that ignited grassroots fervor the way that a proposed march on Washington did. Randolph’s prophecy that “unless America enacts FEPC legislation, it is going to witness a series of devastating and destructive racial tensions and riots . . . which will make the race conflicts following World War I seem petty” proved untrue, and his urgency did not convince a regionally divided Democratic Party to support fair employment legislation. From 1944 through 1955, the National Committee for a Permanent FEPC united groups such as the CIO, NAACP, National Urban League, and AKA Non-Partisan Council. For more than a decade, their efforts could not get legislation through a Congress dominated by prosegregation southern Democrats.127 When seen as part of a decades-long struggle for fair employment, MOWM is properly understood as part of a long movement (a very long movement) for civil rights and economic opportunity. Canceling the march on Washington in 1941 led to the FEPC’s creation, and individual states acted to preserve this gain

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by establishing their own agencies to enforce antidiscrimination laws. By 1964, when Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was passed, creating the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, twenty-nine states already had fair employment practices laws of some kind on the books.128 Even then, when more than half of the states had legislation prohibiting discrimination, there was concern that new laws would not alter the deeply entrenched pattern of workplace discrimination. NAACP labor secretary Herbert Hill must have had lessons from the 1940s on his mind when he tersely warned local branches, “Title VII is not self-enforcing.”129 The federal government had to be prodded to enforce its mandates, and shattering the legacy of being debarred from many workplaces required a combination of bottom-up pressure by grassroots activists and top-down resolve from management. One of the ironies behind A. Philip Randolph’s leadership during the 1940s is that his goals were often too ambitious for their time. The march on Washington and the establishment of federal fair employment law did happen, but both took decades to occur.

Fighting the Jim Crow Army By the end of World War II, MOWM lost much of its ability to catalyze social or political change. Undaunted, Randolph remained involved in furthering the cause of civil rights. Disappointed by the FEPC’s disintegration under President Truman, Randolph rejuvenated his reputation as an uncompromising and bold leader through his role in helping abolish racial segregation in the armed forces.130 This issue was one of MOWM’s demands when the call to march was proclaimed back in 1941. In his contribution to Rayford Logan’s What the Negro Wants (1944), Randolph restated MOWM’s position that “pivotal and central to the whole struggle in the Negro liberation movement at this time is the abolition of Jim Crow in the armed forces.”131 Unaddressed by Roosevelt, the issue remained just as urgent as when the Crisis appealed at the onset of the war, “This is no fight merely to wear a uniform. This is a struggle for status, a struggle to take democracy off of parchment and give it life.”132 Segregation within ranks effectively nationalized the southern practices of exclusion and separation. “The pattern is the cause of most of the trouble experienced by Negroes in civilian as well as military life,” wrote the Crisis. “Until segregation as a procedure is overthrown, the race will be hobbled in all of its endeavors in every field.”133 The resentment of serving in a segregated military and a growing awareness that “separate but equal” was a mythic legal fiction crystallized in a damning statement against racial segregation in the armed forces by the President’s Committee on Civil Rights. In its 1947 report, To Secure These Rights, the committee concluded that “prejudice in any area is an ugly, undemocratic phenomenon,” but it was “particularly repugnant” in the armed forces. After

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surveying ways that the military “can be used to educate citizens on a broad range of social and political problems,” the committee recommended that the military “end immediately all discrimination and segregation based on race, color, creed or national origin . . . in all branches of the armed services.”134 The bitterness of serving in a segregated fighting force did not wane quickly, and Truman’s proposal of a peacetime draft sparked Randolph to get involved once again in a fight to desegregate the military.135 “They had enough of segregation in World War II,” observed an editorial in the Crisis. “The scars of Jim Crow service are still fresh upon their young men and families.”136 This time the prospect of another generation of African Americans being forced into segregated military service drew outrage. Once again, pacifists on the Left, notably A. J. Muste and Bayard Rustin, aligned themselves with Randolph. Although organizing to integrate African Americans into the armed forces was hardly in line with pacifist ideals, the ironic cause was “an imperfect fit” that Muste and others thought had the potential to demonstrate nonviolent action’s feasibility as a force for creating change.137 Randolph’s recent experiences in MOWM suited him well for this campaign. He learned that focusing pressure on the executive branch allowed him to sidestep congressional opponents from the “solid south.”138 As commander in chief, Truman had direct authority to order and enforce any mandate over the armed forces. Unlike the FEPC, segregationists were unlikely to chop the military’s budgetary appropriations in order to get back at the president. Moreover, the timing was right. Because the United States was not actively involved in a war, segregationists could not fall back on the excuse that it was inopportune to tinker with the military during a crisis. In hindsight, the Second World War seems an unlikely time for a successful military integration effort. Activists such as Randolph saw the war as an opportunity, but the military was hesitant to alter a long-standing pattern of racial segregation at a time when American troops were preparing to engage in combat.139 Resistance to integrating the military permeated the institution’s upper echelons. In 1940 the War Department argued that racial segregation “has been proven satisfactory over a long period of years and to make changes would produce situations destructive to morale and detrimental to the preparations for national defense.”140 Colonel Eugene R. Householder summed up the military’s position that the nation’s fighting force “is not a sociological laboratory.”141 Frustrated with demands by pressure groups such as MOWM and the NAACP to speedily integrate the military in time for the fight against fascism, Roosevelt exclaimed, “If you have a Northern ship and a Southern ship it would be different. But you can’t do that.”142 Correspondence between military officers and White House officials made plain that modifying the military’s segregationist policies was unlikely on the eve of World War II because “for practical reasons it would be impossible to put into operation.”143 Many officers

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internalized stereotypes about African American soldiers as being cowardly and disorganized, and they feared leading a group of men into combat whose supposed inherent unfitness for battle might get them all killed.144 Convinced that America’s racial attitudes and his own party’s fragile coalition made the cause impractical, Roosevelt distanced himself from discussions about military desegregation or using African American troops in a greater capacity.145 Since MOWM’s inception in 1941, Randolph wanted to utilize civil disobedience and a march on Washington to “shock” the government into desegregating the military.146 Even though just about every national civil rights organization clamored for reforming this policy, the march was canceled without addressing the contentious issue of military segregation.147 The issue picked up again midwar, with MOWM sponsoring a letter-writing campaign, urging Roosevelt to force the desegregation of what former civilian aid to the secretary of war William Hastie identified as the largest employer of African Americans in the country—the armed forces.148 Winfred Lynn, an African American draftee who refused induction into a segregated army, became the symbol of MOWM’s opposition to fighting fascism with a racially divided military.149 The American Civil Liberties Union took on Lynn’s

MOWM published and distributed a February 1943 article from the Nation in pamphlet form under the title “The War’s Greatest Scandal! The Story of Jim Crow in Uniform.” Behind the provocative cover art, which featured a Caucasian fist crushing a uniformed African American male, is an essay written by white MOWM supporter Dwight Macdonald. Echoing popular “Double V” rhetoric, Macdonald pointed to the hypocrisy of fighting fascism overseas with a racially segregated fighting force. (August Meier Collection, University of Massachusetts–Amherst)

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case, arguing that the draft’s racial quota system and the existence of segregation in uniform were both unconstitutional. MOWM raised funds to support Lynn’s legal defense and printed a pamphlet authored by Dwight Macdonald titled War’s Greatest Scandal: Jim Crow in Uniform. Distributed by grassroots peddlers who bought it for three cents and resold the pamphlet for a nickel, this little piece of propaganda was sold “by the thousands.”150 Randolph threw MOWM’s weight behind the Lynn case, but the organization’s local chapters never really lined up for the fight.151 In retrospect, latching on to Lynn was a choice that further distanced Randolph from what MOWM’s grassroots activists were most interested in agitating for—jobs. Randolph’s discussions of applying nonviolent civil disobedience to confront segregation and racial inequality within America’s fighting force petered out as MOWM faded from the spotlight, but he remained interested in the cause during the coming years. The campaign was, of course, successful, and America’s next major war would be fought with an integrated army by soldiers who returned to the United States once again convinced that their service should confer full citizenship—regardless of what region of the country they called home.152 Randolph’s inner circle in the effort to abolish Jim Crow from the military included Maida Springer, Pauli Murray, Hazel Alves, and Bayard Rustin—all of whom worked with Randolph in MOWM or in lobbying for a permanent FEPC. Many of these individuals were carryovers from earlier campaigns, and the tactics were, too. Randolph brought his signature style of using militant rhetoric to build up a credible threat of a nonviolent confrontation into the push for obliterating segregation in ranks. This formula worked well in MOWM, and it proved effective once again. “Negroes are in no mood to shoulder guns for democracy abroad,” Randolph thundered, “while they are denied democracy here at home.”153 At his most brazen, Randolph told members of a congressional hearing that he would go so far as to advise draftees to resist induction if they were ordered to serve in a segregated military. Warned that this constituted treason, Randolph proclaimed that he would oppose a “Jim Crow army till I rot in jail.”154 An NAACP poll of male African American college students revealed that 71 percent of the respondents agreed that civil disobedience was an appropriate way to oppose the segregated draft, and Newsweek noted that “there were indications of strong sympathy and support for Randolph.”155 True to form, Randolph never followed through with this defiant promise, but once again his bold statements forced concessions from the White House. By signing Executive Order 9981, President Truman initiated the desegregation of the military, thus rendering the protest superfluous.156 With African American voters becoming increasingly important in swing states, Randolph found that he could generate reforms with militant rhetoric and promises of confrontation that pushed a comparatively progressive president to issue an executive order hailed

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by one Truman biographer as his “greatest civil rights achievement.”157 By wrangling executive orders from two consecutive administrations, Randolph secured, with varying degrees of success, what he was fighting for—and he accomplished this without actually having to follow through with his threats in either situation. Randolph was a master poker player in the game of 1940s pressure politics, but it was the grassroots activists whom he inspired who stacked the deck in his favor.

Conclusion Although I have never had a desire for wealth, I have had a passion to create a significant movement which would also benefit others.

A

—A. Philip Randolph, “If I Were Young Today,” Ebony, July 1963

ctivism in World War II unfolded throughout the country, and MOWM was hardly alone in waging a fight against Jim Crow. As part of an upsurge in African American protest during the war years, MOWM’s place in the loosely organized Double V campaign demonstrates that social and political movements have the capacity to effectively confront multiple issues through a variety of organizations. Writing of wartime campaigns for racial equality in New York City, Martha Biondi remarked, “It was not a single struggle, coordinated by a single organization.”1 The same can be said about protests on a national level during this period. Sometimes resistance was individual, like Pauli Murray’s personal defiance of bus segregation in Richmond.2 Other times, challenges to racial segregation occurred within the ranks of the U.S. armed forces. African American soldiers keenly resented the military’s adoption and extension of regional Jim Crow patterns on military bases and in overseas deployments, and there are scores of instances in which they fought back against these situations.3 Occasionally, small groups like CORE led sit-ins such as those in 1942 Chicago, but these events did not galvanize a larger movement or attract significant national attention.4 Reports in the St. Louis Argus about the “March on Washington Committee . . . the agency which has done more than any other, to force industry and government in St. Louis to give Negro citizens a greater degree of justice” reveal the esteem that this organization had in that city because of its work to combat Jim Crow.5 In places where MOWM was less vibrant, regional organizations such as the Future Outlook League dominated local headlines and brokered agitation.6 Meanwhile, “the NAACP had overcome

176  •  Conclusion the sins of its past” and put a greater emphasis on grassroots organizing within African American communities.7 The number of its branches grew to exceed one thousand, while between 1940 and 1945 its membership jumped from fifty thousand to four hundred thousand.8 Blessed with tireless full-time fieldworkers like Ella Baker and Daisy Lampkin, the NAACP’s eightfold increase in membership was part of a general “organizational upsurge in black America that was unprecedented in scale.”9 With good reason, Fellowship of Reconciliation member James Farmer was optimistic that returning African American veterans would lead a nonviolent surge against racial segregation in housing and public accommodations.10 In the words of novelist Fannie Cook, the African American veterans who fought for democracy would “never be satisfied to come home and not have any” for themselves.11 If judged by the criteria enunciated in MOWM’s “8-Point Program,” the organization was a terrible failure.12 A march was never staged in Washington, and Randolph did not follow through with his threat that he would organize a prolonged picket at the White House, “until the country and the world recognize the Negro has become of age.”13 Despite the efforts of MOWM and other groups, a “culture of exclusion” continued to mark American life through the next generation.14 Louise Elizabeth Grant certainly embellished her assessment of MOWM’s impact on American race relations as “one of the most dramatic efforts of the American Negro to escape the limitations which, since his advent on this continent, have been imposed upon him.”15 A more balanced evaluation credits MOWM for broadening the protest tactics available to African American activists during the mid–twentieth century. MOWM served as a conduit, introducing and refining techniques that would ultimately overthrow de jure racial segregation in the United States within the next two decades. Women were key to this process, and Randolph’s appointment of E. Pauline Myers, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, and Pauli Murray to national leadership positions during the 1940s shows his awareness that women were necessary partners in the struggle.16 Reflecting back on Randolph’s career during the late 1960s, Hedgeman credited him for “recognizing the importance of women in any organization.”17 Indeed, it is difficult to imagine MOWM accomplishing much at all without the efforts and contributions of African American women. MOWM’s most active branches gave life to the spirit of Executive Order 8802. By agitating for job opportunities and helping the FEPC in its work to mitigate employment discrimination, MOWM prodded the federal government into allowing minority groups greater access into American workplaces. Through local organizing and national lobbying, MOWM played a key role in enabling African American workers to “gain a foothold in single-skilled jobs.”18 The average annual wage of African Americans in urban centers during this period rose from $400 to $1,000, and the average income of African Americans increased more in the forties than in any other decade of the twentieth century.19 It is impossible to

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precisely quantify the number of jobs African American workers gained because of Executive Order 8802, but one analyst estimates that total nonwhite employment in war industries might have been up to 40 percent lower if the FEPC had not existed.20 This not only brought much-needed income into black households, but, some MOWM members argued, it also caused whites to develop a “respect for the determination of the Negro people to fight for their rights.”21 These gains needed safeguarding against what one writer from the period warned would be “the avalanche of post war layoffs.”22 Some 296,429 airplanes, 87,620 warships, and 44 billion rounds of ammunition were made, but demand for these products dropped sharply after Japan surrendered on September 2, 1945.23 The disappearance of jobs was widespread and rapid. African Americans lost their hold on twenty thousand jobs in New York City, twenty-five thousand jobs in Chicago, and thirty-five thousand jobs in Detroit.24 During a one-month period in that year, 44.7 percent of African American workers at twenty-five major war plants in New York were laid off. The workforce in these factories downsized by 21 percent, but while two-fifths of the African American workers lost their jobs, only one-fifth of white workers were laid off.25 As early as July, the Chicago Defender reported that six thousand recently unemployed African Americans in St. Louis crowded the U.S. Employment Service office looking for work, and by the end of 1945 the government expected this number to reach more than sixty thousand.26 Even though the World War II years represented the largest jump in African American earnings since emancipation, black workers still earned only about two-thirds of what their white counterparts brought home. In 1945 the national per capita income for whites was $1,140, while for African Americans that amount was only $779.27 The arsenal of democracy paid white workers more and gave them preferential treatment in keeping their jobs when production slowed down. Statistics such as these presaged the economic disaster that working-class African Americans faced while the nation was on the eve of plant relocation, deindustrialization, and automation. A 1955 retelling of MOWM’s story credited the organization with energizing “the ordinary Negro as nothing had since Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement.”28 When judged by the ability to generate enthusiasm among working-class people, MOWM’s activities show that the Second World War was a ripe moment for challenging America’s Jim Crow system. Seen from the perspective of grassroots organizing, the effectiveness of work by people such as T. D. McNeal should not be judged by whether racial discrimination still existed after their efforts or by what proportion of the more than sixteen thousand jobs St. Louis MOWM claimed to help gain for African American workers. The relative success enjoyed by McNeal and others in MOWM affirms historian Barbara Ransby’s remarks that “an organizer did not have to have the perfect political strategy but did have to have the respect and trust of those he or she struggled alongside.”29 An appreciation for the

178  •  Conclusion intangible gains created by social movements credits MOWM for the effect that it had on regular people.30 “For the first time, the Negro masses participated in a social crusade,” Lerone Bennett remarked of MOWM. “Hundreds of thousands of lower income Negroes came to social maturity in the feverish days of Randolph’s crusade.”31 Their efforts gave credence to Horace Cayton’s remarks on a St. Louis radio broadcast that “the war has broken down conventional race relations patterns,” making it “impossible to maintain the old and established race etiquette.”32 In part, this was because MOWM emboldened people such as Nita Blackwell, Henry Wheeler, and Pearl Maddox to challenge segregation and inequality in their city. These otherwise ordinary individuals stood behind visible public leaders like David Grant and T. D. McNeal. As a cohesive group of activists, they enjoyed each other’s fellowship and mutually shared the burdens and benefits of working together to challenge the status quo. As a study of organizational behavior, MOWM demonstrates that regional manifestations of national groups often operate with considerable autonomy from national leaders. MOWM’s national office called policy conferences and formulated plans for protests, but its members in St. Louis galvanized the community by responding to local issues that resonated with the city’s African American population. Randolph captured headlines by making pronouncements, but grassroots organizers made MOWM thrive by channeling civic engagement into a form of pressure politics that addressed the economic opportunities and civil rights of African Americans. Public protest for access to employment with federal defense contractors mobilized working-class African Americans in St. Louis, and their activism caused a ripple effect throughout the city. The result was new jobs in public utilities, desegregation at a prominent area university and a professional baseball stadium, and a summer of sit-ins that forced the improvement of food service at some department stores. MOWM’s success at the local level came about, in part, because segregation sometimes created strong community ties. These relationships exposed individuals to group pressures that could coerce participation in social movements.33 Those who cautioned against marching or did not support MOWM’s stand against racial inequality were denounced by Washington Tribune columnist Melvin B. Tolson as “moral sissies and black judases . . . Sambos and Aunt Hagars” who should be thrown into the Potomac River.34 MOWM achieved a facade of cohesiveness through what David Grant called a “quarantine.” As Grant recalled, “If we found in our midst a traitor,” the individual would be ostracized within all of the organizations and institutions with which he or she was associated.35 MOWM experimented with harnessing protest politics to create avenues for reform, and in doing so it discovered one of the shortcomings of grassroots pressure—namely, this style of agitation necessitates constant civic engagement in

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order to preserve the reforms that were fought for and won. As William Harris noted, being charismatic does not usually last long or sustain organizations that are geared toward engendering long-term change.36 Leaders such as Randolph are certainly visionary, but the task of implementation falls on the shoulders of the ordinary people whom he inspired. The problematic nature of relying on grassroots activism to create meaningful reform is well illustrated in MOWM’s failure to effectively respond when Paul McNutt of the War Manpower Commission repeatedly postponed FEPC’s railroad hearings, an action taken despite Randolph’s strong personal admonitions. Randolph knew that he had little power to challenge McNutt, as it was “utterly impossible to mobilize a March on Washington upon the issue of the postponement of the railroad hearings.”37 Layle Lane, a close associate and frequent collaborator of Randolph’s throughout MOWM’s existence, knew that enthusiasm for prolonged struggles was fickle. Lane “expected” a “slump in public support for the March,” but she hoped that, “with careful planning,” campaigns could be built around concrete issues that attracted attention by connecting local problems to national affairs.38 It is tempting to describe MOWM as a prototype of the 1960s, but, of course, the people affiliated with MOWM could not have possibly seen themselves that way. Nobody could have known that it would take more than two decades for Randolph’s dream demonstration to occur. Still, just the threat of amassing thousands for a protest in Washington established Randolph as “a pioneer in the use of massprotest” and solidified his place in the pantheon of African American leaders. 39 Unlike today, when assembling in the capital is a political cliché, or, as one writer put it, a “public spectacle, weekend entertainment posing as politics,” the idea of a march on Washington was still fresh and novel and had little precedent.40 MOWM’s efforts led to a modest but historically significant gesture of support for equal opportunity from the president, and Randolph’s tactics of forcing federal action through the threat of mass pressure places the organization within the chronological vanguard of mid-twentieth-century African American protest politics.41 Randolph did not create a widespread movement with MOWM, but he at least constructed a blueprint. The canceled 1941 march laid the groundwork for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the smaller marches of the 1950s, but it is difficult to draw a direct lineage through these actions across the span of two decades.42 As historian Harvard Sitkoff reminds us, “It is one thing to recognize forerunners or acknowledge antecedents and quite another to posit one long, continuous movement stretching back further and further in time.”43 Another generation would pass before American activists discovered how far nonviolent agitation needed to be carried before it could become successful. “The central lesson,” noted Paul Ortiz in his study of African American organizing in Florida, “is that social movements do not arise by chance: they take years of pa-

180  •  Conclusion tient organizing and institution building.”44 A. Philip Randolph knew this. “Every historical epoch has its roots in a preceding epoch,” he commented in a 1969 Ebony article. “The black militants of today are standing upon the shoulders of the ‘new Negro radicals’ of my day—the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s.”45 Arnold Aronson was one of the few present at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom who could reminisce on working to organize the aborted 1941 march and proudly reflect on that “great day 22 years later, when we marched side by side holding hands down Constitution Avenue.”46 Most who got involved with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s were unaware of MOWM, but this short-lived organization made an imprint on the next generation of progressive activists.47 This is particularly true in the conscious use of nonviolence as a protest technique during the post-Brown years. Randolph became convinced that “you can’t win with violence because there’s too much power on the other side.”48 To varying degrees, MOWM supporters such as Bayard Rustin, James Forman, Pauli Murray, and E. D. Nixon shared this view—and each of them made an impact on the Civil Rights Movement.49 MOWM’s strategies of prayer protests, liberation theology, and religiously sanctioned civil disobedience were central to the next generation’s struggles for civil rights. These tactics appeared especially dramatic when captured on video and beamed into people’s houses on the nightly news.50 Although MOWM cannot claim credit for originating the idea of using confrontational nonviolent direct action as a method of attacking racial segregation, it deserves recognition for functioning as an intermediary in translating Gandhi’s tactics to the African American situation more than a decade before King popularized the idea.51 MOWM’s first scholarly historian, Herbert Garfinkel, points out that its precipitous decline from the national scene was attributable to “a complex of political, organizational and leadership rivalry,” but a close examination of MOWM through a local lens reveals a more nuanced portrait.52 Although MOWM disbanded as an organization, its members remained active in protest politics and in striving for black equality. The struggle was not over. In the following years and decades, it assumed new forms. When looked at from the grassroots level, individuals are seen moving seamlessly between organizations and carrying on the fight for a cause under the banner of whichever group presented the best chances to mobilize for victory. These multiple loyalties do not necessarily indicate division or fragmentation within a circle of activists. MOWM members saw no conflict in simultaneously maintaining affiliations with the NAACP, the Urban League, women’s clubs, or fraternal organizations. That is why “officers and key people” from St. Louis MOWM “went into the NAACP, practically [taking] it over” after the war. This transition was natural for T. D. McNeal, David Grant, and Henry Wheeler—all of whom had ties to the nation’s oldest civil rights organization that predated their involvement in MOWM. McNeal drew a paycheck from the BSCP, his name was synonymous

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with MOWM, and he supported “the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, all the way,” since he was nineteen years old. To McNeal, returning to working within the organization in which he had previously served as an officer was the logical thing to do once the time to “march” had expired.53 With the war waning and a march on Washington surely not about to occur anytime soon, MOWM faded from the national and local scenes. Roosevelt’s passing in 1945 marked the end of an era, and his death paralleled MOWM’s dissolution.54 One of MOWM’s shortcomings is that it never actually did what its name implied—organize a demonstration in the capital.55 Bayard Rustin, who worked alongside Randolph when MOWM was at the apex of its power, remarked that the organization represented “only a partial answer to the present need. . . . [I]t has no program, educational or otherwise, for meeting the present need.”56 Adam Clayton Powell acerbically attributed MOWM’s decline to being the inevitable result of “an organization with a name that it doesn’t live up to, an announced program that it doesn’t stick to, and a philosophy contrary to the mood of the times.”57 Whereas MOWM’s national leadership could be criticized for not being active enough, local activists had trouble building on their own successes. Upon the FEPC’s establishment of an office in St. Louis, David Grant said that MOWM “sort of slacked off,” and its persistent utilization of public protests to draw federal attention to illegal practices seemed passé, if not stale.58 St. Louis MOWM tried to keep interest up in the city for nonviolent direct action and mass mobilization, but it could never distance itself from sharing a name with a national organization that never did what its name boldly declared it would do. The skeletal remains of MOWM’s executive committee unanimously agreed that the “March on Washington” name was misleading, and it recommended that the organization either disband or rename itself the “Progressive Negro March Movement,” “All-American Negro Progressive Movement,” or “National Institute for Negro Affairs.”59 MOWM faded from the forefront of African American activism in the same year that southern Democrats finally succeeded in dismantling the FEPC, making 1946 the year that book-ends this organization’s life span. In the most vibrant times of the early 1940s, it seemed as if everybody who had a voice sang in MOWM’s chorus, but the organization’s actual membership numbers remain a mystery. Historian Lance Hill notes that calculating definitive membership figures “in the fluid world of social movements” is fraught with inaccuracy, because “a person might be regarded as a member for simply expressing support.” Moreover, “an organization may have small formal membership but be capable of commanding a large number of supporters.”60 In MOWM’s case, incomplete records and an intentionally loose membership policy make it impossible to accurately gauge how many people were officially affiliated with the organization. Compounding this difficulty is that MOWM never had a strong apparatus

182  •  Conclusion for collecting dues. MOWM’s national membership certainly paled to that of the NAACP, but the St. Louis chapter was among its most active and best organized. The FBI placed St. Louis MOWM at four thousand strong, but this estimate does not indicate the number of dues-paying supporters. If all of these people paid their annual membership fee, MOWM would not have constantly operated under desperate fiscal constraints and its financial statements would have been much healthier.61 Locally and nationally, MOWM failed to get widespread support from the country’s newly integrated war workers, prompting E. Pauline Myers to urge, “We need finances desperately in order to carry forward this gigantic campaign.”62 It may have been impossible to accomplish, but MOWM’s membership would have exceeded that of the NAACP if every African American worker in the defense industry joined this organization. With an inadequate dues-collecting infrastructure and only a few major charitable donations, MOWM was barely financially solvent. Jordan W. Chambers served as treasurer of St. Louis MOWM, an office that suited him well because of his role within the city’s Democratic patronage machine.63 Chambers made “impassioned” pleas for the estimated fourteen thousand black workers in St. Louis defense plants that earned an estimated cumulative total of $450,000 per week to give the organization “100 per cent support.”64 One “very grateful” worker whom David Grant helped get a job at U.S. Cartridge’s Small Arms Plant donated $5, a “token” of her first week’s wages, to St. Louis MOWM.65 Cases such as this were exceptional. MOWM’s fund-raising appeals directed at African American war workers were “a precarious way of raising money” because newly incorporated war workers were reluctant to join regardless of how low the membership fee was.66 Because its campaigns were covered so thoroughly in the local African American press, it is unlikely that MOWM’s efforts to integrate area defense plants were unknown to these newly employed workers. There are several possible explanations for MOWM’s inability to build its base of dues-paying members: those who gained lucrative but typically temporary jobs in defense plants were unaware that their new employment was the result of MOWM’s efforts, they were cognizant of MOWM’s campaigns but had little personal desire to contribute to a protest organization that was not fiscally solvent, or these workers interpreted their own upward employment mobility as the result of larger market forces that were beyond the control of St. Louis’s African American community.67 Although St. Louis MOWM could dominate headlines in the local African American press and “continue hammering relentlessly” on the structures of racial inequality, MOWM’s leadership admitted that it could not extract sufficient revenue from the people whom it helped the most.68 This was a veritable death blow for an organization operating on the premise that “the effectiveness of a movement such as this depends to a large extent upon the size of the base membership.” Organizers

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such as Charles Kennedy and Eugene Wood were undoubtedly sincere in stating that “we are in this fight to stay, no matter what the future may bring in hardships, suffering, opposition or expense.” Still, they could not keep a local branch of a national organization relevant while MOWM failed to recoup its operating expenses.69 Other MOWM branches faced similar difficulties. In Harlem, for instance, the local branch found “itself in dire straights” after collecting only $38 from a crowd of four to five hundred at an event.70 Behind the scenes in MOWM’s national office, Anna Arnold Hedgeman pointed to financial woes as a primary reason for MOWM’s demise, “largely because there had not been enough money to carry on the quality of educational programs required to bring change in national policies.”71 MOWM fell apart because it could not do the things that stable organizations do well: secure immediate goals, maximize political interests, and raise money. People get involved in political action when it seems as if short-term sacrifice will yield long-term benefits. The mere presence of oppression does not create reformers or revolutionary movements. Their interests must be challenged, but they also need to be convinced that their actions are, in historian George Lipsitz’s words, “historically sanctioned, politically necessary, and ideologically desirable.”72 In other words, people are attracted to movements that they think will be successful. Philosopher and Detroit-based civil rights activist Grace Lee Boggs learned this lesson during the 1940s. Although she was critical of MOWM when writing under the name Ria Stone in the New International, Boggs later reflected that MOWM taught her how mass movements operate and credited it with exemplifying “the power that the black community has within itself to change this country when it begins to move.”73 Underemployment, housing discrimination, and segregated public accommodations remained entrenched in St. Louis long after the apex of MOWM’s agitation. Just five years after the war’s conclusion, African American workers in St. Louis had an average yearly income that was 58 percent of what white workers in that city earned. In 1954 African Americans there faced a 15 percent unemployment rate, a number that was two and a half times that of their white counterparts.74 Securing equal access to economic opportunity remained an unresolved issue in the postwar decades, especially within St. Louis’s blue-collar industries. As late as 1963, St. Louis joined Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Brooklyn on the growing list of cities where CORE sponsored demonstrations against all-white construction crews working on public job sites.75 Notably, all of these cities witnessed impressive campaigns for jobs waged by African Americans during the 1940s. Small victories were often won, but the larger issue of black workers being marginalized or excluded remained a problem that future activists would deal with for years to come. In MOWM’s wake, a new generation and another contingent of organizations arose to combat the enduring problems of racial inequality. In the late 1940s, a

184  •  Conclusion group of idealistic youngsters affiliated with a newly formed CORE chapter resumed the sit-in tactic at department-store lunch counters. Instead of making segregated food service closer to the ideal of separate and equal mandated a half century prior in Plessy, this cadre of activists sought to completely desegregate the lunch counters in St. Louis’s busiest department stores. Despite CORE’s efforts, the lunch counters in downtown St. Louis began to “voluntarily” desegregate only during the 1954 Christmas shopping season. It took even longer for St. Louis to guarantee equal access to public services and space. In 1948 former NAACP leader Sidney Redmond and a team of alderman introduced a bill toward this end. After thirteen years of political wrangling, 1961 marked the passage of St. Louis’s Public Accommodations Bill. Also known as Ordinance No. 50553, this legislation forbade racial segregation in all restaurants, playgrounds, pools, stores, hotels, and theaters.76 Local and individual challenges to segregation and discrimination continued to occur throughout the country, but a national movement for civil rights did not gain traction in the years immediately following World War II.77 Of course, these years were not without advances. Signs of change were evident in the establishment of various state fair employment practices laws and, more vividly, in the powerful symbolism of Jackie Robinson’s excellence at a time when simply playing baseball was a radical act.78 Still, the Supreme Court’s ruling against all-white Democratic primaries in Smith v. Allwright (1944) did not have the same kind of impact as the Brown v. Board of Education decision a decade later. Likewise, the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation did not stir the nation’s conscience like the 1961 Freedom Rides. There was something different about Rosa Parks and the context of Montgomery that distinguished the bus boycott from the litany of other protests against public transit that occurred throughout the years.79 There is no formula to predict what kind of incident will ignite a mass movement or capture a nation’s imagination, and it is difficult to delineate precisely why and how a struggle sometimes grows into a widespread push for reform.80 One thing is certain: resistance matters—and in the postwar years, resistance was risky.81 In the context of mid-twentiethcentury America, a hostile racial atmosphere and a reactionary political climate were factors in the slowdown of national organizing against segregation and racism. Violence was the linchpin of segregation, and high-profile instances of racial terror contributed to the loss of wartime momentum for civil rights. Mississippi congressman Frank Smith grandiloquently stated, “More young men came home from World War II with a sense of purpose than any other American venture,” but sometimes that heightened resolve led to animosity when the color line was challenged.82 In 1946, a year after the war ended, white southerners unleashed a wave of terror aimed at enforcing the Jim Crow caste system, while in the North police brutality

Conclusion  • 185

and “legal lynchings” began drawing more attention.83 That year Georgia and Alabama had the highest murder rates of any state in the nation. At roughly twentyfive homicides per one hundred thousand residents, the rate of killing was seven times higher than that of New York.84 A scuffle between two veterans, one black and the other white, in Tennessee resulted in state police and National Guardsmen destroying most of an African American neighborhood. NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall was in town working on the case. The culture of lawlessness was so rampant that Marshall was abducted by a caravan of whites and nearly lynched when he was preparing for the trial.85 Isaac Woodard, an African American veteran, was beaten and blinded by a sheriff in Aiken, South Carolina. The uniformed veteran got in an argument with a bus driver over his choice of seating, and tensions escalated when Woodward objected to the driver’s pejorative use of the term boy. One of the most tragic assaults on an American veteran in modern history ensued.86 Returning African American soldiers were not the only ones targeted. Amid a hotly contested gubernatorial primary in Georgia, political terrorists abducted and executed two African American couples in broad daylight. Eugene Talmadge emerged victorious in what he called an election “to save Georgia for the white man.”87 In Mississippi scores of African Americans, including Medgar Evers and many other veterans, gave detailed accounts about the use of racial violence to thwart democratic participation. Senator Theodore Bilbo appealed to “red-blooded Anglo Saxon men” to “resort to any means to keep hundreds of Negroes from the polls in the July 2 primary.” The beatings, assaults, and intimidation were so widespread that it took four days of testimony in a federal courtroom to fully describe.88 Brutal attacks such as these unmistakably hinted that the energy and optimism expressed by MOWM and others in the wartime Double V campaign might have been misplaced. Totalitarianism was defeated overseas, but racism remained a powerful force in the world’s leading democracy. A postwar wave of anticommunism gave rise to a culture of conformity that equated questioning the status quo as evidence of harboring anti-American attitudes.89 Dating back to the formation of the Dies Committee in 1939, this was, in the words of one historian, “the longest and most far-reaching period of political repression in U.S. history.”90 Attacking liberalism, advancing corporate interests, and maintaining white supremacy were intertwined as part of the postwar reactionary agenda. Seemingly egalitarian legislation such as fair employment laws was opposed through thinly veiled codes for racism that cast the issue as one of big government infringing on private enterprise.91 Even in New York, home to some of the strongest labor unions and most vibrant radical networks in the United States, there was strong opposition to proposed fair employment legislation during this period.92 Conservative columnist Westbrook Pegler, who during World War II spoke out against racial segregation, rejected a state fair employment law

186  •  Conclusion on the grounds that “all such proposals . . . are the work of Communists and their kind whose intent is not to open opportunities for Negroes but to cause friction and provoke disorder by creating intolerable personal situations.”93 Republicans capitalized on national anxieties about the Cold War, and they assailed Truman as “soft” on communism. This red-baiting paved the way for Joseph McCarthy’s meteoric rise and manifested in Republicans sweeping both houses of Congress in the 1946 midterm elections. Loyalty oaths and government purges mandated by EO 9835 were products of this political shift.94 The national political climate impacted the way that civil rights organizations fought for racial equality in the postwar years.95 American diplomats were concerned with the nation’s image abroad, and the State Department estimated that roughly half of Russian propaganda against the United States from the war’s end and into the 1950s focused on problematic race relations. The Red Scare took a heavy toll on civil rights activists, but the Cold War did create international pressure for the United States to redress the crudest forms of racial segregation and discrimination.96 Anticommunist attacks were wielded as a weapon against outspoken civil rights activists. Among reformers, pounding an anticommunist drum led to partisan splintering within progressive organizations. The result was a rupturing of coalitions, the marginalization of key organizers, and a general depletion of energies that could have been devoted toward working for meaningful social change.97 In 1947 former MOWM member Pauli Murray lamented the difficulties she faced as an activist with socialist leanings who did not identify at all with communism. To her, being an “active anti-communist” was a time-consuming, tiring, and sometimes distracting battle that was “a detriment of the cause we profess to support.”98 Hard-core segregationists such as Congressman John Rankin and Senator Theodore Bilbo demonstrated that raising the specter of radicalism was an effective way to discredit anyone or anything that addressed racial inequality, making the postwar years what one historian called “the nadir of black radicalism.”99 Civil rights organizations had long been divided by differences in ideology, program, and personality, but the rising suspicions of radicalism resulted in exacerbated differences, furthered divisions, and tempered reform agendas.100 A few individuals and tightly knit cadres of activists braved this hostile political climate, and they remained committed to advancing a radical agenda that included the overthrow of racial segregation.101 In some cases, their persistent involvement in the struggle built bridges across generations and laid some of the groundwork for the vibrant period of civil rights activism that occurred in the decades to come.102 “Even when they fail to attain their stated goals,” notes a scholar of oppositional social movements, they “change power realities in the present and hold open the possibility for even more radical change in the future.”103 MOWM was no excep-

Conclusion  • 187

tion, and the sheer longevity of engagement in activism that its members achieved makes this short-lived organization, as well as some of its individual members, worthy of a more prominent place in history. A. Philip Randolph remained involved in civil rights affairs for two more decades, a duration of commitment that caused one writer in 1969 to remark that Randolph’s time as an activist spanned “more years than most American blacks have been alive.”104 Randolph’s prolonged commitment to the struggle was legendary. “For more than 40 years,” eulogized NAACP president Benjamin Hooks in 1979, “he was a tower and a beacon of strength and hope for the entire black community.”105 Aside from Randolph, a good number of MOWM’s previously unheralded members dedicated a considerable part of their lives and careers to fight for causes that were advanced back in the war years. Participating in MOWM during the 1940s gave activists an opportunity to polish their talents, and a number of them launched careers in politics and in other leadership capacities during the decades that followed. When seen this way, MOWM did not disintegrate—it dissolved. Many of MOWM’s most ardent members got involved in other causes led by different organizations after the war. Anna Arnold Hedgeman and Pauli Murray were pioneers who became the first African American women to enter just about every institution or profession with which they were associated. Hedgeman joined Randolph and Rustin to help plan the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and she used her position in the National Council of Churches to advo-

Pauli Murray’s participation in MOWM during the early 1940s was a stepping-stone toward a lifetime of activism for civil rights and gender equality. (Portrait of Pauli Murray, 1941 [MC41218-3], courtesy of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University)

188  •  Conclusion cate for women’s voices to have a more prominent place on the podium that iconic summer day. Murray shot to prominence after her work with MOWM. By 1947 she was named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle and by the National Council of Negro Women. She was the first African American woman to obtain a Ph.D. in law from Yale University, and she became one of the founding members of the National Organization for Women.106 Perhaps most famously, Murray coined the phrase Jane Crow and was one of the more influential voices for including women under Title VII of the 1965 Civil Rights Act.107 Murray’s chief strategist in her 1949 campaign for a seat on the Brooklyn City Council was ILGWU organizer Maida Springer—a woman Murray met when working on MOWM’s parade to save Odell Waller back in 1942.108 For her part, Springer also remained active, agitating for “the right to equal opportunity” at the workplace and exposing “the myth of equal but separate accommodations.”109 Layle Lane unsuccessfully ran for several offices in New York City on the Socialist ticket. Lane is best remembered as an educator in New York’s public schools and as a tactician in MOWM’s national office, but her biggest impact would prove to be on the boys who spent summers at a retreat on her forested property in rural eastern Pennsylvania. Being there allowed them to escape the city while on school break, and Lane used her stature as matron of the manor to instill in “her boys” a sense of pride, propriety, and fair play.110 Of course, women were not the only MOWM members who remained active in civil rights causes. Frank Crosswaith parlayed his position as one of MOWM’s founding members into an appointment from Mayor La Guardia to serve on the New York City Housing Authority. Crosswaith went on to work as an organizer for the ILGWU, and during the 1950s he edited a publication called Negro Labor News.111 Dick Campbell, the playwright of The Watchword Is Forward, was drafted into the army. Responsible for African American entertainment in the USO, Campbell produced more than one hundred shows and directed more than three thousand performers, including luminaries such as Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Fletcher Henderson. Campbell returned to Madison Square Garden in 1951, when he wrote, directed, and produced a dramatization of the bombing and murder of NAACP organizer Harry T. Moore. Stars such as Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, and Canada Lee helped the production of Toll the Liberty Bell go off without a hitch in front of a crowd of twenty thousand. In 1972 Campbell founded the Sickle Cell Anemia Foundation of Greater New York, and the man described as an “activist entertainer” by Ossie Davis raised more than $125 million to study this hereditary blood disorder.112 Bayard Rustin was the individual whose life was shaped the most as a result of participating in MOWM. Rustin publicly took exception to Randolph’s unilateral cancellation of the march, but he remained affiliated with MOWM because this new organization gave him an ideological home after he left the Communist Party in 1941.113 It was a productive time, and Rustin remarked that his activism

Conclusion  • 189

during the Second World War was “one of the most important things I ever did.”114 Rustin quickly took to Randolph, and he credited MOWM’s leader with helping him recognize his talents and develop the organizational skills that he would use during three decades of activities for various civil rights causes. Unfortunately for MOWM, Rustin’s time with the organization was short. In 1943 Rustin was one of six thousand conscientious objectors who were imprisoned during World War II for refusing to comply with the Selective Service Act. In the years that followed, Rustin developed into a tactical mastermind of the Civil Rights Movement. Forged by their association through MOWM, this friendship set Randolph and Rustin on a course that impacted black freedom struggles for years to come.115 Aside from nationally recognizable leaders, lesser-known activists also remained involved in civil rights issues after their time in MOWM. David Grant became the first St. Louis native, and the first Democrat, to head the local NAACP.116 In 1941 the St. Louis County branch reported only sixty-seven paid members, but in 1947, after less than two years under Grant’s leadership, the number of dues-paying members reached nearly six thousand.117 One of the first things that Grant did after being elected branch president in 1945 was to file a suit against Washington University, charging that the institution should lose its tax-exempt status if African Americans were not admitted. The case made it to the Supreme Court, but was dropped in 1948 when the school chose to integrate. The fight over education continued. Joined by Ruth Mattie Wheeler, another former MOWM stalwart, Grant worked through the local NAACP to expose the dangerous and “unheard of conditions” in African American elementary schools, two of which accidentally burned down in 1945.118 Later in his life, Grant blocked a city charter that threatened to undercut the power of aldermen who represented traditionally African American districts. He also served on various state and federal committees concerned with civil rights and equitable employment. Most notably, he and Eleanor Roosevelt helped write the civil rights plank for the 1960 Kennedy-Johnson presidential campaign.119 Much like A. Philip Randolph, T. D. McNeal was a distance runner in the long struggle for civil rights, spending parts of five decades in advancing progressive causes and confronting racial discrimination. McNeal’s affiliation with the BSCP, a union in which he rose to the rank of national vice president in 1950, was the foundation of his activism.120 The BSCP was so central to McNeal’s life that he even named his son in honor of its two most prominent members, Philip Webster McNeal.121 In 1955 E. D. Nixon, leader of the Montgomery BSCP and president of the local NAACP, called McNeal to ask for money to finance a boycott of city buses that arose in response to the arrest of Rosa Parks. McNeal sent ten thousand dollars, and it was reportedly the first money to arrive in support of the Montgomery Bus Boycott from out of town. The porters quietly underwrote MOWM during the 1940s, and they also helped pay for the campaign that jump-started the civil rights career of a young minister named Martin Luther King Jr.122

190  •  Conclusion In 1960, nearly two decades removed from his heyday as “the spark plug” of MOWM and after thirty years of service with the BSCP, McNeal became the first African American to serve in Missouri’s state senate.123 He immediately ushered through Missouri’s first meaningful civil rights legislation, the 1961 Fair Employment Practices Act.124 The relationships that McNeal built with union devotees and NAACP members since the 1920s were essential to his senatorial campaigns in the 1960s, and many of the same men that he agitated alongside during the 1940s were his closest political advisers.125 The strong community ties and knack for organizing that made McNeal a power broker in wartime St. Louis propelled him into public office at a time when African Americans across the country were riding a momentous wave of social change, and he remained there until retiring from public life in 1971.126 His record as an activist, organizer, and politician exemplifies the uneven trajectory of African American struggles for civil rights during the mid–twentieth century. McNeal’s career as a labor organizer for the BSCP shaped his view of public service and grassroots activism as complementary facets in the dual struggles against racial injustice and class exploitation. McNeal’s campaign literature emphasized virtues such as “unity of purpose, moral discipline and political independence,” attributes that would have been familiar to African Americans who spent time with him during the war years. David Grant stated that he “never worked with a more courageous, fearless, and dedicated person than T. D. McNeal. He was a tower of strength” who dedicated his life to what he saw as the interrelated goals of civil rights and economic opportunity.127

A. Philip Randolph speaks in support of T. D. McNeal’s successful 1960 state senate campaign. The two were close associates in the BSCP since the 1930s, and they held each other in high esteem for the rest of their lives. (540.532, Ernest Calloway Addenda, the State Historical Society of Missouri—Research Center—St. Louis)

Conclusion  • 191

The war’s conclusion heralded the end of MOWM’s status as a leader among African American protest groups, but the networks of progressives, leftists, and radicals that supported it outlasted the defunct organization.128 MOWM’s brief but fiery existence serves as a model for patriotic protest from a historically oppressed racial minority during a period of international crisis. Fatally eviscerated by Congress, the FEPC prepared to “peaceably pass out of existence,” prompting Milton Webster to lament that “discrimination against minority groups was far more deep-seated in every phase of American life than even the most pessimistic of us anticipated.”129 That considerable struggles over civil rights were still needed in St. Louis during the postwar era attests to the fact that even MOWM’s most active locales could not completely shatter the city’s racial inequality.130 Many of the things that African Americans fought for during the war years would take decades to completely mature, and precious gains had to be zealously safeguarded, lest the revolution go backward. One must be cautious in appraising the impact of social and political movements, as success is sometimes difficult to perceive and even harder to measure. “Those who explore the politics of the oppressed,” writes Glenda Gilmore, must consider “how much worse life might have been without . . . resistance.”131 Sometimes reform follows, and in this case it did. Langston Hughes came back to St. Louis after many years away and ordered a drink at a soda fountain where he was previously denied service. Thrilled with the changes that occurred in the years since his last visit, Hughes wrote, “De sun do move!”132 Organizing for any worthwhile cause is long and hard, and progress rarely seems imminent. White supremacy remained a powerful force toward the end of World War II, prompting Walter White to remark, “The world has not yet learned the danger and folly of its racial greed and intransigence.”133 Still, people such as A. Philip Randolph, Pauli Murray, and Bayard Rustin kept on keeping on. Twentyfive years after Randolph issued the original call to march on Washington, T. D. McNeal’s reelection literature addressed the need to resolve many of the issues that he and others agitated for during the Second World War: establishing a state fair employment practices law, ensuring equality of public accommodations for all, and securing more appointments of African Americans to serve on various municipal posts, including the Board of Elections, Board of Police Commissioners, and Board of Education.134 The struggles were ongoing. On the one hand, the persistence of inequality and injustice caused an elderly David Grant to lament, “This is a racism country.”135 Seen differently, the fact that these struggles continued across generational lines speaks to the tenacity, optimism, and courage of those who were committed to making America a more egalitarian nation. Success is best observed when situated on a spectrum. It sometimes takes years of efforts to make any perceptible change. It can take even longer until the clarity of hindsight allows one the vantage to appreciate the impact of historical actors who,

192  • 

chapter 6

in their time, appeared to be making little headway. MOWM did not achieve most of its stated goals, but the organization did give its members a place to refine their skills as leaders. Many of those individuals would use their experiences of fighting racism in World War II to jump-start a lifetime of activism that outlasted the organization they coalesced under during the war years. It is here, in the individual lives of certain members, that MOWM made its greatest impact—and it is at the personal level that this long-defunct organization has the most to teach us about sustaining movements for social change. Working together builds relationships, and these nurturing connections are what help keep individuals involved for the tedious long haul of making their world a better place to live.

Appendix A

MOWM Chapters and Local Chairpersons

Washington, D.C. Chicago St. Louis New York City Jacksonville Tampa Savannah Jersey City, N.J. Newarkb Trenton, N.J. Boston Los Angeles Buffalo New Orleans Cincinnati Flint, Michiganb Cleveland Pittsburgh Salt Lake City Richmond, Va. Birmingham Nashville Denver Mobile Chattanooga Montgomery Albany, N.Y. Atlanta, Ga.

Thurman Dodson, Eugene Davidson Charles W. Burton, Milton P. Webster Sidney Redmond, T. D. McNeala Colden Brown S. Harper, Miss E. M. White Matthew Gregorya Mr. Johnson Mrs. Lillian L. Williams, C. A. Johnson Harold A. Lett, Mrs. Georgia Boone Miss Susie Steele, Jasper Brown Robert A. Williamsa Philip Peterson, Oscar Soaresa Otis Thomasa C. J. Pharr, Ollie Webb James Smith Harrison Johnson Sidney R. Williams, C. S. Wellsa Rev. R. H. Johnson Henry Dumasa Senora Lawson, Rev. Joseph T. Hill Hartford Knight Mrs. Davie Della Phillips Thelma Freeman, Barry Slater J. F. Gilcrease R. H. Craig Edgar D. Nixon Mrs. J. B. (Wardell) Robinson William Y. Bell

194  •  Appendixes Akron Indianapolis Macon, Ga. Kansas City, Mo. Memphis, Tenn. Milwaukee Baltimore, Md. St. Paul, Minn. Philadelphia, Pa.

Norman Gowens Mr. Butts A. L. Thomas Thomas A. Webster L. J. Searcy William V. Kelley Edward Lewis N. A. Evans G. James Fleming

Source: Data compiled from “Lists of Locals and Chairmen,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM; also found in “Local Units—March on Washington Movement,” revised May 24, 1943, Reel 21, APR; “Negro-March-onWashington-Committee Bulletin,” vol. 1, no. 1, May 22, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. a Indicates that MOWM chairperson was also an officer in the BSCP as indicated in “Officers of the Local Divisions of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: Train Porters and Colored Firemen,” June 1943, Reel 11, APR. b Indicates that this city was not listed as a city with an active BSCP division. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 71, mentions a “short-lived” MOWM branch founded by William V. Kelley of the Milwaukee Urban League and James W. Dorsey of the city’s NAACP. Akron MOWM is documented only in Norman Gowens to “Dear Friend and Marcher,” n.d., Reel 20, APR. A brief note of women’s activism in Albany MOWM is found in Chicago Defender, February 12, 1944; correspondence between the branch and Randolph is found in Box 25, MOWM Correspondence, 1944, Reel 21, APR; Indianapolis MOWM officers are named in Priscilla Dean Lewis to Bennie Smith, June 14, 1943, Reel 7, APR; and a complete list of this chapter’s members is in “March on Washington Movement: Indianapolis, Indiana, 1941–1946,” Reel 21, APR; the Macon, Ga., branch is mentioned in A. L. Thomas to A. Philip Randolph, February 2, 1944, Reel 21, APR. Fee Milo Manly résumé, December 1946, Reel 15, APR, mentions an organization called Philadelphia Committee for Equal Job Opportunity that morphed into the Philadelphia MOWM, but I found no details of this branch. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 462–63, lists MOWM chapters but does not mention leadership of the branches. Meridian, Mississippi, Miami, Florida, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and West Medford, Massachusetts, are listed, but there is no corroborating evidence that these branches existed beyond notation from this same source that J. A. Burns of Meridian and Rev. M. C. Strachen were on MOWM’s national committee.

Appendix B

Approximate Racial Composition of Major St. Louis Defense Contractors during World War II

Company

Total workforce

Atlas Powder Company Ameritorp

a

Broderick and Bacon   Wire Rope Company Carter Carburetor  Corporationb Curtiss-Wright  Corporationc Emerson Electric  Company Gaylord Container  Corporation McDonald Air Craft  Corporation McQuay-Norris   Home Plant McQuay-Norris   plant 1 McQuay-Norris   plant 2 National Lead  Company Robertson Air Craft  Corporation

5,000 3,500–4,000 (33% women) 700 (50 women) 2,660 (1,000 women) 14,000–16,000 (33% women) 10,000 (33% women) 1,000 (400 women) 2,500 (33% women) 2,000 (50% women) 3,500 (900 women) 3,000–4,000 (1,500 women) 700 450

Percentage of African American employees

African American employees (women)

African Americans in skilled production

280 165 (0 women) 1 (0 women) 0

16 Yes

.056 .041–.048

0

.001

0

.000

225–500 225–300 women >350

Yes

.016–.031

Yes

>.035

0

0

.000

30–35

0

.014

14–15

0

.008

300 (0 women) 400 (0 women) 160

0

.086

0

.133–.100

Not disclosed

.228

4–5

Not disclosed

.011

196  •  Appendixes

Company St. Louis Air Craft Southwestern Bell  Telephone U.S. Cartridged

Total workforce 500 600 20,000–30,000

African American employees (women) 1 15 (0 women) 600 (0 women) 3,500 (700 women)

African Americans in skilled production

Percentage of African American employees

0 Not disclosed

.002 .025

Yes

.030–.117

Source: Figures compiled from: “Untitled Document,” n.d. (1942 likely because of surrounding documents in collection); “Job Situation for Women Here Serious,” n.d. (1944 likely because sit-ins are mentioned); and David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor Regarding Fair Employment Practices, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. a Atlas Powder Company, 7 Point Letter, May 29, 1943, Reel 1, TDM, notes that as of October 1942, the company had 36 African Americans working on production, a number that fluctuated to 0 at one point but rebounded to 16 when rehiring was possible. MOWM’s investigation revealed a dual wage scale, with white porters earning ninety cents per hour while African Americans doing the same work capped out at seventy-five cents per hour. This admittedly partisan investigation also revealed inequitable working conditions, with African Americans not having access to showers, lockers to store possessions, lunch breaks, and less sanitary toilet facilities. “Skit Read at Meeting—Block Captains,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM, includes a scene featuring a son, age twenty-one, with college experience in chemistry that cannot gain employment with Atlas Powder. b St. Louis Argus, August 28, 1942. c Photographs of African American women working in this plant were published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 5, 1945. d High-end figures from David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; lower figure is from Pittsburgh Courier, June 27, 1942; yet another statistic is from St. Louis Argus, June 20, 1942, which reports another 23,500 workers, 8,000 of whom were women. African Americans on the payroll were limited to 300, none of whom were women and all of whom were unskilled workers. A final figure from this plant is reported in St. Louis American, June 25, 1942, which reports 600 African Americans employed in the 20,000-person plant. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 47–48, reports that U.S. Cartridge employed 8,000 females, none of them African American.

Appendix C

March on Washington Movement Documents

8-Point Program—March on Washington Movement “Winning Democracy for the Negro Is Winning the War for Democracy”

The war in which our country is engaged not only involves a major share of its resources, but also every one of its citizens both white and black. The Negro citizen, therefore, who is part of the warp and woof of these United States, is vitally concerned not only in a military victory of his country but also of the expressed aims of the war. Every statement of war aims by responsible leaders in all walks of life, the principles of the Four Freedoms, the eight point program of the Atlantic Charter and it is to be hoped, the prospectus of a much needed Pacific Charter, express the desire that the outcome of this vast and terrible conflict will be the triumph of democracy and its establishment on a wider and firmer basis. To insure such a result the preservation and extension of our democratic principles must be an essential part of winning the war. For the masses of people abstract principles have vitality only in concrete expression: Freedom from want is real only when it means a chance to work for sufficient food, clothing and shelter. Likewise for the Negro, and for all oppressed people everywhere, the fight for democracy has meaning only when it grants to them the full measure of every right as well as of every obligation for which democracy stands. We Negroes do not enjoy these rights in the country to which we have given fully of our labor, our talents and of our blood. To insure that national unity so essential for victory it is imperative that the Negro be given an equal chance with every other American to enjoy the privileges of American citizenship.

198  •  Appendixes The source of our disabilities lies in the caste system maintained by the Southern states, where segregation and discrimination in social, economic and political life spreads its vicious influence everywhere. Only an all-attack by the national government on this caste system at its source will destroy its danger to our national unity. (1) We demand in the interest of national unity, the abrogation of every law which makes a distinction in treatment between citizens based on religion, creed, color, or national origin. This means an end to Jim Crow in education, in housing, in transportation and in every other social, economic, and political privilege; and especially we demand, in the capital of the nation, an end to all segregation in public places and public institutions. (2) We demand legislation to enforce the 5th and 14th amendments guaranteeing that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law so that the full weight of the national government may be used for the protection of life and thereby may end the disgrace of lynching. (3) We demand the enforcement 14th and 15th amendments and the enactment of the Pepper Poll Tax Bill so that all barriers in the exercise of the suffrage are eliminated. (4) We demand the abolition of segregation and discrimination in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Corps, and all other branches of national defense. (5) We demand an end to discrimination in jobs and job training. Further, we demand that the F.E.P.C. be made a permanent administration agency of the U.S. Government and that it be given power to enforce its decisions based on its findings. (6) We demand that federal funds be withheld from any agency which practices discrimination in the use of such funds. (7) We demand Negro and minority group representation on all administrative agencies so that these groups may have recognition of their democratic right to participate in formulating policies. (8) We demand representation for the Negro and minority racial groups on all missions, political and technical, which will be sent to the peace conference so that the interests of all people everywhere may be fully recognized and justly provided for in the post war settlement. Nothing less than this program will afford Negroes their constitutional rights; nothing less will be evidence of America’s devotion to the democratic way of life.

Appendixes  • 199

Reprinted from “March on Washington Movement Action Conference, Harlem Y.M.C.A., February 13, 1943,” program, March on Washington Movement, 1941–1945, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF.

Additional Points on 8-Point Program The Program and Strategy Committee recommends the addition of the following points to the 8 Point Program, bearing in mind that the original eight points are primarily aimed at the National Government: (9) We demand the end of discrimination and anti-Negro propaganda wherever it exists throughout the national press, radio, and other channels of public information; we demand fair and full coverage of Negro news by the national press and the use of Negro reporters on white papers to implement such fair coverage. (10) We demand the fair and equal treatment of Negroes by department stores, hotels, restaurants, busses and all other agencies which serve the public, both as to treatment of Negro patrons and as to employment opportunities for Negroes. (11) We demand the employment of Negroes in more equitable numbers, and on the basis of equal merit by all private industries and public utilities; and that Negroes be permitted to rise in the employment scale within these industries in accordance with their merit. We further demand that Negro women be given full and free opportunities to enter industries as women labor is further coordinated into the defense effort. (12) We demand the passage of Civil Rights Laws, and their enforcement by the state legislatures where such laws do not now exist. “Report of Committee on Program and Strategy,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 34, March on Washington Movement, 1941–1945, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF.

March on Washington Movement Membership Pledge I.

I support and endorse the fight of the United Nations to wipe out the Axis menace. II. I endorse the policy of a mixed army and consider it a negation of democracy to segregate soldiers who are fighting the same foe for the same cause. III. I will work for Negro representation at the Peace Conference to negotiate worldwide peace. IV. I support a non-violent but direct struggle by the Negro people to abolish segregation now and agree to “March” when authorized by the National Executive Committee.

200  •  Appendixes V. I am not anti-white, but I believe that Negroes should initiate the campaign to win their unconditional equality of status for themselves. VI. I will work for a Free Africa and a Free Caribbean. “March on Washington Movement Membership Pledge,” handbill, n.d., March on Washington Movement, 1941–1945, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF.

National Program of Action August 1943 to July 31, 1944 I.

A. To carry on a progressive fight on behalf of a mixed army of the United States of America. B. To continue the fight on the Winfred Lynn case in cooperation with the American Civil Liberties Union for the enforcement of Section 4A of the 1940 Draft Act which reads: “In the selection and training of men under this act, and in the interpretation and execution of the provision of this act, there shall be no discrimination against any person on account of race or color.” II.

A. To understand and develop strategy in the use of the technique of non-violent good will direct action as an instrument for abolishing jim crow and racial segregation in the United States. B. To sponsor institute and weekend conference for the training of MARCH ON WASHINGTON leadership in non-violent good will direct action. C. To organize, discipline and school members of the MOWM in the dynamic technique of “marching” preparatory to launching a national non-violent “march” of Negroes to the nation’s capitol to protest the indignities and injustices heaped upon the Negro people and to demand action on the part of the National government. III.

A. To organize a Non-Partisan Political Bloc of Negroes for the purpose of developing mass political pressure. B. To develop mass plans to secure mass registration of the Negroes for the primaries and for the elections. IV.

A. To work for Negro representation on the Peace Commission to negotiate the peace of the world. B. To popularize the slogan of a Free Africa and a Free Caribbean. V.

To initiate a Western Hemispheric Conference of Free Negroes.

Appendixes  • 201 VI.

To carry on a national fund raising campaign among the Negro people to carry on the fight for their own liberation. VII.

A. To continue the fight to strengthen and ensure a permanent Fair Employment Practice Committee. B. To work for the preservation of the public hearing as a permanent instrument of FEPC. “National Program of Action, August 1943 to July 31, 1944,” March on Washington Movement, 1941–1945, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF

Notes

Abbreviations AAH AM APR APR NYPL AW BSCP CORE DC DG ERP FC FDR HC HG ILGWU JECJ LL LM LT MSK NAACP NAACP LOC

Anna Arnold Hedgeman Papers August Meier Papers A. Philip Randolph Papers, Library of Congress A. Philip Randolph Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Aubrey Williams Papers Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Collection Congress of Racial Equality Papers Dick Campbell Papers David Grant Papers Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Frank Crosswaith Papers Franklin D. Roosevelt Papers Harold Cruse Papers Herbert Garfinkel Papers International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Papers James E. Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson Papers Layle Lane Papers Lowell Mellett Papers Lorenzo Tucker Papers Maida Springer Kemp Papers National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Papers National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Records

204  •  Notes to Introduction PE PM RJB RT SCF TDM WHMC WS

Printed Ephemera Collection on Individuals Pauli Murray Papers Ralph J. Bunche Collection Rosina Tucker Papers Schomburg Center Clipping File Theodore D. McNeal Papers Western Historical Manuscript Collection William Sentner Papers

Introduction 1. The low estimate of ten thousand marchers was from Randolph’s initial call in early 1941; estimates of anticipated attendees steadily increased throughout the summer. A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, March 18, 1941; “Plan to Mobilize 10,000 Negroes to March on Washington, D.C.,” n.d., Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP; Pittsburgh Courier, January 25, 1941. After the march, Randolph called out to “enlist a million Negroes.” See Amsterdam News, September 13, 1941. For a chronology of this numerical increase, see Benjamin Quarles, “A. Philip Randolph: Labor Leader at Large,” 155; Philip S. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619–1973, 240; and Lucy G. Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition, 121. 2. Quote from Patricia Sullivan, Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement, 254; Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North, 144–47; Erik S. McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism, and the Making of Black Left Feminism, 75–76; Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic; Carlos A. Schwantz, Coxey’s Army: An American Odyssey. 3. Barber, in Marching on Washington, 109, writes, “Planned, but cancelled, the Negro March on Washington will always remain somewhat mysterious.” This interpretation parallels that of Edwin Embree: “The power of the new movement is mysterious. It has almost no organization, no big machine for promotion and publicity. Yet it grips the people’s imagination and holds their loyalty. Masses of the darker common people are looking to Randolph as the modern Messiah.” Embree, 13 against the Odds, 225. 4. “Text of Recorded Interview with John Slawson and A. Philip Randolph,” April 20, 1970, Reel 33, APR. 5. Black Worker, August 1941. 6. William P. Jones, “The Unknown Origins of the March on Washington: Civil Rights Politics and the Black Working Class”; John Lewis with Michael D’Orso, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, 202–27; Amsterdam News, December 5, 1942. Many of these entertainers worked together and supported shared causes. 7. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, “The Role of the Negro Women,” 466–67. 8. I borrow the concepts of bridge leaders and intellectual architects from Belinda Robnett, How Long? How Long? African American Women in the Struggle for Civil Rights, 19–21, 190–93; and Robnett, “Women in the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee: Ideology, Organizational Structure, and Leadership,” 141. On women as strategists and

Notes to Introduction  • 205

“intellectual architects,” see Dayo F. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War, 6. 9. Beth Bates, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925–1945, 148–74; A. Russell Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, 15–26; Rawn James Jr., The Double V: How Wars, Protest, and Harry Truman Desegregated America’s Military, 123–28; John B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era, 170–75; Philip A. Klinker and Rogers M. Smith, The Unsteady March: The Rise and Decline of Racial Equality in America, 154–60, 164–65, 199; Harvard Sitkoff, A New Deal for Blacks: The Emergence of Civil Rights as a National Issue, 314–25; Neil A. Wynn, The Afro-American and the Second World War, 42–48. 10. William P. Jones, The March on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights, 41–78. 11. Lee Finkle, “The Conservative Aims of Militant Rhetoric: Black Protest during World War II.” On radicalism, see Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, African American History Reconsidered, 84–91; and Timothy Patrick McCarthy and John McMillan, eds., The Radical Reader: A Documentary History of the American Radical Tradition, 3. 12. St. Louis American, April 8, 1943. 13. Quarles, “A. Philip Randolph,” 156. 14. “The Editor, the New York Post,” July 11, 1941, Folder: Editorials, 1929–1933, 1941– 1947, Box 6, FC. 15. Kansas City Call, January 3, 1941. 16. Lerone Bennett, “The Day They Didn’t March: Protest Threat Forced President Roosevelt’s Hand”; Tony Martin, “March on Washington Movement.” 17. Andrew E. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War: The FEPC in the Midwest, 1941–1946; Andrew E. Kersten, “Jobs and Justice: Detroit, Fair Employment, and Federal Activism during the Second World War”; Eileen Boris, “Black Workers, Trade Unions, and Labor Standards: The Wartime FEPC”; Paul D. Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action: Fair Employment Law and Policy in America, 1933–1972; Louis Kesselman, The Social Politics of FEPC; Paul F. Norgrent and Samuel Hill, Toward Fair Employment; Merl E. Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement: The President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice, 1941–1946; Merl E. Reed, “FEPC and the Federal Agencies in the South”; Daniel Kryder, “The American State & Management of Race Conflict in the Workplace & in the Army, 1941–1945”; Louis Ruchames, Race, Jobs, and Politics: The Story of FEPC. 18. Frederick Douglass, “The Significance of Emancipation in the West Indies: An Address Delivered in Canandaigua, New York, on 3 August 1857,” reprinted in The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews, edited by John W. Blassingame, 204. 19. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 20. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, 997. 21. Kevin M. Kruse and Stephen Tuck, eds., Fog of War: The Second World War and the Civil Rights Movement, 3; Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, 1941–1945, 99–130; Richard Polenberg, “The Good War? A Reappraisal of How World War II Affected American Society”; Jonathan Rosenberg, How Far the Promised Land? World Affairs and the

206  •  Notes to Introduction American Civil Rights Movement from the First World War to Vietnam, 131–55; Peter Kellogg, “Civil Rights Consciousness in the 1940s.” 22. David Grant, “Commencement Address, Stowe Teachers College,” June 12, 1944, DG. 23. Quoted in John Egerton, Speak Now against the Day: The Generation before the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 188. 24. Patricia Sullivan, Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era, 135; Klinker and Smith, Unsteady March, 13. 25. Hedgeman, “Role of the Negro Women,” 466–67. 26. Ralph Ellison, “Twentieth Century Fiction and the Mask of Black Humanity,” Confluence, December 1953, reprinted in The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison, edited by John F. Callahan, 85. 27. Pittsburgh Courier, October 10, 1942. 28. Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom; Francis D. Adams and Barry Sanders, Alienable Rights: The Exclusion of African Americans in a White Man’s Land, 1619–2000; Klinker and Smith, Unsteady March, 1–9; Arthur Marwick, ed., Total War and Social Change, xvi. 29. Daniel Kryder, Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II, ix. 30. Kimberley L. Phillips, War! What Is It Good For? Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq, 1–19; Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt—the Home Front in World War II, 626; James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook, 79–80. 31. Lawrence Ervin, “Speech Delivered by Lawrence Ervin, Eastern Regional Director of the March on Washington Movement at the We Are Americans, Too Conference, Held at the Metropolitan Community Church, Chicago, Ill., June 30, 1943,” Reel 2, TDM. 32. Brailsford R. Brazeal, The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: Its Origin and Development, 235. 33. Herbert Garfinkel, When Negroes March: The March on Washington Movement in the Organizational Politics for FEPC, 97–124. 34. Albert Parker, The March on Washington: One Year Later, pamphlet, 2. 35. Mary McLeod Bethune, “The New Negro,” Interracial Review 15, no. 7 (1942), Reel 22, APR. 36. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Marching Blacks: An Interpretive History of the Rise of the Black Common Man, 150. 37. Nathan Huggins, Black Odyssey: The African American Ordeal in Slavery, xx. 38. William H. Harris, “A. Philip Randolph as a Charismatic Leader, 1925–1941,” 302. 39. Jeanne Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, eds., Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America, 1. 40. Black Worker, June 1941; Bates, Pullman Porters, 153. 41. Cornelius L. Bynum, A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 165. 42. A. Philip Randolph, “Are Negroes American Citizens?,” July 4, 1943, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF. 43. George Schuyler, “Views and Reviews,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 1, 1942. 44. For circulation figures circa 1943–44, see “101 Best Newspapers in the Negro Group,” Reel 21, APR. The Baltimore Afro-American was a distant second, with 120,000 printed every

Notes to Introduction  • 207

week, and the Chicago Defender ranked third, with 100,000. The St. Louis Argus, a newspaper frequently cited in this study, circulated at 15,053. 45. Schuyler, “Views and Reviews.” An undated and uncited clipping of an article by Horace Cayton also overlooked the depth of MOWM activity in some locales, writing, “For whatever cause this movement stirred the souls of the black man on the street but failed to organize him.” Reel 2, TDM. 46. Pittsburgh Courier, May 8, 1943. Moore criticized the NAACP for confining its activity to legal protest, thus diminishing its appeal to the masses of African Americans. Displeased with Moore’s criticism, MOWM member and St. Louis American editor Henry Winfield Wheeler denounced Moore as “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and compared him to infamous traitors such as Judas, Brutus, and Benedict Arnold. See St. Louis American, May 20, 1943. 47. In true Schuyler fashion, he personally responded to McLaurin with a terse letter correcting some of McLaurin’s finer and sometimes inconsequential points. See “To the Editors of the Pittsburgh Courier—Reply to George Schuyler by Benjamin McLaurin,” n.d., and George Schuyler to Benjamin McLaurin, August 8, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 48. Pauli Murray to George Schuyler, July 31, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. 49. A. Philip Randolph, “March on Washington Movement Presents Program for the Negro.” 50. A. Philip Randolph to Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt, June 5, 1941, Box 748, ERP. 51. Stephen Tuck, We Ain’t What We Ought to Be: The Black Freedom Struggle from Emancipation to Obama, 211. For an overview of African Americans during the Depression, see Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression, 21–41. 52. Anthony S. Chen, The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941–1972, 10. 53. Walter White, “It’s Our Country, Too: The Negro Demands the Right to Be Allowed to Fight for It,” Saturday Evening Post, December 14, 1940, 66. 54. Richard R. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On? The American Homefront, 1941– 1945, 162. 55. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 97–124; William H. Harris, “A. Philip Randolph, Black Workers, and the Labor Movement,” 273. 56. Toure Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity: The Urban League and the Politics of Racial Uplift, 1910–1950, 139. 57. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 58. Eric Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality, 188–91; Brazeal, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 234–35. 59. Sterling D. Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement, 430–60; Eric Arnesen, “A. Philip Randolph: Labor and the New Black Politics,” 182. 60. William H. Harris, Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925–1937; Jack Santino, Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle: Stories

208  •  Notes to Introduction of Black Pullman Porters; Larry Tye, Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. 61. “Convention Joint Session,” September 17, 1940, 50, Folder 7, Box 2, BSCP. 62. John H. Bracey Jr. and August Meier, “Allies or Adversaries? The NAACP, A. Philip Randolph, and the 1941 March on Washington”; St. Claire Drake to A. Philip Randolph, August 7, 1948, Reel 12, APR. 63. “To All Branches,” May 12, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. 64. “Estimate for a National Budget,” n.d.; A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, May 6, June 2, 1941, April 10, 1942; “Contributions to the Negro March-on-Washington Committee,” Eardlie John to Walter White, April 17, 1942; A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, May 25, 1942; Walter White to A. Philip Randolph, May 13, 1941, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. “Financial Report,” 1941, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP, indicates that the BSCP outspent NAACP $957.89 to $543 in 1941. “Report of A. Philip Randolph, International President to the First Triennial Convention of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters on Its Twenty-Eighth Anniversary in Los Angeles, California, October 1953,” Reel 28, APR, remarks, “It was our union which originated and largely financed the March on Washington movement.” 65. Chicago Defender, July 26, 1941, February 14, 1942; Eugenie Settles to A. Philip Randolph, November 10, 1942, Reel 7, APR. 66. An adept lobbyist, White forwarded a transcript of his speech to Eleanor Roosevelt. See White to Roosevelt, November 5, 1941, White House Correspondence, Box 754, ERP. 67. Brazeal, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 234. 68. Pittsburgh Courier, October 10, 1942. 69. “Suggested Statement for Consideration by Board on Relationship of NAACP to March-on-Washington Movement,” September 14, 1942, and Walter White to Daisy Lampkin, April 6, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 70. Walter White to Alfred Baker Lewis, September 21, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 71. Roy Wilkins to Walter White, June 24, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 72. Anna Arnold Hedgeman to A. Philip Randolph, September 25, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 73. Bracey and Meier, “Allies or Adversaries?,” 2. 74. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 75. Manning Marable, “A. Philip Randolph and the Foundations of Black American Socialism.” 76. “National March on Washington Movement: Policies and Directives—Local Units,” n.d., Reel 22, APR. 77. “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 37, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 78. “Tentative Proposal for a National Monthly Periodical to Be Sponsored by the Negro March on Washington Committee,” July 11, 1941, Reel 21, APR. 79. “National March on Washington Movement: Policies and Directives—Local Units,” n.d., Reel 22, APR. 80. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 60–63; Harvard Sitkoff, “African American Militancy in the World War II South,” 75.

Notes to Introduction  • 209

81. David Grant, “Commencement Address, Stowe Teachers College,” June 12, 1944, DG. 82. Michael J. Klarman, From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality, 179. 83. “How to Organize a Unit March on Washington Movement,” n.d. (likely 1942 because Pauline Myers is listed as national secretary), Reel 1, TDM. 84. Tracey E. K’Meyer, Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South: Louisville, Kentucky, 1945–1980, 11–13. 85. “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 36, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 86. George C. Wright, Life behind a Veil: Blacks in Louisville, Kentucky, 1865–1930; Kenneth D. Durr, Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940–1980; Andor Skotnes, A New Deal for All? Race and Class Struggles in Depression-Era Baltimore and “The Black Freedom Movement and the Workers’ Movement in Baltimore, 1930–1939”; David Taft Terry, “Tramping for Justice: The Dismantling of Jim Crow in Baltimore, 1942–1954”; Michael Flug, “Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s: The Case of the Maryland Freedom Union”; Mark Kimbrough and Margaret W. Dagen, Victory without Violence: The First Ten Years of the St. Louis Committee of Racial Equality, 1947–1957; Patricia L. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis: Civil Rights during World War II”; Priscilla Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910–1949; Clarence Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936–1975 and “Community and Resistance in the Gateway City: Black National Consciousness, Working Class Formation, and Social Movements in St. Louis, Missouri, 1941–1964”; Kenneth S. Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest: The Struggle in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964–1970; Henry Louis Taylor, ed., Race and the City: Work, Community, and Protest in Cincinnati, 1820–1970. For a theoretical framework on interpreting activism for civil rights in border states, see Jean Van Delinder, Struggles before “Brown”: Early Civil Rights Protests and Their Significance Today, 15–18. 87. Studies of African American migration, urbanization, and proletarianization are voluminous. Landmark works exploring these themes include Beth Tompkins Bates, The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford; Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy, They Seek a City; Beverly A. Bunch-Lyons, Contested Terrain: African-American Women Migrate from the South to Cincinnati, Ohio, 1900–1950; Peter Gottlieb, Making Their Own Way: Southern Blacks’ Migration to Pittsburgh, 1916–1930; James R. Grossman, Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration; Alferdteen Harrison, ed., Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South; Hollis R. Lynch, ed., The Black Urban Condition: A Documentary History, 1866–1971; Carole Marks, Farewell—We’re Good and Gone: The Great Black Migration; Nell Irvin Painter, Exodusters: Black Migration to Kansas after Reconstruction; Kimberley Phillips, Alabama North: African-American Migrants, Community, and Working-Class Activism in Cleveland, 1915–1945; Lawrence R. Rodgers, Canaan Bound: The African-American Great Migration Novel; Richard W. Thomas, Life for Us Is What We Make It: Building Black Community in Detroit, 1915– 1945; Joe William Trotter, Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915–1945 and The Great Migration in Historical Perspective: New Dimensions of Race, Class, and Gender;

210  •  Notes to Introduction Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration; and James Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love. 88. Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy, 2–3, 34. 89. Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest, 4. 90. Mary Welek, “Jordan Chambers: Black Politician and Boss.” 91. William J. Collins, “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets”; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 112–25. 92. For tables on interaction between MOWM and FEPC, refer to FEPC Financial Papers, Contributions, Reel 16, APR. 93. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 43–68; Doris A. Wesley, Wiley Price, and Ann Morris, Lift Every Voice and Sing: St. Louis African Americans in the Twentieth Century, 11–12; Richard S. Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 247–48; Debra Foster Greene, “Published in the Interest of Colored People: The St. Louis Argus Newspaper in the Twentieth Century,” 111, 138–39. 94. Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy, 118. 95. Quote from Kenneth S. Jolly, “It Happened Here Too: The Black Liberation Movement in St. Louis, Missouri, 1964–1970,” 45–46; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 170–75; Sitkoff, “African American Militancy,” 92. Jeanne Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, 151–52, demonstrates that a similar pattern occurred in 1950s Detroit, where Rosa Parks’s residence in the city as a “southern exile” was unknown to local leaders of the NAACP. 96. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 59. 97. Mary McLeod Bethune, “Certain Unalienable Rights,” 255. 98. McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom, 5. 99. Bates, Pullman Porters, 173, 238n117. 100. Lee Sartain, Invisible Activists: Women of the Louisiana NAACP and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1915–1945, 1–13, reveals that a similar phenomenon occurred in some NAACP branches. For remarks on the challenge of recovering the history of marginalized women, see Nell Irvin Painter, “Writing Biographies of Women,” 160. 101. This phrase is borrowed from Sherry J. Katz, “Excavating Radical Women in Progressive-Era California,” 90–91. 102. Kenneth W. Goings and Raymond A. Mohl, “Toward a New African American Urban History.” 103. Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change, 40. 104. Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision, 139. T. Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity, 191–92, underscores the importance of examining national organizations through the actions of their local affiliates. For a perceptive analysis of the dynamics between local and national civil rights activists, see Steven F. Lawson, “Freedom Then, Freedom Now: The Historiography of the Civil Rights Movement.” 105. Tuck, We Ain’t What We Ought to Be, 8; Steven F. Lawson, “Long Origins of the Short Civil Rights Movement, 1954–1968.” 106. Darlene Clark Hine, “Black Professionals and Race Consciousness: Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 1890–1950,” 1294; Clayborne Carson, “Civil Rights Reform and the Black Freedom Struggle.”

Notes to Introduction  • 211

107. Messenger, April 1926, 114. 108. Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy, 6. 109. Jeanne F. Theoharis, introduction to Freedom North: Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, 1940–1980, edited by Jeanne F. Theoharis and Komozi Woodard, 11. See also Sundiata Cha-Jua and Clarence Lang, “The Long Movement as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies,” 265; Adam Fairclough, “Historians and the Civil Rights Movement,” 388; and Eric Arnesen, “Reconsidering the ‘Long Civil Rights Movement.’” 110. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past”; Robert Rodgers Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement”; Richard Dalfiume, “The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution”; Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945, 323. 111. William Chafe, Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Equality; Robert J. Norrell, Reaping the Whirlwind: The Civil Rights Movement in Tuskegee; Patricia Sullivan, “Southern Reformers, the New Deal, and the Movement’s Foundation.” For a discussion of how local histories have influenced civil rights historiography, see Emilye Crosby, ed., Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement, 1–42. 112. “The Civil Rights Revolution: Origin and Mission, Address by A. Philip Randolph to the North Jersey Chapter, Jack and Jill of America, Inc., East Orange High School, East Orange, New Jersey, April 19, 1964,” Reel 29, APR. 113. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 3. 114. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, 13. See also James T. Sparrow, “Freedom to Want: The Federal Government and Politicized Consumption in World War II”; J. B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era, 92; and Sullivan, Days of Hope, 59. For a counterpoint, see Sitkoff, New Deal for Blacks, 328. 115. Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 47. See also Carl N. Degler, “The Third American Revolution”; 263–85; Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R., 303, 316–17; Gary Gerstle, “The Protean Character of American Liberalism”; and Howard Zinn, ed., New Deal Thought. 116. August Meier, “Toward a Synthesis of Civil Rights History,” 212. 117. St. Louis American, September 22, 1944. 118. Horace R. Cayton and George S. Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, ix–xii; Robert C. Weaver, Negro Labor: A National Problem, 239; Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 74. For a counterpoint that the 1940s represented a “new revolution over civil rights,” see Des Moines Sunday Register, August 15, 1948, Reel 13, APR. 119. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, “Honoring Mr. Randolph,” New York Age, n.d. (sometime in January 1960), Folder 1, Box 4, BSCP. 120. W. E. B. Du Bois, “A Chronicle of Race Relations.” 121. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 5, 15, 41–42; Kenneth Robert Janken, Walter White: Mr. NAACP, 249. 122. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, Along the Color Line: Explorations in the Black Experience, 345–46. 123. John M. Thornton to Marvin E. Wolfgang, March 15, 1974, Reel 3, APR.

212  •  Notes to Introduction and Chapter 1 124. Sullivan, Days of Hope, 275. 125. “Address by A. Philip Randolph, President, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, at NAACP Convention, the Coliseum, New York City, July 15, 1959,” Folder 8, Box 27, JECJ. 126. March, October 17, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 127. Garfinkel, When Negroes March; David Welky, Marching across the Color Line: A. Philip Randolph and Civil Rights in the World War II Era. 128. Report of Committee on Education to National Policy Conference on the March on Washington Movement, Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit, September 26–27, 1942, 15–16, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 129. Kathryn L. Nasstrom, “Down to Now: Memory, Narrative, and Women’s Leadership in the Civil Rights Movement in Atlanta, Georgia,” 114; Charles Payne, “Men Led, but Women Organized: Movement Participation in the Mississippi Delta”; Robnett, How Long? How Long?, 21; Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, 84–89. Sugrue, in Sweet Land of Liberty, 403, argues, “Most civil rights and radical organizations in the postwar years had male heads but depended on the energy of a large female rank and file.”

Chapter 1. What Happens When Negroes Don’t March? 1. Ted Potson, “From Shakespeare to FEPC,” New York Post, February 13, 1946, Folder: Biographical Material, Box 1, APR NYPL; L. Bennett, “Day They Didn’t March,” 132; Anna Arnold Hedgeman, The Gift of Chaos: Decades of American Discontent, 58–59; Jervis Anderson, A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait, 248; Robert E. Turner, Memories of a Retired Pullman Porter, 138; Murray Kempton, Part of Our Time: Some Ruins and Monuments of the Thirties, 250. For an alternative story of MOWM’s creation, see Sitkoff, New Deal for Blacks, 314–15; and W. Jones, March on Washington, 1–2. 2. “1941: The Pullman Porters March on Washington,” New Leader, July 11, 1955, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF. An account of Randolph conceiving the idea to march while in a meeting with Walter White, Channing Tobias, Frank Crosswaith, and “three or four others” is found in A. Philip Randolph, Interview by Robert Martin, January 14, 1969, 57, RJB. 3. Theodore McNeal, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 22, 1970, Oral History T-024, WHMC; Gail Milissa Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders: One Family’s Journey toward Civil Rights, 115. 4. E. Pauline Myers, The March on Washington Movement Mobilizes a Gigantic Crusade for Freedom, pamphlet (published by the March on Washington Movement), 1943, FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF. 5. Wilkerson, Warmth of Other Suns, 218. 6. Joe William Trotter, “From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?,” 440. 7. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 288. For a general study on African American voters in the 1940s, see Henry Lee Moon, Balance of Power: The Negro Vote. 8. Quote from Chicago Defender, October 11, 1941; Joseph F. Wilson, ed., Tearing Down the Color Bar: A Documentary History and Analysis of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 178–79; William Cohen, “The Great Migration as a Lever for Social Change.”

Notes to Chapter 1  • 213

9. See appendix A for a list of MOWM chapters with cross-references to BSCP leadership. For a table of BSCP chapters and enrollment figures, see Brazeal, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 221–22. 10. James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 98–99. 11. Nat Brandt, Harlem at War: The Black Experience in WWII, 5. 12. Ralph Ellison, “The Way It Is,” New Masses, October 20, 1942, reprinted in Collected Essays of Ellison, edited by Callahan, 310–19. 13. “The Negro Looks at the War: Attitudes of New York Negroes toward Discrimination against Negroes and a Comparison of Poor White Attitudes toward War-Related Issues,” Report 21, May 19, 1942, Extensive Surveys Division, Bureau of Intelligence, Office of Facts and Figures, 4–9, Microfilm Collections, Manuscripts and Archives, Sterling Library, Yale University, New Haven, Conn. 14. Shirley Graham, “Tar,” Negro Story, March–April 1945, reprinted in Bitter Fruit: African American Women in World War II, edited by Maureen Honey, 49–54. 15. Negro-March-on-Washington-Committee Bulletin, May 22, 1941, Reel 21, APR; T. T. Patterson to A. Philip Randolph, May 15, 1942, Reel 7, APR. 16. John White, “E. D. Nixon and the White Supremacists: Civil Rights in Montgomery,” and Lewis Baldwin and Aprille Woodson, Freedom Is Never Free: A Biographical Portrait of Edgar Daniel Nixon, are the most detailed writings on Nixon, but neither mentions his MOWM connection; only a passing reference is made in John White, “Nixon Was the One: Edgar Daniel Nixon, the MIA, and the Montgomery Bus Boycott,” 47. 17. Adam Fairclough, “Louisiana: The Civil Rights Struggle,” 162. 18. Margaret McLaurin to A. Philip Randolph, n.d. (1942 likely because of surrounding papers), Reel 6, APR. 19. “Mr. Randolph’s Response at 80th Birthday Celebration,” Folder: 80th Birthday, Box 1, APR NYPL. 20. St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942, June 6, 1940, June 13, 1941. 21. Robert A. Hill, ed., The FBI’s RACON: Racial Conditions in the United States during World War II, 4. 22. Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class, 164. See also H. C. Brearley, “The Negro’s New Belligerency.” 23. Black Worker, July 1941. 24. Charles A. Simmons, The African American Press: With Special Reference to Four Newspapers, 1827–1965, 72. 25. Pittsburgh Courier, January 31, 1942. 26. Percival L. Prattis, “The Role of the Negro Press in Race Relations”; Lewis H. Fenderson, “The Negro Press as a Social Instrument”; Gene Roberts and Hank Kilbanoff, The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation, 12–23. 27. Pittsburgh Courier, February 14, 1942. See also Pittsburgh Courier, February 7, 1942; and Bill V. Mullen, Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics, 1935–46, 50–55. 28. Nikhil Pal Singh, “Culture/Wars: Recording Empire in the Age of Democracy,” 474. 29. Chicago Defender, May 8, 1943. 30. Quote from Adam Green, Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940– 1955, 130. For studies of the Courier’s Double V and the importance of this slogan, see

214  •  Notes to Chapter 1 Simmons, African American Press, 79–82; Lee Finkle, Forum for Protest: The Black Press during World War II; Patrick Washburn, A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government’s Investigation of the Black Press during World War II; Charles W. Eagles, “Two Double V’s: Jonathan Daniels, FDR, and Race Relations during World War II”; Beth Bailey and David Farber, “The Double V Campaign in World War II Hawaii: African Americans, Racial Ideology, and Federal Power”; Kevin Mumford, “Double V in New Jersey: African American Civic Culture and Rising Consciousness against Jim Crow, 1938–1966”; Byron R. Skinner, “The Double V: The Impact of World War II on Black America”; Joyce Thomas, “The Double V Was for Victory: Black Soldiers, the Black Protest, and World War II”; and Gail Buckley, American Patriots: The Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm, 272–73. 31. Roi Ottley, New World a-Coming, 287; Guido Van Rijn, Roosevelt’s Blues: African American Blues and Gospel Songs on FDR, 210–11. 32. Crisis, July 1940. 33. Kempton, Part of Our Time, 249. 34. Ralph N. Davis, “The Negro Newspapers and the War”; Thomas Sancton, “The Negro Press”; Truman K. Gibson with Steve Huntley, Knocking Down Barriers: My Fight for Black America, 116. 35. Chicago Defender, May 9, 1942; A. J. Stovall, “The Role of the African American Press in the Aborted 1941 March on Washington”; W. Jones, March on Washington, 31–32; Washburn, Question of Sedition, 82. 36. Quoted in Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 275. 37. “The Acid Test of Democracy,” October 1942, FSN Sc 003,420-1, SCF. 38. Caroline Singer, “Integration of the Negro into American Life,” March 15, 1942, FSN Sc 003, 465-1, SCF. 39. St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944. 40. “Are Negroes American Citizens?,” FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF; Randolph quoted in Bynum, A. Philip Randolph, 158. 41. “Address by Walter White, Executive Secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at Closing Meeting of Wartime Conference, Sunday, July 16, 1944, Washington Park, Chicago, Illinois,” FSN Sc 003-437-2 SCF. 42. Black Worker, March 1941, 4. 43. Chicago Defender, September 26, 1942. 44. Chicago Defender, February 20, 1943. 45. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 46. Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 348. 47. Gerstle, “Protean Character of American Liberalism,” 1045, 1070. 48. Walter White, A Rising Wind, 81. 49. David Grant, “St. Louis Negros and the March,” speech, August 14, 1942, reprinted in “The St. Louis Unit of the March on Washington Movement: A Study in the Sociology of Conflict,” by Louise Elizabeth Grant. See also Stanley High, “How the Negro Fights for Freedom,” Reader’s Digest, July 1942, 113. 50. Quote from Powell, Marching Blacks, 149; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 347.

Notes to Chapter 1  • 215

51. Chicago Defender, July 10, 1943. 52. Crisis, July 1918; David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919, 555–57; Nina Mjagkij, Loyalty in Time of Trial: The African American Experience in World War I, 121–40; Mark Ellis, “Closing Ranks and Seeking Honors: W. E. B. Du Bois and World War I” and “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Formation of Black Opinion in World War I: A Commentary on the Damnable Dilemma”; William Jordan, “The Damnable Dilemma: African-American Accommodation and Protest during World War I.” 53. Crisis, May 1919; D. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 570; Mark Robert Schneider, We Return Fighting: The Civil Rights Movement in the Jazz Age; Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American Soldiers in the World War I Era, 187–223; Chad L. Williams, “Vanguard of the New Negro: African American Veterans and Post–World War I Racial Militancy”; Adriane Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, 169–205. 54. Amsterdam News, September 23, 1939. 55. Weaver, Negro Labor, vii, 15, 18–20. 56. Ottley, New World a-Coming, 289–90; Brandt, Harlem at War, 73. 57. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 57. 58. James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time, 76. 59. Kenneth B. Clark, “Morale of the Negro on the Home Front: World Wars I and II”; Metz T. P. Lochard, “Negroes and Defense,” Nation, January 4, 1941, 14–16. 60. James P. Shepard to Franklin D. Roosevelt, February 13, 1942, Folder: January–February 1942, Box 4, OF 93—Colored Matters, FDR. See also Gerald Gill, “Afro-American Opposition to the United States’ Wars of the Twentieth Century: Dissent, Discontent, and Disinterest,” 258–93. 61. “National Defense and Negro Americans,” March 29, 1941, Folder: January–May 1941, Box 3, OF 93, FDR. 62. Walter White, A Man Called White: The Autobiography of Walter White, 189. 63. 9/27/1940, FDR: Day by Day—the Pare Lorentz Chronology, FDR; “List of Organization Submitting Resolutions on Integrating Negroes into the National Defense,” n.d. (1940 likely), and “Memorandum as Suggested Basis of Conference on Alleged Discrimination against Negroes in the Armed Forces—White House, September 27, 1940,” Reel 25, Part 13, NAACP. 64. “Conference at the White House,” September 27, 1940, Reel 25, Part 13, NAACP; transcription of secret recordings can be found in William Doyle, Inside the Oval Office: The Secret White House Tapes from FDR to Clinton, 15; John Prados, The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President, 34–35. 65. Richard M. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939– 1953, 31–43; W. White, Man Called White, 186–88; Janken, Walter White, 253; “White House Blesses Jim Crow,” Crisis, November 1940, 350–51; “F.D.R. Regrets That Army Policy Was ‘Misinterpreted,’” Crisis, December 1940, 390; Pittsburgh Courier, October 19, 1940; Chicago Defender, October 26, 1940; “Negro Leaders Deny on Segregated Regiments in Army,” press release, October 10, 1940; “White House Charged with Trickery in Announcing Jim Crow Policy of Army,” press release, October 11, 1940; and “F.D.R. Regrets That Army Policy Was Misinterpreted,” press release, October 26, 1940, Reel 25, Part 13, NAACP.

216  •  Notes to Chapter 1 66. Bynum, A. Philip Randolph, 164–65; Cynthia Taylor, A. Philip Randolph: The Religious Journey of an African American Labor Leader, 129–30; Allan Morrison, “A. Philip Randolph: Dean of Negro Leaders,” 106. 67. Chicago Defender, February 1, 1941; “Program from Thirty-Second Annual Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Houston, Texas,” June 24–28, 1941, FSN Sc 003,426-12, SCF; Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 57–58; Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 188; Klinker and Smith, Unsteady March, 155–59. For comparison of the March on Washington with other demonstrations against lynching, peonage, and the poll tax, see Chicago Defender, February 8, 1941. 68. “The Randolph Plan,” Chicago Defender, March 8, 1941. 69. St. Louis Argus, June 20, 1941. 70. Chicago Defender, June 21, 1941. 71. A. Philip Randolph, “Government Sets a Pattern of Jim Crow,” Interracial Review 15, no. 7 (1942), Reel 22, APR. 72. “Washington Committee on Negro Protest against Defense Discrimination,” May 6, 1941, and “Respectfully Submitted,” May 14, 1941, Box 5, BSCP. 73. “Minutes of Sub-committee Meeting on March to Washington Held in NAACP Office,” April 10, 1941, Reel 22, Part 1, NAACP. 74. For a general study of African American middle-class ethos during the Roosevelt years, see Charles Banner-Haley, To Do Good and to Do Well: Middle-Class Blacks and the Depression, Philadelphia, 1929–1941. On African American women’s “respectability” and notions of social responsibility in the first half of the twentieth century, see Evelyn Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880–1920, 186–229; Stephanie Shaw, What a Woman Ought to Be and Do: Black Professional Women Workers during the Jim Crow Era, 15, 23, 66, 206; Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896–1920, 147–75; and Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century, 31–43. 75. Chicago Defender, July 3, 1943. 76. Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 360; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 57. 77. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 62. 78. Washington Tribune, June 24, 1941. 79. Malcolm X and Alex Haley, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 72. 80. A. Philip Randolph, “Should Negroes March on Washington against Jim Crow?,” n.d., Reel 30, APR. 81. Eardlie John to A. Philip Randolph, August 1, 1942, Reel 29, APR. 82. Bracey and Meier, “Allies or Adversaries?,” 16. 83. On racial violence and police brutality in the capital during the 1930s, see Erik S. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights, 109–26. 84. St. Louis Argus, June 20, 27, 1941; Washington Evening Star, June 26, 1941. 85. Albert Parker, “The Negro March on Washington,” Fourth International, June 1941, Reel 22, APR. Parker had “sharp differences with Randolph” and supported the demonstration only on the principle that all militant activity was “a part of our fight for full social,

Notes to Chapter 1  • 217

economic, and political equality for the Negroes.” Parker’s view is consistent with Leon Trotsky’s ideal of working-class self-emancipation, as discussed in Constance Ashton Myers, The Prophet’s Army: Trotskyists in America, 1928–1941. 86. Albert Parker, Negroes March on Washington, pamphlet (New York: Pioneer, 1941), FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF. 87. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 160–61. For another FBI opinion positing that Randolph bluffed his way into the meeting with Roosevelt, see Kenneth O’Reilly, “The Roosevelt Administration and Black America: Federal Surveillance Policy and Civil Rights during the New Deal and World War II Years,” 21. 88. Walter White to John A. Singleton, June 12, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. See also Quarles, “A. Philip Randolph,” 140. 89. On African American wartime morale, see Horace Cayton, “Fighting for White Folks?,” Nation, September 26, 1942; Ulysses Lee, The Employment of Negro Troops: Special Studies, the United States Army in World War II, 300–347; Walter White, “What the Negro Thinks of the Army”; Arnold M. Rose, The Negro’s Morale: Group Identification and Protest; and Merl E. Reed, “The FBI, MOWM, and CORE, 1941–1946.” 90. Tony Judt, Ill Fares the Land, 71. 91. William J. Thompkins to Edwin M. Watson, January 23, 1941, Folder: January–May 1941, Box 3, OF 93, FDR. 92. Wayne Coy to Memorandum for the President, June 16, 1941, OF 391, FDR; Wayne Coy to Aubrey Williams, June 11, 1941, Folder: Negro Marches on Washington, GR 58, Box 3, AW; S. Res. 75, February 19, 1941, OF 391, FDR. See also Senate Resolution no. 75: Clippings, Press, Resolutions—1941, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. For the NAACP’s lobbying efforts on behalf of this legislation, see Folder: Senate Resolution no. 75—Correspondence, General, 1941, Reel 24, Part 13, NAACP; and J. Joseph Huthmacher, Senator Robert Wagner and the Rise of Urban Liberalism, 275. 93. F. Adams and Sanders, Alienable Rights, 269. 94. Black Worker, May 1941. 95. Sidney Hillman, “To All Holders of Defense Contracts,” April 11, 1941, Folder: January–May 1941, Box 3, OF 93, FDR. 96. Franklin D. Roosevelt to Walter White, June 2, 1941, Folder: Negro Marches on Washington, GR 58, Box 3, AW; Wayne Coy to Memorandum for the President, June 16, 1941, OF 391, FDR. Coy pushed this message on Aubrey Williams as well, informing him that inroads to civilian employment with defense contractors were “as much as they could hope to accomplish by a march on Washington at this time.” Coy to Williams, June 11, 1941, Folder: Negro Marches on Washington, GR 58, Box 3, AW. 97. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 60–61. 98. Harry Belafonte with Michael Shnayerson, My Song: A Memoir, 196. 99. Studs Terkel, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II, 334–36; Joseph L. Rauh, A Few Reminiscences of A. Philip Randolph, Friends of the A. Philip Randolph Campus High School Annual Dinner Program, November 21, 1985, Folder: A. Philip Randolph, Box 23, PE. 100. “Minutes of Local Unit of Negro March-on-Washington Committee,” June 14, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP.

218  •  Notes to Chapter 1 101. 6/18/1941, FDR: Day by Day—the Pare Lorentz Chronology, FDR; St. Louis Argus, June 27, 1941; Oswald Garrison Villard, “Phylon Profile XIII: A Philip Randolph,” 227. 102. For more on Crosswaith, see John Howard Seabrook, “Black and White Unite: The Career of Frank R. Crosswaith,” 227–32; Louis J. Parascandola, Look for Me All around You: Anglophone Caribbean Immigrants in the Harlem Renaissance, 184–98; “Biographical Sketch of Frank R. Crosswaith,” n.d., Folder 1, Box 1, FC; “Oral History Program: Interview by Maida Springer,” June 6, 1973, Folder: Interviews, Box 1, APR NYPL; “Frank R. Crosswaith,” Folder 16, Box 2, HC; and Franklin S. Roberts, “Frank R. Crosswaith: Harlem’s Eugene Debs,” Political World, July 1942, Box 5, PE. For an overview of the activism by Caribbean immigrants in New York during this era, see Joyce Moore Turner, Caribbean Crusaders and the Harlem Renaissance. 103. Lauri Johnson, “A Generation of Women Activists: African American Female Educators in Harlem, 1930–1950,” 232–35; Ellen Swartz, “Stepping Outside the Master Script: Re-connecting the History of American Education,” 179; Julie A. Gallagher, Black Women and Politics in New York City, 57–58; Cheryl Mullenbach, Double Victory: How African American Women Broke Race and Gender Barriers to Help Win World War II, 45–49; S. Shaw, What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do, 200, 227. For an overview of Lane’s life, see Jack Schierenbeck, “Lost and Found: The Incredible Life and Times of (Miss) Layle Lane”; and Daily Intelligencer, February 1, 1979, Folder: Printer Material, 1942, 1944, n.d., Box 1, LL. 104. Chicago Defender, April 19, 1941. 105. St. Louis Argus, June 27, 1941. 106. W. White, Man Called White, 192–93; Chicago Defender, June 28, 1941; “Interview: A. Philip Randolph & Richard Parrish,” May 1, 1975, Folder: Interviews, Box 1, APR NYPL, notes Crosswaith’s presence that day, but Randolph hedges and states that “he was, I think, there. My memory is not too good now.” 107. St. Louis Argus, June 27, 1941. 108. A. Philip Randolph to the President, June 16, 1941, telegram, OF 391, FDR. 109. Quote from Doyle, Inside the Oval Office, ix–xi, 10, 43; Prados, White House Tapes, 4–5. Roosevelt’s interest in recording conversations make the absence of a transcript even more unusual. On La Guardia and Roosevelt’s meeting, see 6/18/1941, FDR: Day by Day—the Pare Lorentz Chronology, FDR. 110. Quote from Stephen Early to “Dear Wayne,” June 6, 1941, OF 391, FDR. For the friendship of La Guardia and Randolph, see New York Post, February 13, 1946, clipping in Folder: Biographical Material, Box 1, APR NYPL; and “Interview: A. Philip Randolph & Richard Parrish,” May 1, 1975, Folder: Interviews, Box 1, APR NYPL. 111. Stephen Early to “Dear Wayne,” June 6, 1941, OF 391, FDR. 112. Wayne Coy to Memorandum for the President, June 16, 1941, OF 391, FDR. 113. Wayne Coy to Stephen Early, June 12, 1941, OF 391, FDR. 114. Edwin Watson to Memorandum for the President, June 14, 1941, OF 391, FDR. 115. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 64 116. Wayne Coy to Stephen Early, June 12, 1941, OF 391, FDR. 117. Chicago Defender, June 28, 1941; Amsterdam News, June 28, 1941; J. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 256–58; Bates, Pullman Porters, 158–59; Lerone Bennett, Confrontation: Black and White, 176–77; L. Bennett, “Day They Didn’t March,” 136; Brazeal, Brotherhood of Sleeping

Notes to Chapter 1  • 219

Car Porters, 234; Daniel S. Davis, Mr. Black Labor: The Story of A. Philip Randolph, Father of the Civil Rights Movement, 107–9; Egerton, Speak Now against the Day, 215–17; P. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 241; Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 53–57; Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 249–53; Janken, Walter White, 257; Andrew E. Kersten, A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard, 60; Moon, Balance of Power, 135–36; R. Turner, Memories of a Retired Pullman Porter, 138–39; Tye, Rising from the Rails, 207–8; Roy Wilkins, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins, 180. 118. W. White, Man Called White, 192. See also Myers, March on Washington Movement Mobilizes, FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF; Rorty, Brother Jim Crow; and “Text of Recorded Interview with John Slawson and A. Philip Randolph,” April 20, 1970, Reel 33, APR. 119. American Labor, August 1968, 53, Folder 1: A. Philip Randolph Biographical Information and Testimonials, Box 4, BSCP. Citing personal discussions with Randolph as a source, this article claims that Eleanor Roosevelt came because the president “asked me to talk to you about the March on Washington. I suppose I need not tell you that the White House is stirred up about it. There is great fear that some one will be killed or injured if such a march takes place.” 120. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, 121. For remarks on how Roosevelt appeased his party’s southern bloc, see Allan Morrison, “The Secret Papers of FDR”; and Dewey W. Grantham, “The South and Congressional Politics,” 21–22. 121. Terkel, Good War, 334–36; Joseph L. Rauh, A Few Reminiscences of A. Philip Randolph, Friends of the A. Philip Randolph Campus High School annual dinner program, November 21, 1985, Folder: A. Philip Randolph, Box 23, PE; “Text of Recorded Interview with John Slawson and A. Philip Randolph,” April 20, 1970, Reel 33, APR; J. Wilson, Tearing Down the Color Bar, 346, 369. 122. Aubrey Williams to Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt, June 25, 1941, Folder: Negro Marches on Washington, GR 58, Box 3, AW. 123. Amsterdam News, September 13, 1942; A. Philip Randolph, “The Negro’s Fight for Democracy Now: Speech for Golden Gate Mass Meeting,” September 11, 1942, Speeches, no. 47, APR NYPL. 124. Robert P. Patterson and James V. Forrestal, “Memorandum to the President,” June 24, 1941, Folder: June–July 1941, Box 4, OF 93, FDR. 125. F. H. La Guardia, “Memorandum for the President,” June 19, 1941, and F. H. La Guardia to “My dear Aubrey,” June 19, 1941, Folder: Marches on Washington, Box 3, OF 93, AW. Other committee members included Secretary of the Navy Knox, Secretary Stimson, Sidney Hillman, William Knudsen, Aubrey Williams, and Anna Rosenberg. 126. Black Dispatch, June 28, 1941; “Executive Order 8802,” Federal Register 6, no. 125 (1941): 4544. 127. Allan Morrison, “The Secret Papers of FDR.” 128. Quoted in Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 191. 129. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, xi; Harold G. Vatter, The U.S. Economy during World War II, 127. 130. Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 160–61. 131. Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 361. For a journalistic opinion that “it is a miracle that the FEPC has been able to accomplish as much as it has,” see I. F. Stone, “Jim Crow Flies High,”

220  •  Notes to Chapter 1 June 23, 1945, reprinted in A Nonconformist History of Our Times: The War Years, 1939–1945, I. F. Stone, 288. 132. Mary McLeod Bethune to Franklin D. Roosevelt, June 26, 1941, White House Correspondence: Box 18, LM; Ira F. Lewis to “My dear Mr. Roosevelt,” June 28, 1941, OF 93, FDR. 133. Michael Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights: Moral Courage and Political Risks, 105–21; Richard M. Yon and Tom Lansford, “Political Pragmatism and Civil Rights Policy: Truman and Integration of the Military.” 134. Walter White to Franklin Roosevelt, December 31, 1941, Box 77, General Correspondence, FDR. 135. Chicago Defender, September 5, January 30, 1942. 136. Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 190. 137. A. Philip Randolph to Milton Webster, April 10, 1942, Reel 8, APR. For Ickes’s work in Chicago NAACP and in the federal government, see H. A. Watkins, Righteous Pilgrim: The Life and Times of Harold Ickes, 1874–1952, 199–201, 643–45; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 51; and Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 193–94. 138. St. Louis Argus, June 19, 1942. On Anderson’s historic 1939 Easter concert, see Marian Anderson, My Lord, What a Morning: An Autobiography, 184–96; Raymond Arsenault, The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America; Allan Keiler, Marian Anderson: A Singer’s Journey, 181–217; and Victoria Garrett Jones, Marian Anderson: A Voice Uplifted, 70–82. See also Sarah A. Butler, “The Art of Negotiation: Federal Arts, Civil Rights, and the Legacy of the Marian Anderson Concert, 1939–1943.” 139. Scott A. Sandage, “A Marble House Divided: The Lincoln Memorial, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Politics of Memory, 1939–1963,” 153. 140. “A. Philip Randolph: Portrait of a Gentle Warrior,” New York Teacher, October 13, 1974, Folder 1, Box 4, BSCP. 141. Eleanor Roosevelt, This I Remember, 173–74; Eleanor Roosevelt, “Some of My Best Friends Are Negro,” Ebony, February 1953, reprinted in What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt, edited by Allida Black, 171–76; George T. McJimsey, The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 163–64; Leslie Fischel, “The Negro in the New Deal Era”; Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 161–89, 246–53; Sullivan, Days of Hope, 99–100; J. B. Kirby, Black Americans in the Roosevelt Era, 78–86; August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, From Plantation to Ghetto, 259. Harvard Sitkoff, “The New Deal and Race Relations,” 105, describes Eleanor as the “unofficial ombudsman for blacks.” 142. Pamela Tyler, “‘Blood on Your Hands’: White Southerners’ Criticism of Eleanor Roosevelt during World War II,” 102–5. 143. Pittsburgh Courier, September 28, 1940. 144. “1941: The Pullman Porters March on Washington,” New Leader, July 11, 1955, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF. 145. St. Louis Argus, June 20, 1941; Paula F. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph: Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement, 48; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 360; “Text of Recorded Interview with John Slawson and A. Philip Randolph,” April 20, 1970, Reel 33, APR. 146. Eleanor Roosevelt to A. Philip Randolph, June 10, 1941, Box 748, ERP; “First Lady Is Not for Hike to Capitol,” Amsterdam News, June 21, 1941. In reminiscences late in his life,

Notes to Chapter 1  • 221

Randolph quotes Eleanor saying, “If you stage this march, there’s going to be bloodshed and death in Washington. . . . [N]obody will be able to control them.” See A. Philip Randolph, Interview by Robert Martin, January 14, 1969, 63, RJB. 147. Goodwin, No Ordinary Time, 252–53. 148. Amsterdam News, July 5, 1941; Pittsburgh Courier, June 21, 1941; Chicago Defender, June 21, 28, July 5, 1941; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Age of Roosevelt: Politics of Upheaval, 431; Leslie H. Fischel, “The Negro in the New Deal Era.” 149. Ruchames, Race, Jobs, and Politics, 164. 150. Melinda Chateauvert, Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 165. 151. Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 142–73. 152. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, xii–xiii; Doyle, Inside the White House, 41. 153. W. Harris, “Randolph as a Charismatic Leader,” 305. 154. Black Worker, July 1941; “Proposals of the Negro March-on-Washington Committee to President Roosevelt for Urgent Consideration,” May 1941, Reel 22, APR; duplicate copy found in “Proposals of the Negro March-on-Washington Committee to President Roosevelt for Urgent Consideration,” June 21, 1941, OF 391, FDR. 155. Quote from Spero and Harris, Black Worker, 455; Bynum, A. Philip Randolph, 131, 136; W. Harris, Keeping the Faith, 150–54; W. Harris, “A. Philip Randolph, Black Workers, and the Labor Movement,” 263–65; D. Davis, Mr. Black Labor, 63–74; Bruce Minton and John Stuart, Men Who Lead Labor, 155–58. 156. Connection between the 1928 BSCP strike and the 1941 threat to march made in Benjamin Quarles, Black Mosaic: Essays in Afro-American History and Historiography, 168–69. 157. “Rogers Says,” n.d., Box 5, BSCP. 158. St. Louis Argus, July 4, 1941. 159. “Hits Dictator Action in Calling Off March,” n.d., and “Postponed,” July 5, 1941, Box 5, BSCP. 160. Black Worker, May 1940; Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 149–64; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 459; J. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 230–39; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 307–11; Wilson Record, The Negro and the Communist Party, 191–99; Lawrence S. Wittner, “The National Negro Congress: A Reassessment.” For a general overview of the NNC, refer to John Baxter Streater, The National Negro Congress, 1936–1947. 161. Amsterdam News, June 21, 1941; Baltimore Afro-American, June 21, 1941; A. Philip Randolph, “The Communists and the Negro,” Black Worker, July 1942; “Communists: A Menace to Black America,” Black Worker, November 1945. 162. Chicago Defender, February 29, 1936. For more on animosity between Randolph and the NNC, see Mark Solomon, The Cry Was Unity: Communists and African Americans, 1917–1936, 234–37, 301–4. 163. Randolph, “March on Washington Movement Presents Program,” 146, 148. 164. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 165. Quoted in Bynum, A. Philip Randolph, 150–51. Randolph probably overestimated the danger of Communists to his organization. While the Communist Party USA reached a peak in 1938 with eighty thousand members, its numbers dropped during the war years

222  •  Notes to Chapter 1 to an estimated three to four thousand members. On the size and strength of the CPUSA, see Kenneth O’Reilly, “Racial Matters”: The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972, 44; and McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom, 93. For studies of American communism, doctrinal divisions among the Left, and organizations associated with the Communist Party during the Roosevelt years, see Harvey Klehr, The Heyday of American Communism: The Depression Decade; Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes, The American Communist Movement: Storming Heaven Itself, 59–95; Judy Kutulas, The Long War: The Intellectual People’s Front and Anti-Stalinism, 1930–1940; Alan M. Wald, The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s; and Frank A. Warren, Liberals and Communism: The “Red Decade” Revisited. 166. “Minutes of Sub-committee Meeting on March to Washington Held in NAACP Office,” April 10, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. 167. Layle Lane to A. Philip Randolph, March 29, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 168. “Report of Committee on Resolutions to National Policy Conference,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 24, FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. On the Nazi-Soviet Pact and its impact on African American activists, see Mark Naison, Communists in Harlem during the Great Depression, 232–33; and Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 301–7. See also Doug Rossinow, Visions of Progress: The Left-Liberal Tradition in America, 157–62; Warren, Liberals and Communism, 163–215; and Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party during the Second World War. 169. NY File no. 100-19194 by John J. Manning, 7, 18, Bureau File no. 100-55616, Section 1: September 22–March 1963, FBI File on A. Philip Randolph. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 26–28, 460, 495–97, 550–80, offers an overview of how the FBI understood the relationship between African Americans and the Communist Party. 170. Walter White to J. Edgar Hoover, June 18, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; NY file no. 100-19194 by John J. Manning, 4, Bureau File no. 100-55616, Section 1: September 22–March 1963, FBI File on A. Philip Randolph. 171. Daily Worker, June 10, 14, March 3, 1941. 172. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 160–61. 173. Albert Parker, “The March on Washington: One Year After,” June 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 174. Henry Pelham, “On to Washington for Negro Rights,” Box 5, BSCP. 175. Quoted in Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 308, 310. See also Wittner, “National Negro Congress,” 883. 176. New York Times, July 18, 1943. 177. “Minutes of Sub-committee Meeting on March to Washington Held in NAACP Office,” April 10, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 178. “Report of Committee on Resolutions to We Are Americans Too Conference,” 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 179. Quoted in Bates, Pullman Porters, 168. 180. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 55–56, explains that MOWM’s membership policy was “both a matter of realpolitik and ideology.”

Notes to Chapter 1  • 223

181. People’s Voice, July 10, 1943; Chicago Defender, September 4, 1943. 182. Charles H. Houston to A. Philip Randolph, May 20, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; Bates, Pullman Porters, 169; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 57–58. See also Harry Allen, “Unity with Labor: The Only Hope for MOW,” Labor Action (July 1943). 183. Bayard Rustin, “The Negro and Nonviolence,” Fellowship: The Journal of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, October 1942, reprinted in Down the Line: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin, edited by C. Vann Woodward, 8–12. 184. Chicago Defender, July 17, 1943. For other critiques, see Chicago Defender, May 29, July 10, 1943; Pittsburgh Courier, June 6, 1942, August 14, 1943; quote on rhetoric from Sumner M. Rosen, “The CIO Era, 1935–1955,” 189. See also Gerard A. Houser, Introduction to Rhetorical Theory, 27–28. 185. Randolph quoted in Bynum, A. Philip Randolph, 160. 186. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942” and “Mass Meeting March on Washington,” program for rally at Golden Gate Auditorium, September 11, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 187. Quoted in Bates, Pullman Porters, 170. 188. Black Worker, March 1942. 189. E. Pauline Myers to Local Units of the March on Washington Movement, July 20, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 190. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 114–15. 191. Gertrude Stone to Walter White, May 9, 1941; Walter White to “Dear Gertrude,” May 13, 1941; John Lovell to Thurman Dodson, May 7, 1941; A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, May 11, 1941, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 192. Thurman Dodson to A. Philip Randolph, March 1, 1947, Reel 15, APR. 193. Walter White to James K. Scott, April 2, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 194. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 494. 195. John D’Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin, 58. 196. T. D. McNeal to A. Philip Randolph, September 15, 1941, Reel 6, APR. 197. Everett Thomas, Hope Williams, and Richard Parrish to “Dear Sir,” June 28, 1941, and Walter White to New York Youth Division, July 14, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 67–69. 198. Richard Parrish to A. Philip Randolph, June 28, 1941, Reel 20, APR. 199. Randolph provoked MOWM’s Youth Division, expressing doubt that they actually did any significant organizing among African American youth and questioning whether they could have even brought twenty-five young people to the capital. See A. Philip Randolph to NY Youth Division, July 18, 1941, Reel 20, APR. 200. “Randolph’s Speech Explains Why He Called Off March,” n.d., Box 5, BSCP; A. Philip Randolph, “How and Why the March Was Postponed,” Black Worker, August 1941; Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 60. 201. Metz Lochard to A. Philip Randolph, April 28, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 202. Ira Lewis to A. Philip Randolph, June 9, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; Jerry Gershenhorn, “Double V in North Carolina: The Carolina Times and the Struggle for Racial Equality during World War II,” 160–63.

224  •  Notes to Chapters 1 and 2 203. Black Dispatch, June 28, 1941, Folder 15, Box 14, JECJ. 204. Chicago Sun, July 5, 1943. 205. Quote from Chicago Defender, June 26, 1943. 206. Quote from “Call to Negro America,” n.d., Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP; “Report of the President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice: Confidential,” May 1943, Reel 10, Part 13, NAACP. 207. Chicago Defender, June 12, 1943. 208. Black Worker, May 1941.

Chapter 2. “We Are Americans, Too” 1. “Interview with Bayard Rustin,” March 28, 1974, Folder, Box 58, AM. 2. Quote from Washington Tribune, June 7, 1941. 3. St. Louis Argus, June 27, 1941. 4. “Report of Committee on Resolutions to National Policy Conference,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 35, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 5. Charles Wesley Burton, March 16, 1942 (form letter), Reel 20, APR. 6. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 77–96. 7. “March on Washington Movement Mass Meeting, June 16, 1942,” program, FSN Sc 002, 968-6, SCF, lists the “ardent workers” as Thelma Haylock, Bernice McMillan, Lawrence Ervin, Core Illidge, Jean Jones, F. A. Pinckney, Dick Campbell, Benjamin McLaurin, Colden Brown, Novella McCrorey, Edward Hueston, Margaret V. Brown, Robert Early, and Ada Dillon. Theodore Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia: The Formative Period, 13–15, traces this rhetoric to the Communist vocabulary of the 1930s, but African American groups in Harlem publicized a “Monster Mass Meeting” since at least 1921, when the Virgin Islands Protective League used the phrase on two occasions where Frank Crosswaith spoke. See “Monster Mass Meeting,” December 2, 1921, June 4, 1922, Folder 1, Box 5, FC. 8. Chicago Defender, June 27, 1942; Theophilus Lewis, “Plans and a Point of View,” Interracial Review 15, no. 7 (1942), found in Reel 22, APR; Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 96, describes MOWM’s rallies as attracting a “lower-class audience.” 9. Interracial Review 15, no. 7 (1942), Reel 22, APR; Ottley, New World a-Coming, 251–53. 10. Ellen Tarry, The Third Door: The Autobiography of an American Negro Woman, 192–93; attendance from New York Times, June 17, 1942. 11. Interracial Review 15, no. 7 (1942), Reel 22, APR. 12. Layle Lane to A. Philip Randolph, June 14, 17, 1942, Reel 20, APR; Interracial Review, July 1942, Reel 22, APR; Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 59; Mass Meeting Program: Golden Gate Auditorium, Folder 19, Box 1, LT; Richard Grupenhoff, “Campbell Birthday Bash—Draft,” n.d. (1993 likely), DC. Campbell was a producer, director, and manager with the USO during World War II. See Big Red News, January 12, 1985, Folder 12, Box 8A, AAH. 13. A. Philip Randolph to Lorenzo Tucker, May 12, 1942; L. M. Ervin to Lorenzo Tucker, June 18, 1942, Folder 19, Box 1, LT. Tucker, known as the “Black Valentino” for his acting in the previous two decades, supported MOWM until he enlisted in the army as an entertainment specialist. For background on Tucker’s career, see Richard Grupenhoff, The Black Valentino: The Stage and Screen Career of Lorenzo Tucker, 120–21; Frank Manchel,

Notes to Chapter 2  • 225

Every Step a Struggle: Interviews with Seven Who Shaped the African-American Image in Movies, 45–169; Lorenzo Tucker, Actor, n.d., Folder 1, Box 1; Vineyard Gazette, June 8, 1976; Black American, February 8–14, 1976, Folder 2, Box 1; “Enlisted Record and Report of Separation: Honorable Discharge,” Folder 4, Box 2, LT. For more on Canada Lee, see Mona Z. Smith, Becoming Something: The Story of Canada Lee; James J. Podesta, “Canada Lee, 1907–1952”; and obituary, New York Times, May 10, 1952. 14. Frank Crosswaith, “A New Day,” Interracial Review, July 1942, Reel 22, APR. 15. Powell, Marching Blacks, 158–59; “Winning Democracy for the Negro Is Winning the War for Democracy,” schedule, n.d., Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. 16. Robert L. Carter, A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights, 196. See also Lee A. Daniels, “The Political Career of Adam Clayton Powell”; Esther Popel Shaw, “What a Great Boy Am I!,” 64–66; Charles V. Hamilton, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.: The Political Biography of an American Dilemma; and Will Haygood, The King of Cats: The Life and Times of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. 17. Daily Worker, June 18, 1942. These terms were attached to splinter groups from the Communist Party that advocated a more reformist approach, religious tolerance, or autonomy from Stalin. Jay Lovestone was purged from the Communist Party in the 1920s for embracing the view that socialism should be gradually built in the United States through reformist measures. Pauli Murray and Ella Baker are two noteworthy African Americans who were affiliated with this faction. For studies of ideological fractures and political purges within the Communist Party USA, see Robert J. Alexander, The Right Opposition: Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s; Myers, The Prophet’s Army; Bryan D. Palmer, James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890–1928, 316–49; William L. O’Neill, A Better World: The Great Schism: Stalinism and the American Intellectuals; and “Lovestoneites,” in Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas, 435–37. 18. Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 58–59. On Randolph’s speaking ability, see W. Harris, “Randolph as a Charismatic Leader,” 303; and Ralph Ellison, “A Congress Jim Crow Didn’t Attend,” New Masses, May 14, 1940, reprinted in Collected Essays of Ellison, edited by Callahan, 13. Ellison’s involvement with the Communist Party in the early 1940s made him an opponent of Randolph. For details, see Arnold Rampersad, Ralph Ellison: A Biography, 133–34, 140–41. 19. A. Philip Randolph to Helena Wilson, June 22, 1942, quoted in Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 52. 20. “To the Editors of the Pittsburgh Courier—Reply to George Schuyler by Benjamin McLaurin,” n.d., Reel 20, APR. 21. March, October 17, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 22. C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 134. 23. Randolph quoted in “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins,” September 1, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 24. A. Philip Randolph, “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF.

226  •  Notes to Chapter 2 25. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 53. 26. “Memorandum on the National Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement,” September 26–27, 1942, Reel 20, APR; and Bates, Pullman Porters, 167–71. Attendance from Chicago Defender, September 19, October 10, 1942. Another account indicates that only thirty-seven delegates from six chapters attended the conference: “Report on March on Washington Policy Conference, Lucy Thurman YWCA, Detroit, Mich., Sept. 26–27, 1942,” Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. MOWM’s newsletter reports sixty-two attended. See March, October 17, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 27. “Report on March on Washington Policy Conference, Lucy Thurman YWCA, Detroit, Mich., Sept. 26–27, 1942,” Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 28. St. Louis Argus, October 2, 1942, lists the seven St. Louis delegates, but another source enumerates only six registered delegates from the city. See “Report on March on Washington Policy Conference, Lucy Thurman YWCA, Detroit, Mich., Sept. 26–27, 1942,” Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 29. “March on Washington Movement Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit, September 26–27, 1942,” Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 30. A. Philip Randolph, “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 31. “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit, September 26–27, 1942,” Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP; “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 32. Sudarshan Kapur, Raising Up a Prophet: The African American Encounter with Gandhi, 101–23; Aldon D. Morris, “A Retrospective on the Civil Rights Movement: Political and Intellectual Landmarks,” 524. 33. Bates, Pullman Porters, 168. 34. “Plans for Permanent Organization of March on Washington Committee,” n.d., Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 35. Chicago Defender, October 10, 1942. 36. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 37. Bynum, A. Philip Randolph, 199. 38. Bracey and Meier, “Allies or Adversaries?,” 1–17; Bates, Pullman Porters, 167, 169; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 86. 39. Lester Granger to A. Philip Randolph, September 1, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 40. Lester Granger to John T. Clark, February 10, 1943, quoted in Paula F. Pfeffer, “A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement,” 59. 41. Walter White to A. Philip Randolph, September 2, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 42. NAACP to All Branches, May 12, 1941, quoted in Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 69. 43. A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, September 9, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 44. “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins,” July 7, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. For NAACP membership, see Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 285–86. 45. “Minutes of the Board of Directors,” September 14, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; “Relationship of NAACP to March-on-Washington Movement,” Reel 2, Part 13, NAACP.

Notes to Chapter 2  • 227

46. “March on Washington Movement Action Conference” program, February 13, 1943, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. See also appendix C. 47. Pittsburgh Courier, January 4, 1941; Kansas City Call, April 18, 1941; Amsterdam News, May 3, 1941; Chicago Defender, May 3, 10, 17, 1941. 48. Walter White to Judge William H. Hastie, September 21, 1942, quoted in Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 73. 49. Morris Milgram to Walter White, December 1, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 72. 50. “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins,” July 7, 1943, and “Memorandum from Mr. White to Mr. Wilkins,” July 8, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 51. A. Philip Randolph, “A Program for the Negro People in the World Today,” address to the Christian Street Branch YMCA, Philadelphia, January 21, 1943, Reel 28, APR. 52. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 474–80; Bates, Pullman Porters, 171–72. 53. William Bell to A. Philip Randolph, January 14, 1943, Reel 20, APR. For the call to “I Am an American Too,” see Black Worker, December 1942. 54. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 61–62; Donna T. Haverty-Stacke, America’s Forgotten Holiday: May Day and Nationalism, 1867–1960, 184–92. By appropriating and modifying this phrase, MOWM boldly challenged the historical tendency of the word American being taken as synonymous with white. See Joe R. Feagin, Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations, 99–100. 55. “Are Negroes American Citizens,” July 4, 1943, FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF. 56. “Calling All Negroes! We Are American’s Too!,” program, FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF; March on Washington Movement Conference Music, June 30–July 4, 1943, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF; Walter Johnson, “Possible Pasts: Some Speculation on Time, Temporality, and the History of Atlantic Slavery.” 57. St. Louis American, July 9, August 5, 1943. 58. Chicago Defender, July 3, 1943. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 474, lists attendance at the opening meeting as “approximately 500 persons.” 59. C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 139. 60. Milton Webster to A. Philip Randolph, April 6, 10, August 25, 27, 1942, Reel 8, APR. On Webster’s stature within Randolph’s inner circle, see W. Harris, “Randolph as a Charismatic Leader,” 306. “Prickly” description from Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 74. 61. Ella J. Baker to Roy Wilkins, March 11, 1942. See also Daisy Lampkin to Walter White, April 7, 1942, and Walter White to A. Philip Randolph, April 9, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 62. For insight into daily operations and personal divisions within Chicago MOWM, refer to correspondence between Neva Ryan and Ethel Payne to A. Philip Randolph, Reel 20, APR. For a third-person summary of conflict between local activists and BSCP members in Chicago MOWM, refer to correspondence between David Wilburn and A. Philip Randolph, Reel 20, APR; and Ethel Payne to A. Philip Randolph, April 15, 1942, Reel 22, APR. 63. Cynthia Taylor, “How Did the March on Washington Movement’s Critique of American Democracy in the 1940s Awaken African American Women to the Problem of Jane Crow?”; Chateauvert, Marching Together, 167. Morris Milgram offers a more chauvinistic

228  •  Notes to Chapter 2 reading of gender relations in organizations run by Randolph. He commented, “Phil is extremely attractive to women, which results in his getting some of them to work like Trojans in the causes which he heads. But his work schedule scarcely gives him time to pay attention to ’em, which often causes injured feelings.” Morris Milgram to Daniel James, January 16, 1949, Reel 1, APR. 64. Roy Wilkins to Walter White, July 1, 1943, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins,” July 7, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP; “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins: Supplementary Report on the March on Washington Convention,” July 8, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 65. “Minutes of National Executive Committee Meeting,” May 14–15, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 66. For a discussion on the network of activists in Chicago’s African American organizations, see C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 136–41; and “Chicago Meeting Thank You Notes,” July 7, 1942, Reel 25, APR. Irene Gaines, one of Chicago’s outstanding clubwomen, organized meat packers during the 1920s. With community credibility built through nearly two decades of activism, Gaines played a key role in Chicago MOWM. For more on Gaines, see Chateauvert, Marching Together, 44–45, 86. For more on Ryan, a supporter of the BSCP since the early 1930s, see Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 24. 67. “Minutes of National Executive Committee Meeting,” May 14–15, 1943, Reel 2, TDM; Chicago Defender, July 2, 1943; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 474–81. 68. Erik S. Gellman, “Carthage Must Be Destroyed: Race, City Politics, and the Campaign to Integrate Chicago Transportation Work, 1929–1943,” 87; Beth Tompkins Bates, “Mobilizing Black Chicago: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Community Organizing, 1925–35,” 199. 69. On African American churches in Chicago, see St. Claire Drake and Horace Cayton, Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City, 412–29. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 5, argues that religious organizations were the backbone of self-help and racial uplift efforts. 70. E. Pauline Myers to T. D. McNeal, March 1, 1943, and “The March on Washington Movement and Non-violent Civil Disobedience,” press release, February 23, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 71. Chicago Defender, June 26, 1943. Central to this thinking is a commitment to “the rule of law,” a belief that “the government should establish impartial rules and apply them equally to whites and blacks.” For an explanation of how this ideology shaped political thought in early-twentieth-century Tulsa, Oklahoma, and presumably beyond, see Alfred L. Brophy, Reconstructing the Dreamland: The Tulsa Riot of 1921—Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation, 2. 72. “Executive Committee Statement on March on Washington—Non-violent Action Proposals,” 1943, Folder: March on Washington 1943, Box 1, APR NYPL; Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” (1849). 73. August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942– 1968, 4–10, 16. See also Erik Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence, 413–34; and Richard Gregg, The Power of Non-Violence. For a study of nonviolence that

Notes to Chapter 2  • 229

delineates the differences of typology between “pacifism” and “passive resistance,” see Gene Sharp, The Politics of Nonviolent Action. 74. C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 165; Arna Bontemps, 100 Years of Negro Freedom, 244; Phyl Garland, “A. Philip Randolph: Labor’s Grand Old Man.” Connecting Randolph to Gandhi built upon a tradition in the African American press of praising the Indian nationalist leader typified in a July 1921 issue of the Crisis that quotes John Haynes Holmes calling him the “greatest man alive in the world today.” 75. Nico Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India, 94, 107–8. 76. “The March on Washington Movement and Non-Violent Civil Disobedience,” press release, February 23, 1943, Reel 22, APR; Marian Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest, 4, 9; Joseph Kip Kosek, Acts of Conscience: Christian Nonviolence and Modern American Democracy, 184. See also Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s, 68–93; and Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement, 25–39. 77. Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 385–86; Chateauvert, Marching Together, x–xiii; Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 212–13. 78. Reinhold Neibuhr, Moral Man in Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics, 254. 79. Gill, “Afro-American Opposition,” 166. This assessment is consistent with that of Lance Hill, who argues that “African Americans in the South had never been disposed to pacifism,” and that this ideal was imposed on black southerners during the Civil Rights Movement by well-funded and highly organized northern progressives. Hill also argues that MOWM’s adoption of nonviolence is not directly connected to the use of civil disobedience in the fight for civil rights that occurred in the late 1950s. Hill, The Deacons for Defense: Armed Resistance and the Civil Rights Movement, 236, 325n6. 80. E. Franklin Frazier, “The Negro and Non-Resistance,” Crisis, January 1924. 81. Levine, Bayard Rustin, 27; David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, 54–62. 82. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 4; Meier and Rudwick, Along the Color Line, 347–53; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 145. 83. Sean Chabot, Transnational Roots of the Civil Rights Movement: African American Explorations of the Gandhian Repertoire, 94–95; D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 39–40. Levine, Bayard Rustin, 29, places FOR’s membership at under one thousand. For more on Chicago CORE activism, see James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven, 32; James Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 113–14; and Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 13–14. 84. J. Holmes Smith to A. J. Muste, July 8, 1943, Folder 12, Box 58, AM. For Smith’s connection to the Harlem Ashram, see Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941, 215–16; Kosek, Acts of Conscience, 185–86; and Tracy, Direct Action, 5–6. 85. “Mammoth Mass Meeting,” flyer, July 4, 1943; J. Holmes Smith to A. J. Muste, July 8, 1943, Folder 12, Box 58, AM; “E. Stanley Jones Expounds Non-violent Technique at MOWM Conference,” press release, July 9, 1943, FSN Sc 002, 967-1, SCF; quote on Jones’s prominence in C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 166. Jones’s speech in front of twenty-one hundred people at DuSable High School was so long-winded that it drove off an already

230  •  Notes to Chapter 2 irritated Roy Wilkins. See “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins,” July 7, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 86. Chicago Defender, June 19, 1943. For the full text of Randolph’s address at the conference, see “Address by A. Philip Randolph—National Director, March on Washington Movement, in the Chicago Coliseum, June 26, 1942,” Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 87. George Houser, Erasing the Color Line, 7. 88. Quote from Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 586. 89. Chicago Defender, June 12, 1943. 90. Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 67–88, 117–24. 91. “Notes: Bayard Rustin Papers,” Folder 2, Box 59, AM; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 470. 92. James Farmer to George Houser, February 5, 1943, Reel 11, CORE; Farmer, Lay Bare the Heart, 156. 93. Wallace Lee, “Is Civil Disobedience Practical to Win Full Rights for Negroes?,” Negro Digest, March 1943, 25; Pittsburgh Courier, April 24, 1943; Murray, Song in a Weary Throat, 203; Jean M. Humez, “Pauli Murray’s Histories of Loyalty and Revolt.” 94. “MOWM Not Anti-White,” press release, August 19, 1943, Reel 22, APR. 95. Unlike Friends of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), which made vital financial contributions to its parent organization during the early 1960s, Friends of MOWM accomplished relatively little. See Wesley C. Hogan, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC’s Dream for a New America, 114–15. 96. Quoted by Ralph Bunche in “Joseph Gottlieb’s Manuscript on Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph,” 6, Folder 7, Box 58, APR NYPL. 97. “We Are Americans, Too: Resolutions,” July 4, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. This was a moot point, as no white or mixed-race organizations had offered MOWM any financial contributions. 98. T. Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity, 2. 99. “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 100. Abram Harris, The Negro as a Capitalist: A Study in Banking and Business among American Negroes, 66, 211. 101. A. Philip Randolph to T. D. McNeal, December 30, 1942, Reel 6, APR. 102. St. Louis Argus, July 9, 1943, and “We Are Americans Too Conference Opens at Chicago with A. Philip Randolph Presiding,” press release, 1943, Reel 1, TDM; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 474–80. 103. The term culture wars was not coined for five more decades: James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. 104. “Report of Committee on Resolutions to National Policy Conference,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 29–30, 34, FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 105. “Are Negroes American Citizens?,” July 4, 1943, FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF. For protests against Birth of a Nation, see Melvyn Stokes, D. W. Griffith’s “The Birth of a Nation”: A History of the Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time, 129–70; and Arthur Lenning, “Myth and Fact: The Reception of The Birth of a Nation.”

Notes to Chapter 2  • 231

106. Chicago Defender, July 3, 1943. 107. “We Are Americans, Too: Resolutions,” July 4, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 108. Washington Post, May 26, 1982, Folder: Printed Matter, Box 1, RT. 109. C. Taylor, “March on Washington Movement’s Critique of American Democracy.” 110. Eugenie Settles to A. Philip Randolph, March 3, 1943, Reel 7, APR. For the opinion of a male coworker about Randolph’s underdeveloped managerial skills and his inability to raise money, see “Interview with Bayard Rustin,” March 28, 1974, Folder 4, Box 58, AM. 111. Quotes in W. Harris, Keeping the Faith, ix. See also Quarles, “A. Philip Randolph,” 149; and Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 118–19. 112. “March Movement to Get New Executive,” December 14, 1942, Reel 2, TDM; Chicago Defender, December 26, 1942; People’s Voice, January 16, 1943. 113. Quote from E. Pauline Myers to T. D. McNeal, n.d. (1943 likely because of surrounding documents in file and her start date for working in the organization was January 2, 1943), Reel 1, TDM. 114. “Plans for Permanent Organization of March on Washington Committee,” n.d., FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF; “Estimate for a National Budget,” n.d., A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, June 2, 1941, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP; “March on Washington Movement: Financial Report of the National Committee, Schedule 2&3,” July 1943, Reel 21, APR. 115. “March to Get New Executive,” December 14, 1942, Reel 2, TDM; financial figures from Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 82–83. By fiscal year 1943–44, MOWM’s national budget increased to sixteen thousand dollars. See “National Program of Action: March on Washington Movement—August 1943 to July 31, 1944,” Reel 2, TDM. 116. “Hints for Setting Up Uniform Local Units—March on Washington Movement,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM. 117. Rosenberg, How Far the Promised Land?, 5–6. 118. A. Philip Randolph, “The Negro’s Fight for Democracy Now: Speech for Golden Gate Mass Meeting,” September 11, 1942, Speeches: #47, APR NYPL; “Address by A. Philip Randolph—National Director, March on Washington Movement, in the Chicago Coliseum, June 26, 1942,” Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 119. Layle Lane, “The Negro and War Activities,” Folder: Printed Material, 1942, n.d., Box 1, LL. 120. “The March on Washington Movement and Non-Violent Civil Disobedience,” press release, February 23, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 121. “Statement to the Political Parties of the Nation,” in “Conference Call to a National Non-partisan Political Conference for Negroes,” June 25–26, 1944, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF. 122. B. F. McLaurin to A. Philip Randolph, January 13, October 11, 1943, Reel 6, APR. 123. Benjamin McLaurin, Aldrich Turner, Lawrence Ervin, and Layle Lane to A. Philip Randolph, November 10, 1943, Reel 20, APR; Benjamin McLaurin to Leyton Weston, November 10, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 124. E. Pauline Myers to A. Philip Randolph, December 2, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 125. Jesse Taylor to A. Philip Randolph, December 9, 1943, Reel 21, APR. 126. B. F. McLaurin to A. Philip Randolph, February 3, 1944, Reel 6, APR; for Hedgeman’s contributions to civil rights, see Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 3–9, 21–22, 26–31,

232  •  Notes to Chapter 2 92–94; and Collier-Thomas, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice, 383–87. For more on Hedgeman’s tenure in the Committee for a Permanent FEPC and MOWM, see “Interview with Bayard Rustin,” March 28, 1974, Box 58, AM. Hedgeman remained a coworker and friend of Randolph throughout his life. Their respect for each other is highlighted in a testimonial at his memorial service; see New York Voice, June 2, 1979, Timeline, Box 1, AAH. 127. E. Pauline Myers to A. Philip Randolph, December 2, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 128. Chicago Defender, September 30, 1944. 129. J. Finley Wilson’s presence at high-profile MOWM events and large donations that he personally made to MOWM suggest that the Elks were quiet but steady supporters of racially progressive activism. J. Finley Wilson to A. Philip Randolph, July 8, 1947, Reel 17, APR. 130. E. Pauline Myers to A. Philip Randolph, September 1947, Reel 15, APR. 131. E. Pauline Myers to Herbert Garfinkel, August 16, 1955, Reel 1, APR. Strangely, a copy of Myers’s 1956 résumé does not mention her experience with this organization. See E. Pauline Myers Résumé and E. Pauline Myers to A. Philip Randolph, August 10, 1956, Reel 1, APR. 132. “Financial Report of March on Washington Movement—National Office,” November 11, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 133. “Minutes of National Executive Committee Meeting,” May 14, 15, 1943, and Aldrich Turner to National Executive Committee, November 11, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 134. “March Movement to Get New Executive,” December 14, 1942, Reel 2, TDM. 135. Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 8, 54; D. Davis, Mr. Black Labor, 11, dates Randolph’s arrival in New York at 1906. 136. Richard B. Sherman, The Case of Odell Waller and Virginia Justice, 1940–1942. See also Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 329–45; and Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, 280–325. 137. Black Worker, June 1942. 138. Pauli Murray to A. Philip Randolph, May 13, 1942, and A. Philip Randolph to Pauli Murray, May 17, 1943, Reel 20, APR; W. Jones, March on Washington, 52–53. 139. Pauli Murray to A. Philip Randolph, July 15, 1942, Reel 1, APR. 140. Ashley Totten to A. Philip Randolph, July 15, 1942, Reel 1, APR. 141. Chicago Defender, July 25, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, August 1, 1942. For a photograph and account of the silent parade, see People’s Voice, August 1, 1942, Reel 22, APR. 142. New York Times, July 29, 1917; Crisis, September 1917; Schierenbeck, “Lost and Found,” 9; James Weldon Johnson, Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson, 320–21. 143. Roscoe E. Lewis, “The Role of Pressure Groups in Maintaining Morale among Negroes,” 464. 144. Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 368. 145. Eugenie Settles to A. Philip Randolph, July 17, 1942, Reel 7, APR. 146. Julie A. Gallagher, “Women of Action, in Action: The New Politics of Black Women in New York City, 1944–1974,” 102–6; L. Johnson, “Generation of Women Activists”; Pete Daniel, Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s, 12. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 7–9, argues that the YWCA was one of the few white-led organizations that hired African Americans on equal footing. Prior to working as MOWM’s executive secretary, E. Pauline Myers was

Notes to Chapters 2 and 3  • 233

employed by the YWCA in Richmond, Virginia. See E. Pauline Myers, “The March on Washington Movement Mobilizes,” 1941–1945, FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF; and W. Jones, March on Washington, 55–56. 147. Chicago Defender, February 3, 1940; Murray, Song in a Weary Throat, 75. Gore, in Radicalism at the Crossroads, 36, speculates, “Just as men’s enlistment in the armed forces opened up job opportunities for women in the workplace, it also provided openings for women in left organizations.” 148. Collier-Thomas, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice, 370. 149. “Plans for Protest Parade against the Execution of Odell Waller and the Poll Tax,” July 25, 1942, Reel 21, APR; Murray, Song in a Weary Throat, 174; Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads, 52–53. 150. Barbara Ransby, “Behind the Scenes View of a Behind the Scenes Organizer: The Roots of Ella Baker’s Political Passions,” 47. 151. Quote from Ransby, Ella Baker, 106. 152. August Meier and John H. Bracey Jr., “The NAACP as a Reform Movement: ‘To Reach the Conscience of America,’” 19; Chicago Defender, May 1, 1943. 153. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 61; and W. Jones, March on Washington, 41–42, mention a poorly attended reception cheering the executive order. 154. “Watergate Theatre Ideal Setting for March on Washington Rally,” n.d.; “The Little Flower Says Fights Has Just Begun,” n.d.; “Wrong of Long Standing Has Been Recognized,” July 5, 1941; “Laud FDR at March Victory Meeting,” n.d., Box 5, BSCP. 155. “Program: Victory Rally—Watergate Theatre,” July 1, 1941, Box 5, BSCP. 156. B. F. McLaurin to A. Philip Randolph, April 27, 1942, Reel 6, APR. 157. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 135–40; Skotnes, A New Deal for All?, 298–303. 158. E. Pauline Myers to A. Philip Randolph, October 13, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 159. Ibid., October 30, 1943. 160. Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 30. 161. Gertrude Stone to Walter White, May 9, 1941; Walter White to “Dear Gertrude,” May 13, 1941; John Lovell to Thurman Dodson, May 7, 1941; A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, May 11, 1941, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. If we can take Randolph at his word that anticommunism was the driving force behind MOWM’s exclusion of whites, D.C. MOWM is yet another example of the Red Scare tearing the American Left apart, creating what Walter White called “a very unfortunate situation” in the capital just weeks before the demonstration. Janken, Walter White, 254. 162. Thurman Dodson to A. Philip Randolph, March 1, 1947, Reel 15, APR. 163. Ibid., November 21, 1942, Reel 1, APR. 164. Myrtle Face to A. Philip Randolph, November 24, 1942, Reel 1, APR. 165. A. Philip Randolph to Herbert Garfinkel, November 28, 1955, Reel 22, APR.

Chapter 3. Wartime St. Louis and the Genesis of MOWM in the Gateway City, 1942 1. Desmond King, Separate and Unequal: Black Americans and the U.S. Federal Government, 72–108, 230. 2. Quoted in Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 115. 3. FDR “National Security” radio address, December 29, 1940, Master Speech File, FDR.

234  •  Notes to Chapter 3 4. James Neal Primm, Lion of the Valley: St. Louis, Missouri, 1764–1980, 468–69; Rosemary Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 32–33; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 43–45; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 114. 5. Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 143–44; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 46. 6. Keona K. Ervin, “‘A Decent Living Out of Our Work’: Black Women’s Labor Activism in St. Louis, 1929–1945,” 173–75. 7. U.S. War Department, You’re Going to Employ Women, pamphlet (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1943). 8. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, October 11, 1942; Edward S. Lewis, “Profiles: Baltimore”; P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 64; Emily Yellin, Our Mother’s War: American Women at Home and at the Front during World War II, 51. 9. Charles Chamberlain, Victory at Home: Manpower and Race in the American South during World War II, 40–68. 10. St. Louis American, May 14, 1942; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 36, 46. 11. St. Louis Argus, June 6, 1941; Sidney R. Redmond to Walter White, May 14, 22, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. 12. “Constitution and By Laws: St. Louis Unit, March on Washington Movement,” October 28, 1942, Reel 1, TDM; “little band of Spartans” quote from St. Louis American, January 6, 1944. 13. March, October 17, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 14. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 44. 15. St. Louis American, May 13, 1943. 16. Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy, 38. 17. St. Louis Unit Constitution, Reel 1, TDM. 18. St. Louis American, July 27, 1944. 19. Norgrent and Hill, Toward Fair Employment, 65–66, table 4.3. 20. Chicago Defender, October 2, 1943; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 237; Walter White to Daisy Lampkin, April 2, 1942, Part 13, Reel 22, NAACP. 21. “The McNeal Story,” April 1, 1966, Reel 1, TDM. 22. Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action, 4–5, 65. 23. Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 134. 24. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 47. 25. Debra Foster Greene, “‘Just Enough of Everything’: The St. Louis Argus—an African American Newspaper and Publishing Company in Its First Decade.” 26. D. Greene, “Published in the Interest of Colored People,” 111, 133–34. 27. Gerald Early, ed., Ain’t but a Place: An Anthology of African American Writings about St. Louis, xiii–xxv. 28. St. Louis Star-Times, July 20, 1944. 29. Daniel Monti, A Semblance of Justice: St. Louis School Desegregation and Order in Urban America, 5–6. 30. St. Louis Star-Times, July 20, 1944. 31. St. Louis Labor Tribune, August 19, 1942. 32. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 9, 1943.

Notes to Chapter 3  • 235

33. Chicago Defender, August 1, 1942. 34. K’Meyer, Civil Rights in the Gateway to the South, 1. 35. St. Louis Argus, June 20, 1941; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 264; Lorenzo J. Greene, Gary R. Kremer, and Antonio Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage: Revised Edition, 160. 36. There are many studies of African Americans in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. Among the most useful are U. Lee, Employment of Negro Troops; Mattie E. Treadwell, United States Army in World War II—Special Studies: The Women’s Army Corps; Charles C. Moskos Jr., “Racial Integration in the Armed Forces”; and Phillip McGuire, Taps for a Jim Crow Army: Letters from Black Soldiers in World War II. 37. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 240. For a survey of civilian attacks on African American enlisted men, see U. Lee, Employment of Negro Troops, 348–80; and James Albert Burran, “Racial Violence in the South during World War II.” For an analysis of attacks on African American soldiers in the larger context of racial violence on the home front, see Herbert Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery, 301–47. 38. Jennifer C. James, A Freedom Bought with Blood: African American War Literature from the Civil War to World War II, 232–78; David Lundberg, “The American Literature of War: The Civil War, World War I, and World War II.” For examples, see Langston Hughes, “Private Jim Crow”; Georgia Douglas Johnson, “Black Recruit,” Ebony Rhythm (1943), reprinted in Bitter Fruit, edited by Honey, 136; and Cora Ball Moten, “Negro Mother to Her Son,” Opportunity (April 1943), reprinted in Bitter Fruit, edited by Honey, 285. 39. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, December 19, 1942; for additional coverage, see St. Louis Star-Times, December 19, 1942. 40. Burnett, St. Louis at War, 40; St. Louis American, August 13, 1942. 41. Sidney Redmond, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 6, 1970, Oral History T-025, WHMC; E. D. Nixon, “When Montgomery Was Not Like St. Louis,” in Refuse to Stand Silently By: An Oral History of Grass Roots Social Activism in America, 1921–1964, edited by Eliot Wigginton, 24. 42. Brophy, Reconstructing the Dreamland, 54. 43. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, vii, 8, 10. 44. Primm, Lion of the Valley, 436–39; Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 72–73. 45. U.S. Census Bureau, Sixteenth Census of the United States, 2, pt. 4, 850. Census figures from 1940 indicating that African Americans were 13.3 percent of the city in R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 237. 46. R. N. Dutton, “Race Problems in Our Community,” in “St. Louis—White and Black: Two Addresses Delivered at the St. Louis Institute on Race Relations and Non-violent Solutions Held at Central Baptist Church, April 9–11, 1943,” Reel 1, TDM; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 113; Primm, Lion of the Valley, 490. 47. St. Louis Argus, September 5, 1941, November 13, 1942. 48. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 113; Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 174–213, 379–98; Kenneth Kusmer, A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870–1930; Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, 1890–1930; Allen Spear, Black Chicago: The Making of a Negro Ghetto, 1890–1920; and Richard Sterner, The Negro’s Share: A Study of Income, Consumption, Housing,

236  •  Notes to Chapter 3 and Public Assistance, 185–95, document how common conditions such as these were in urban environments inhabited by African Americans throughout the industrial Midwest and Northeast. 49. My use of Frazier is borrowed from Wright, Life behind a Veil, 7–8. 50. George Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle: Ivory Perry and the Culture of Opposition, 65. Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 294, details white flight in the mid–twentieth century. In 1940 white residents of St. Louis numbered 706,794, but by 1950 that number decreased to 702,400. Conversely, the amount of African Americans calling St. Louis home rose by 1950 to 154,000. 51. Primm, Lion of the Valley, 472, 504. Donald J. Kemper, “Catholic Integration in St. Louis, 1935–1947,” 2, places the number of African Americans in St. Louis during 1945 at 180,000—an unlikely figure considering that this was more than the 1950 total tabulated by the census. The cities with the largest proportional increase in residents during World War II tended to be located in coastal areas. Detroit’s wartime increase of 8.2 percent, for instance, is dwarfed by the influx of migrants who increased the population of Mobile County, Alabama, by 64.7 percent and the Hampton Roads, Virginia, area by 44.7 percent. See Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 67–68; and Megan Taylor Shockley, “We, Too, Are Americans”: African American Women in Detroit and Richmond, 1940–1954, 16. 52. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 164; Sparrow, “Freedom to Want,” 17; Morton Sonsa, introduction to Remaking Dixie, edited by Neil R. McMillen, xv. 53. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 3; Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, 33. 54. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, SL 552, Folder 9, Oral History Program, Afro-American Studies at St. Louis University, WHMC, 2. 55. Sidney Redmond, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 6, 1970, Oral History T-025, WHMC. 56. On Mississippi’s repressive political climate, see John Dittmer, Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi, 41–69; Nan Elizabeth Woodruff, American Congo: The African American Freedom Struggle in the Delta, 190–237; Stephen Hahn, A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration, 275–76, 288–89; Neil R. McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow, 1–32, 38–48; Stokely Carmichael with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell, Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture], 277–96; V. S. Naipaul, A Turn in the South, 155; and Paul Hendrickson, “Mississippi Haunting.” 57. Lipsitz, Life in the Struggle, 67. 58. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 17; St. Louis Argus, December 5, 1941. 59. Katherine T. Corbett and Mary E. Seematter, “No Crystal Stair: Black St. Louis, 1920–1940”; Richard R. Jefferson, “Negro Employment in St. Louis War Production,” Opportunity, Summer 1944, 116–17; William August Crossland, Industrial Conditions among Negroes in St. Louis, 12–23; Lawrence O. Christensen, “Black St. Louis: A Study in Race Relations, 1865–1916,” 67. 60. Priscilla Dowden, “Over This Point We Are Determined to Fight: The Urban League of St. Louis in Historical Perspective”; Nancy J. Weiss, The National Urban League, 1910–1940, 57, 73, 90–91, 119–20, 184.

Notes to Chapter 3  • 237

61. Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy, 156–81; George Lipsitz, The Sidewalks of St. Louis: Places, People, and Politics in an American City, 52–55; H. Phillip Venable, “The History of Homer G. Phillips Hospital”; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 86–90, 96–97. 62. Jared Roll, Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South, 128–38; Erik Gellman and Jared Roll, Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America, 95–96. 63. Documentation of Clark’s official role with MOWM is found in Negro-March-onWashington-Committee: Bulletin, May 22, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; “Conversion of War to Peace Economy,” February 26, March 11, 1941, Folder: David Dubinsky, 1942–1966, Box 1, ILGWU. T. Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity, 124, 141, 148, mentions Clark’s activism. 64. Lester Granger to John T. Clark, February 10, 1943, quoted in Pfeffer, “A. Philip Randolph and the March on Washington Movement,” 59. 65. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 493–94. 66. Quote from Maida Springer Kemp to A. Philip Randolph, November 13, 1969, Reel 2, APR. Bates, “Mobilizing Black Chicago,” details how ingrained African American union members were within their respective communities during this era. 67. St. Louis Argus, January 5, 1940. 68. Chicago Defender, June 21, 1941. E. J. Bradley deserves mention as a member of MOWM, but his career as a porter and dedication to working with the BSCP prevented steady participation in his hometown MOWM chapter. 69. “MOWM Drive Off to a Good Start,” n.d. (1944 likely), Reel 1, TDM. 70. Daniel T. Rodgers, Contested Truths: Keywords in American Politics since Independence, 213–19. 71. Address of the President of the United States, January 6, 1941 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), 46–47. 72. St. Louis Argus, May 29, 1942. 73. “Statement Made by Mr. McNeal, Emancipation Proclamation, 9-22-43: Special to St. Louis American,” Reel 1, TDM. 74. Chandler Owen, Negroes and the War (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of War Information, 1943); Earl Brown and George R. Leighton, The Negro and the War. Owen worked closely with Randolph on the Messenger, while Brown was a correspondent for the New York Herald-Tribune and Leighton was an associate editor of Harper’s. 75. David Grant, “Race Problems in Our Community,” in “St. Louis—White and Black: Two Addresses Delivered at the Institute on Race Relations and Non-violent Solutions,” Reel 1, TDM. 76. William Sentner, Vice President, United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers (CIO), “Statement before FEPC,” reprinted in St. Louis American, September 26, 1944. A similar demographic trend is noted in St. Louis American, September 8, 1943. 77. Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 144–45; Rosemary Fuerer, The St. Louis Labor History Tour, 33. 78. St. Louis American, September 7, 1944. The most detailed scholarship on William Sentner are Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest; and Rosemary Fuerer, “William Sentner, the UE, and Civic Unionism in St. Louis.” See also Judith Stepan-Norris and Maurice Zeitlin, Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions, 82; Ronald W. Schatz, The Electrical Workers: A

238  •  Notes to Chapter 3 History of Labor at General Electric and Westinghouse, 1923–1960, 157; Ronald L. Filippelli and Mark McColloch, Cold War in the Working Class: The Rise and Decline of the United Electrical Workers, 7, 36–37, 130; James J. Mantles and James Higgins, Them and Us: Struggles of a Rank-and-File Union, 74, 91–93, 96–100; and Robert Zieger, The CIO, 1935–1955, 159–60. 79. St. Louis Argus, June 4, 1942. 80. St. Louis Argus, March 7, 1944. The employment situation in St. Louis mirrored that of the United States. See Charles H. Thompson, “The American Negro and National Defense”; Robert C. Weaver, “Racial Employment Trends in National Defense”; and E. Franklin Frazier, “Ethnic and Minority Groups in Wartime,” 373. 81. March, October 17, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 82. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 10, 1943. 83. R. N. Dutton, “Race Problems in Our Community,” in “St. Louis—White and Black: Two Addresses Delivered at the St. Louis Institute on Race Relations and Non-violent Solutions Held at Central Baptist Church, April 9–11, 1943,” Reel 1, TDM. 84. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 118–19; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 45. See also appendix B of this book, “Approximate Racial Composition of Major St. Louis Defense Contractors during World War II.” 85. St. Louis Argus, June 11, 1942. In a speech at Hampton Institute, Randolph presented a similar argument about the capacity of mass organizations to challenge the status quo. See A. Philip Randolph, “The Negro’s Struggle for Power: Address at Hampton Institute,” October 19, 1942, Speeches #46, APR NYPL. 86. “Skit Read at Meeting—Block Captains,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM. 87. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 237–38, 471. 88. For more on workplace subculture, social mores, and upward mobility of porters, see Tye, Rising from the Rails, 169–98; and R. Turner, Memories of a Retired Porter, 142, 185–87. 89. Pamphlet distributed by solicitors, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 90. “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins,” July 7, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 91. Roy Wilkins to Walter White, June 24, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 92. St. Louis Argus, July 18, 1941. 93. George Schuyler, “Views and Reviews,” Pittsburgh Courier, August 1, 1942. 94. St. Louis American, February 4, 1943. 95. T. D. McNeal to Pauline Myers, June 25, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 96. Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 58. 97. Randolph respected McNeal as a “militant who organized for jobs and led demonstrations.” See “Pink Note Card from Roosevelt Hotel, New Orleans,” n.d., Folder 2, Box 4, BSCP. See also L. Greene, Kremer, and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage, 186. 98. “Comments from Senator McNeal,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 99. St. Louis American, May 15, 1943. 100. Jefferson City (Mo.) News, July 11, 1965. 101. “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins: Supplementary Report on the March on Washington Convention,” July 8, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. Wilkins noted that “the St. Louis group” stood in contrast to the Chicago chapter because it “seems to be very strong and well organized and exerts a major influence.”

Notes to Chapter 3  • 239

102. Theodore McNeal, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 22, 1970, Oral History T-024, WHMC. 103. Theodore D. McNeal, Interview by Bill Morrison, May 20, 1974, Oral History T-343, WHMC. 104. Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy, 5. 105. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 113. 106. “Convention Joint Session,” September 17, 1940, 198–99, Folder 7, Box 2, BSCP; “Comments from Senator McNeal,” n.d., Reel 1. 107. “Statement made by Mr. McNeal, Emancipation Proclamation, 9-22-43: Special to St. Louis American,” Reel 1, TDM. 108. “The McNeal Story,” April 1, 1966, Reel 1, TDM. 109. T. D. McNeal to A. Philip Randolph, January 8, 1943, Reel 6, APR; Theodore D. McNeal, Interview by Bill Morrison, May 20, 1974, Oral History T-343, WHMC. 110. “Anonymous Letter,” August 20, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. This handwritten letter expressed concern that etiquette was being breached on streetcars: “In street cars 12 niggers all know one an other [sic] will not sit together each will take single seats,” forcing “white people to sit with a stinken nigger.” For accounts of the post–World War I riot, see Charles Lumpkins, American Pogrom: The East St. Louis Riot and Black Politics, 109–42; and Elliot Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis: July 2, 1917, 174–96. 111. Vigilantes, Inc., to T. D. McNeal, n.d., Reel 2, TDM. This group believed in “Justice to all races, but segregation at crucial points where necessary!” This reactionary organization believed that “Jim-Crow laws are necessary for the safety of our country, and the safety of its people, both white and black. The better negroes want this—and true, white Americans want this.” 112. T. D. McNeal to A. Philip Randolph, August 22, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 113. Theodore D. McNeal, Interview by Bill Morrison, May 20, 1974, Oral History T-343, WHMC. 114. St. Louis Argus, May 9, 1942; Chicago Defender, September 16, 1939. 115. St. Louis Argus, January 30, 1942. For more on Wright’s lynching, see Dominic J. Capeci Jr., The Lynching of Cleo Wright and “The Lynching of Cleo Wright: Federal Protection of Constitutional Rights during World War II.” 116. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 51; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 364. 117. George C. Wright, Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and Legal Lynchings, 1. 118. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 98, 117; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 117. 119. St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942. 120. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 11, 164; Clarence Lang, “Between Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Mason-Dixon Line: A Case Study of Black Freedom Movement Militancy in the Gateway City.” 121. “David Marshall Grant: 1961 Memoir Draft,” Folder 1, SL 552, DG; David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, SL 552, Folder 9, WHMC, 2; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 32–44. 122. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 79. On Houston as a mentor, see Genna Rae McNeil, Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 63–75; Carter,

240  •  Notes to Chapter 3 Matter of Law, 24–25; Rawn James Jr., Root and Branch: Charles Hamilton Houston, Thurgood Marshall, and the Struggle to End Segregation, 52–54; and Mark V. Tushnet, Making Civil Rights Law: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court, 126–36. 123. St. Louis American, September 13, 1930. 124. “David Marshall Grant: 1961 Memoir Draft,” Folder 1, SL 552, DG; Lawrence O. Christensen et al., eds., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 343. 125. “David Marshall Grant: 1961 Memoir Draft,” Folder 1, SL 552, DG. 126. Donald Gunn to David Grant, August 30, 1983, Folder 4, DG; Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942; David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, SL 552, Folder 9, WHMC. 127. St. Louis Argus, May 29, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942; “David Marshall Grant: 1961 Memoir Draft,” Folder 1, SL 552, DG. 128. St. Louis Argus, May 29, 1942; “The NAACP Honor Guard,” June 22, 1960, FSN Sc 003,431-1, SCF. 129. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, Folder 9, SL 552, WHMC, 68; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 101–4. 130. Houston Baker Jr., Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era, 9, defines this term: “A race man or race woman is one who dedicates his or her life and work to countering the lies, ideological evasions, and pretentions . . . that prop up America’s deeply embedded, systematic, and institutionalized racism.” 131. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, SL 552, Folder 9, WHMC, 60. On the financial precariousness of African American lawyers in the mid–twentieth century, see Kenneth W. Mack, Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer, 39–42, 54. 132. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 2, 154–55, 159–60. 133. David Grant, “Commencement Address, Stowe Teachers College,” June 12, 1944, DG. 134. David Grant, “A Biblical Narration from the Second Book of Moses,” Reel 1, TDM. 135. “Addendum to Vita” and “Missouri Bar Certificate,” Folder 1SL 552, DG. Grant was not working on any high-profile legal cases during St. Louis MOWM’s heyday, but he was an accomplished lawyer who was on the Supreme Court Bar by 1948 and a senior counselor of the Missouri Bar, the state’s highest honor in the legal profession. 136. Fairclough, A Class of Their Own, 310, 344–53. 137. St. Louis Argus, August 20, 1943. 138. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 139. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, Folder 9, SL 552, WHMC, 61. 140. St. Louis Argus, September 12, 1941. 141. David Grant to Layle Lane, July 13, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 142. St. Louis Argus, May 31, September 20, 1940. St. Louis Argus, September 27, 1940, reports Grant delivering a similar message of supporting black-owned businesses to civic groups in the area.

Notes to Chapter 3  • 241

143. “Con,” n.d., and “Pro,” May 4, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 144. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 90, 116. On the importance of friendship in lifelong activism, see Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads, 35. These relationships were cemented by sharing experiences in unions such as the BSCP, protest organizations such as MOWM, and fraternities such as the Elks. T. D. McNeal and Leyton Weston were involved in all of these groups, and McNeal was best man at Weston’s wedding. See Chicago Defender, June 30, 1945. 145. Welek, “Jordan Chambers”; Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy, 51–52; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 91–92; Christensen et al., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 160–61; Chicago Defender, August 24, 1946. 146. Quote from Spero and Harris, Black Worker, 35; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 73, 172. 147. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 80–86; David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, Folder 9, SL 552, WHMC, 4–8, 15, 62. 148. Chicago Defender, December 22, 1934. On 1930s party realignment, see Nancy J. Weiss, Farewell to the Party of Lincoln: Black Politics in the Age of FDR, 91–92, 209–35; and Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics: Race and the Mainsprings of American Politics, 212–14. 149. Negro Central Democratic Organization to David Grant, April 23, 1936, Folder 4, SL 552, DG. 150. St. Louis American, February 4, 11, 1943. 151. St. Louis Argus, March 29, 1940. On the importance of the YMCA to urban African American communities in the Jim Crow years, see Nina Mjagkij, Light in the Darkness: African Americans and the YMCA, 1852–1946, 128–32. 152. There is an enormous body of literature about how participating in social movements had a transformative effect on American women. For examples of this in the nineteenthcentury abolitionist movement, see Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869; Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: Feminists-Abolitionists in America; and Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Anti-slavery Movement. For studies of this phenomenon within the twentieth-century Left and the labor movement, see Elizabeth Faue, The Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915–1945; Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of “The Feminine Mystique”; Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965; and Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Rights. 153. L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 54. 154. St. Louis American, January 1, 1943, March 5, 1943, May 11, 1944. 155. Skotnes, New Deal for All?, 77–82, documents a similar phenomenon occurring in Depression-era Baltimore through the Young People’s Forum. 156. St. Louis American, January 28, February 11, 1943. 157. St. Louis American, August 26, September 17, October 21, 1943; V. P. Franklin and Bettye Collier-Thomas, “For the Race in General and Black Women in Particular: The Civil Rights Activities of African American Women’s Organizations, 1915–50,” 26–27.

242  •  Notes to Chapter 3 158. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 198, details Los Angeles’s population increase. Additional research is needed to trace the path of Blackwell’s activism in Los Angeles. The California Eagle from 1943 to 1945 offers few clues about her activities on the West Coast. One can only speculate whether Blackwell was the “young woman from Los Angeles, California,” who spoke against MOWM’s all-black membership criteria at the “We Are Americans, Too” conference. See “Memorandum to Mr. White from Mr. Wilkins,” July 7, 1943, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 159. Myers, “The March on Washington Movement Mobilizes,” FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF. 160. Ronald Takaki, Double Victory: A Multicultural History of America in World War II, 5; Goldfield, Color of Politics, 181. 161. St. Louis Argus, November 29, December 13, 20, 1940. 162. National Urban League, “A Summary Report of the Industrial Relations Laboratory: Part 1—Performance of Negro Workers in Three Hundred War Plants,” June 1944, Reel 1, TDM. On underemployment and industrial segregation in a variety of industries, see Cayton and Mitchell, Black Workers and the New Unions, 19–22; and Spero and Harris, Black Worker. 163. St. Louis Argus, May 29, 1942. 164. St. Louis American, June 4, 1942. 165. St. Louis Argus, February 20, 1942, reprints 1940 census figures. During David Grant’s 1944 testimony to the House Committee on Labor, committee chairperson Mary Norton’s estimate of 25 percent effectively doubled the proportion of African Americans in St. Louis. Grant corrected her and conceded that his figure of 12.4 percent might perhaps hover a tenth of a percentage higher, to 12.5 percent. In this city of 816,000 residents, African Americans numbered about 110,000. Of these, approximately 50,000 were part of the workforce. See David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. David Roediger, Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past, 10–11, suggests that white Americans have historically perceived more black people than actually existed. 166. St. Louis Argus, July 4, 1941. 167. Ray Marshall, The Negro and Organized Labor, 134. 168. St. Louis American, June 11, 1942. 169. “Constitution and By Laws: St. Louis Unit, March on Washington Movement,” adopted October 28, 1942, Reel 1, TDM; “Certificate of Social Action,” membership card, n.d., Box 5, BSCP. 170. T. D. McNeal to Fellow Negro Citizens, March 25, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 171. “Skit Read at Meeting—Block Captains,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM; Bennie Smith to A. Philip Randolph, October 10, 1942, Reel 7, APR. 172. Quote from St. Louis Argus, June 11, 1942. On the importance of African American social spaces during the Jim Crow era, see Robin D. G. Kelley, “We Are Not What We Seem: Rethinking Black Working-Class Opposition in the Jim Crow South,” 79; D. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street, 61; and Sarah M. Evans and Harry C. Boyte, Free Spaces: The Sources of Democratic Change in America, ix. 173. “Hints for Setting Up Uniform Local Units,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM.

Notes to Chapter 3  • 243

174. “Constitution of the March on Washington Movement,” Reel 1, TDM. Two dollars was more than the NAACP asked of its members during this time. See Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 373. 175. T. D. McNeal to Beula Harris, December 29, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. 176. Dowden-White, Groping toward Democracy, 134; Katharine T. Corbett, In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women’s History, 229–31, 237–39; “cultural middle class” from William H. Wilson, Hamilton Park: A Planned Black Community in Dallas, 3. 177. E. J. Bradley to A. Philip Randolph, January 4, April 17, 1943, Reel 5, APR. 178. St. Louis Argus, May 26, 1944; St. Louis American, June 1, 1944; “MOWM Drive Off to a Good Start,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 179. Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest, 8; D. Greene, “Published in the Interest of Colored People,” 117–19. 180. St. Louis American, September 18, 1975; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 73; Wesley, Price, and Morris, Lift Every Voice and Sing, 7; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 23, 47. For more on the landmark 1938 Gaines case, see Daniel T. Kelleher, “The Case of Lloyd Lionel Gaines: The Demise of Separate but Equal Doctrine”; Robert McLaren Sawyer, “The Gaines Case: Its Background and Influence on the University of Missouri and Lincoln University, 1936–1950”; R. James, Root and Branch, 104–12; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 262–64, 289; McNeil, Groundwork, 143–45; Mark Tushnet, The NAACP’s Legal Strategy against Segregated Education, 71–74; and Christensen et al., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 328–29. On George Vaughn and the Shelley v. Kraemer Supreme Court case, see Christensen et al., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 769–70; “George L. Vaughn”; and Peter Irons, Courage of Their Convictions: Sixteen Americans Who Fought Their Way to the Supreme Court, 65–79. 181. David Grant to Layle Lane, July 13, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 182. Lipsitz, Life in the Struggle, 34. 183. “March on Washington Opens 1944 Financial Drive,” May 12, 1944, TDM; St. Louis Argus, June 25, 1944. 184. St. Louis Argus, May 29, 1942; St. Louis American, June 4, 1942. 185. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 9; Kimbrough and Dagen, Victory without Violence, 105–8; Phillips, Alabama North, 190–225; Bert Spector, “Early Interracial Protests: St. Louis Congress of Racial Equality, 1948–1955.” Fraser M. Ottanelli, The Communist Party of the United States: From the Depression to World War II, 44–45, argues that a reliance on volunteer labor contributed to the Communist Party’s low enrollment. 186. St. Louis American, May 29, 1942. 187. Jacksonville, Florida, offers another instance of productive cross-membership between the NAACP, BSCP, and MOWM: “The majority of the members in the NAACP are Brotherhood members and they are enthusiastic Association workers.” Randolph tried to use this experience as part of an argument for a closer long-term working relationship between MOWM and the NAACP. A. Philip Randolph to Walter White, April 17, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. 188. Membership Report Blank, March 21, 27, 1939, Reel 17, Part 12, Series C, NAACP; Membership Report Blank, March 18–25, 1940, and Membership Report Blanks 1942, Box II, C257, NAACP LOC.

244  •  Notes to Chapters 3 and 4 189. Corbett, In Her Place, 258–59, indicates that this pattern of cross-membership was ordinary among African Americans in mid-twentieth-century St. Louis. For instance, it was not uncommon for women in the Housewives League to be active in or supportive of the Urban League or the National Negro Business League. 190. Phillips, Alabama North, 213–14. 191. Membership in Org—ID Cards, Folder 76, Box 4, PM. 192. “Constitution of the March on Washington Movement,” Reel 1, TDM; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 237. 193. In one such example, the St. Louis branch wrote Chicago “to bring a particle of encouraging news from the banks of the Mississippi River,” describing recent efforts to integrate the workforce at U.S. Cartridge. “Statement to the Chicago Unit of the Marchon-Washington Committee,” June 20, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP. 194. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 16, 1942.

Chapter 4. Pickets, Protests, and Prayers 1. Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest, 8. 2. L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 4. 3. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 491. 4. T. D. McNeal to A. Philip Randolph, June 29, July 14, 1942, Reel 6, APR. 5. Harold Ross and T. D. McNeal, “Letter Sent to Negro Organizations,” July 8, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. 6. “Program for March on Washington Movement Mass Meeting,” August 14, 1942, Part 13, Reel 22, NAACP. Much of St. Louis MOWM’s contacts with African American businesses came through its treasurer, Jordan Chambers. As a nightclub owner and a patronage dispenser in the city’s Democratic Party, Chambers maintained a peerless network of local connections. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 25. 7. Hine, “Black Professionals and Race Consciousness,” 1280; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 492. 8. A. Philip Randolph to T. D. McNeal, June 21, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 9. St. Louis Argus, July 3, 1942; Harold Ross and T. D. McNeal, “Letter Sent to Negro Organizations,” July 8, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. For a similar flyer advertising an earlier event in New York, see “Wake Up Negro America!,” handbill, June 16, 1942, Folder: March on Washington 1941–43, HG. 10. “Wake Up Negro America!,” August 14, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. 11. L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 6. 12. St. Louis American, August 13, 1942. 13. Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 120. In Chicago MOWM’s vehicle parade was even more dramatic because it occurred during the evening and attracted attention by using torches. See Chicago Defender, September 20, 1941. 14. “We Join in a protest blackout for Negro Rights—August 14, 9:00 to 9:15 pm— Attend Protest Meeting, Municipal Auditorium, Aug. 14, 7 pm,” handbill, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Star-Times, August 15, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942; Chicago Defender,

Notes to Chapter 4  • 245

August 1, 15, 1942; “Calling All Negro Chicago,” handbill, 1942, Folder: March on Washington Movement 1941–43, HG. 15. Eugenie Settles to A. Philip Randolph, July 23, 1942, Reel 7, APR. 16. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 46–49; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 252, reports that the Citizens Defense Corps coordinated blackouts in Missouri cities. 17. Randolph to Burton, June 9, 1942, Reel 1, APR; “Calling All Negro Chicago to Join All Out Blackout,” flyer, June 26, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 18. Chicago Defender, August 22, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942; St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942. Low estimate of nine thousand from St. Louis Star-Times, August 15, 1942, and eight thousand from R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 238. 19. Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942. 20. “Speech of Walter White Delivered at St. Louis Municipal Auditorium,” August 14, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942. On southern political leaders of this era, see Egerton, Speak Now against the Day, 150–67; Sullivan, Days of Hope, 133–68; and Sitkoff, New Deal for Blacks, 244–67. 21. Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942. 22. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 15, 1942; St. Louis Star-Times, August 15, 1942; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Close Ranks,” Crisis, July 1918, reprinted in W. E. B. Du Bois: A Reader, edited by David Levering Lewis, 697; D. Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois, 555–57; Cameron McWhirter, Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America; William M. Tuttle, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919, 3–31; Stanley B. Norvell and William B. Tuttle, “Views of a Negro during the Red Summer of 1919”; Grif Stockley, Blood in Their Eyes: The Elaine Race Massacres of 1919; Richard C. Cornter, A Mob Intent on Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases, 1–56. 23. St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942. Walter White could not be blamed for the program running unexpectedly late. In Du Boisian tradition, White closely followed his typed remarks and was known for rigidly adhering to self-imposed time limits. In fact, White remarked in a postscript of a letter to McNeal, “I have received your telegram that I am to speak for thirty minutes, but I will only take 20 minutes to deliver my talk.” Walter White to T. D. McNeal, August 11, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. 24. St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, August 15, 1942; St. Louis Star-Times, August 15, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942. 25. Chicago Defender, August 15, 22, 1942. 26. St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942. 27. This pattern of gender relationships is explained in Adam Fairclough, Teaching Equality: Black Schools in the Age of Jim Crow, 52–53. 28. St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942; Chicago Defender, August 22, 1942. 29. James Russell Harris, “At War, 1776–1999,” 152; Terkel, Good War, 70–71. Brooks’s legacy resonated throughout the war. See Chicago Defender, March 20, 1943, September 1, 1945. 30. “Program for March on Washington Movement Mass Meeting,” August 14, 1942, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP.

246  •  Notes to Chapter 4 31. Sacred cultural forms manifesting in secular political protest among African Americans in St. Louis date back at least to a Depression-era strike by pecan nut shellers. See Paul Dennis Brunn, “Black Workers and Social Movements of the 1930s in St. Louis,” 353–56; Corbett, In Her Place, 262–64; Rosemary Fuerer, “The Nutpickers’ Union, 1933–1934: Crossing the Boundaries of Community and Workplace”; Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 36–40; and Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 29–31. For a nuanced study of how religion influenced civil rights protests in the 1950s and 1960s, see Chappell, Stone of Hope. An excellent case analysis of religious sensibilities influencing protest culture is Wilson Fallon Jr., “Rock Solid Faith: African American Church Life and Culture in 1956 Birmingham.” 32. “Wake Up Negro America!,” handbill, August 14, 1942, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Argus, July 3, 1942; “Skit Read at Meeting—Block Captains,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM. 33. St. Louis Star-Times, August 15, 1942. 34. A. Philip Randolph to T. D. McNeal, August 18, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. 35. Theodore McNeal, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 22, 1970, Oral History T-024, WHMC; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 121. 36. O’Reilly, Racial Matters, 8–19, argues that FBI officials exaggerated MOWM’s threat as a subversive threat to security. See also O’Reilly, “Roosevelt Administration,” 21–22. 37. Pittsburgh Courier, August 22, 1942. 38. T. D. McNeal to A. Philip Randolph, August 22, 1942, Reel 20, APR. Theodore McNeal, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 22, 1970, T-024, WHMC, reveals that McNeal was aware that federal investigators were monitoring him during the war. 39. “Report of Committee on Resolutions to National Policy Conference,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 20, 25, 28, FSN Sc 002, 9682, SCF. For contemporary notes on the trial of “Black Hitler” and PMEW leader Robert Jordan, see St. Louis Argus, January 22, 1943; and Ottley, New World a-Coming, 334–38. For African American newspaper reactions to pro-Japanese groups, see Amsterdam News, September 19, 1942. See also cartoon in California Eagle, October 1, 1942, which depicts Tojo as a grotesque caricature with bloody knife in hand along with the caption “The savior of the darker races.” For details of pro-Japanese sentiment among African Americans in Missouri, see Ernest Allen Jr., “Waiting for Tojo: The Pro-Japan Vigil of Black Missourians, 1932–1943.” Also of interest are Ernest Allen Jr., “When Japan Was Champion of the Darker Races: Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism”; and Gill, “Afro-American Opposition,” 63–65, 535–41. 40. St. Louis Argus, August 21, 1942. The We Group was based in the YWCA, and they performed at local African American functions, including local NAACP rallies and the BSCP-sponsored 1940 Mid-Western Labor Conference. See St. Louis Argus, March 8, 1940; and Mid-Western Labor Conference, St. Louis, March 31–April 6, 1940, Reel 11, APR. 41. St. Louis Argus, August 7, 1942. 42. St. Louis American, September 3, 1942, cites MOWM’s figure of the plant having thirty-two hundred employees, but the Pittsburgh Courier, September 5, 1942, places the number at twenty-six hundred. 43. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 28, 1942. 44. Citizen’s Protector, September 3, 1942; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 30, 1942.

Notes to Chapter 4  • 247

45. “St. Louis Negroes!!,” flyer distributed August 24–29, 1942, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 28, 1942; St. Louis Argus, August 28, 1942; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 30, 1942. See also Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 119; and Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 50. 46. The St. Louis American, September 3, 1942; Chicago Defender, September 5, 1942; and Pittsburgh Courier, September 5, 1942, all reported 500. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 30, 1942, estimated 400. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 29, 1942, estimated 300. The St. Louis Star-Times, September 5, 1942, is the low estimate of 200. L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 7, reported 250. St. Louis Star-Times, August 29, 1942; Theodore McNeal, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 22, 1970, T-024, WHMC; Theodore D. McNeal, Interview by Bill Morrison, May 20, 1974, Oral History T-343, WHMC. 47. The use of silent parades and display of the American flag during protests were tactics in black protest dating back at least to the NAACP’s 1917 antilynching campaigns. See Philip Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America, 235–37; and “The Silent Anti-Lynching Parade,” reprinted in A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, edited by Herbert Aptheker, 181–83. 48. St. Louis Star-Times, August 29, 1942; David Grant to Layle Lane, July 13, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 49. Pittsburgh Courier, September 12, 1942. 50. Pittsburgh Courier, September 5, 1942; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 30, 1942. 51. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 29, 1942. Citizen’s Protector, September 3, 1942, reports, “Carter Management took no notice of the orderly petition of loyal citizens who too long have been denied thru prejudice and bias, their analienable [sic] rights as citizens.” 52. St. Louis Star-Times, August 29, 1942, published a photograph of this demonstration featuring a line of marchers holding these signs. 53. Chicago Defender, September 5, 1942. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 29, 1942, explains McNeal’s rationale for expecting ten thousand attendees: “We tested the sentiment of St Louis Negros on the subject at a mass meeting . . . and found we could figure on ample support for this undertaking.” 54. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 30, 1942. 55. “Report of Committee on Program and Strategy,” in “Proceedings of Conference Held in Detroit September 26–27, 1942,” 36, FSN Sc 002, 968-3, SCF. 56. James Weldon Johnson and J. Rosamond Johnson, “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (New York: Edward B. Marks Music Corporation, 1900), reprinted in Black Nationalism in America, edited by John H. Bracey Jr., August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, 367–68. 57. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 118–19; P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 63; Burnett, St. Louis at War, 41–43; Karen Tucker Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers during World War II,” 93. Also see Andre J. Alves and Evan Roberts, “Rosie the Riveter’s Job Market: Advertising for Women Workers in World War II Los Angeles.” 58. Pittsburgh Courier, September 5, 1942; St. Louis American, September 3, 1942, September 21, 1944; David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 59. Collins, “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production,” 280.

248  •  Notes to Chapter 4 60. “St. Louis Negroes!,” Reel 1, TDM; Chicago Defender, September 5, 1942. 61. “Mass Prayer Service, Sunday October 18—3:00 pm,” broadside, Reel 1, TDM, duplicate copy found in Reel 21, APR; St. Louis Argus, September 4, 1942. 62. March, October 17, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF; C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 1–36. On Randolph’s work with the Messenger, see Theodore Kornweibel, No Crystal Stair: Black Life and the “Messenger,” 1918–1928; and Jacob C. Jenkins, “The Messenger and the Case for Black Scientific Radicalism.” 63. “Constitution and By Laws: St. Louis Unit, March on Washington Movement,” adopted October 28, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. On liberation theology and Afro-Christianity, see James Cone, For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church. 64. St. Louis American, September 3, 1942; St. Louis Argus, September 4, 1942. 65. St. Louis Argus, October 16, 23, 1942; C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 147; L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 66–67. 66. St. Louis Argus, February 28, 1941. 67. St. Louis Argus, October 23, 1942; T. D. McNeal to A. Philip Randolph, October 28, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 68. Pittsburgh Courier, September 12, 1942. 69. St. Louis American, October 15, 1942. 70. “Mass Prayer Service, Sunday October 18—3:00 pm,” broadside, Reel 1, TDM. 71. “All Saints Church Broadcast,” October 18, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. 72. Pittsburgh Courier, October 17, 1942. 73. St. Louis American, October 15, 1942. 74. “Statement of T. D. McNeal, Chairman of St. Louis Unit, March on Washington Committee, Mass Prayer Meeting Oct. 18th, St. Louis Memorial Plaza,” Reel 1, TDM. 75. Frederick D. Ogden, The Poll Tax in the South, 33–36; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 336–41. 76. Jason Morgan Ward, “‘A War for State’s Rights’: The White Supremacist Vision of a Double Victory.” 77. “Statement of T. D. McNeal, Chairman of St. Louis Unit, March on Washington Committee, Mass Prayer Meeting Oct. 18th, St. Louis Memorial Plaza,” Reel 1, TDM; “National Program of Action: March on Washington Movement—August 1943 to July 31, 1944,” Reel 2, TDM; T. D. McNeal to A. Philip Randolph, October 28, 1942, Reel 20, APR. 78. St. Louis Argus, October 16, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, October 17, 1942. 79. “Mass Prayer Service,” October 18, 1942, Reel 21, APR. 80. Clarence Taylor, Black Religious Intellectuals: The Fight for Equality from Jim Crow to the 21st Century, 11–36. 81. “Interview with Mr. A. Philip Randolph by Wendell Wray, New York City, June 20, 1972,” Columbia Center for Oral History, 5, 66, 113; C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 27–36, argues that Randolph’s atheist leanings expressed during his young twenties in the pages of the Messenger developed into a Christian humanism during his adulthood. 82. A. Philip Randolph to Charles Wesley Burton, October 26, 1942, Reel 3, APR. 83. Program of the Public Prayer, City Hall Steps, November 9, 1942, Reel 21, APR; C. Taylor, A. Philip Randolph, 151, 157–58.

Notes to Chapter 4  • 249

84. Eugenie Settles to A. Philip Randolph, November 10, 1942, Reel 7, APR. 85. St. Louis Argus, February 19, 1942; “The McNeal Story,” April 1, 1966, Reel 1, TDM. For U.S. Cartridge’s contract, see Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 46–49. For a list of acronyms spawned by the Roosevelt administration during the war, see Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 104–6. 86. Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 147; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 115. 87. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; “Skit Read at Meeting—Block Captains,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM, places the number at twenty-one thousand total employees; see also appendix B of this book. 88. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 195–201; quote from Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth-Century Norfolk, Virginia, 180. 89. Letters from members of MOWM, May 25, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 90. Fannie Cook, Mrs. Palmer’s Honey, 46–47. 91. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 21, 1942. 92. Weaver, Negro Labor, 24, 63. For details of Weaver’s advocacy on behalf of workingclass African Americans, see Sigmund Shipp, “Building Bricks without Straw: Robert C. Weaver and Negro Industrial Employment, 1934–1944.” 93. Phillips, Alabama North, 65–66, discusses the function of stereotypes in marginalizing African American workers from Cleveland’s steel industry. 94. St. Louis American, August 24, 1944. 95. “Pamphlet Distributed by Solicitors,” 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 96. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 97. St. Louis Argus, February 28, July 4, 1941; St. Louis American, August 24, 1944; “Skit Read at Meeting—Block Captains,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 114–15. 98. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 44; St. Louis Star-Times, June 3, 1943. 99. P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 62. 100. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 16, 1942; St. Louis American, June 25, 1942. 101. St. Louis American, June 4, 1942; St. Louis Argus, June 12, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, June 27, 1942; St. Louis American, June 25, 1942; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 17, 1942, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 16, 1942; St. Louis Argus, June 19, 1942; Militant, July 4, 1942; “Pamphlet Distributed by Solicitors,” 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 102. Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 148. 103. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 104. Quotes from St. Louis American, June 25, 1942. For historical coverage of this demonstration, see Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 48–49; Fuerer, St. Louis Labor History Tour, 33. On the muting of class differences in struggles for racial progress in the mid–twentieth century, see Georgina Hickey, “From Auburn Avenue to Buttermilk Bottom: Class and Community Dynamics among Atlanta’s Blacks.” T. Reed, in Not Alms but Opportunity, 28–29, suggests that the plurality of African American experiences based on class status was likely overlooked by white observers, writing that “a pernicious mix of prejudice

250  •  Notes to Chapter 4 and ignorance prevented whites from distinguishing between respectable and dissolute blacks.” 105. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 21, 1942; St. Louis American, June 25, 1942; Chicago Defender, June 27, 1942; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 118; L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 9. 106. St. Louis Argus, June 26, 1942. 107. “Letters from Members of MOWM,” May 25, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 108. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 109. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 110. St. Louis American, June 25, 1942; Chicago Defender, June 27, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, June 27, 1942. Courier photographs portray demonstrators displaying “VV” signs with middle and index fingers of both hands. 111. T. D. McNeal to John H. Glassco, June 18, 1942, Reel 1, TDM. 112. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 113. “Placards Carried in March on June 20th,” Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis American, June 25, 1942. Other placards authorized by the St. Louis unit of the MOWM were “We are fighting for Democracy, why not practice it”; “Negro Dollars for Bullets? Yes! Bullet job dollars for Negroes? Take another guess!!”; “We fight for the right to work as well as die for victory for the United Nations”; “Negro Robert Brookes Dies First on the Firing Line at Pearl Harbor, Why must we be last on the production line at St. Louis?”; “Racial discrimination is SABOTAGE”; “We are helping to stop Hitler in Europe—We demand that his practices be stopped here too”; “Where is your conscience fellow Americans?”; “20,500 workers at Small Arms—Not one Negro in Production. Is this democracy?”; “Pres. Roosevelt says ‘No Discrimination” Small Arms management replies ‘Says You!’”; “Fight the Axis—Don’t fight US!”; “8000 Women employed—Not one Negro Woman”; “Not one Black American in production here—Is that Democracy or Hitlerism?”; “We denounce and condemn humiliating and degrading Jim Crow policy inside small arms plant”; and “We’ll grind axes ’gainst the Axis in Europe or Japan and also grind them at the Small Arms Plant!” 114. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 1. 115. St. Louis American, June 25, 1942; Pittsburgh Courier, June 27, 1942; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 21, 1942. 116. St. Louis Argus, June 26, July 24, 1942; St. Louis American, June 25, 1942; L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 98. 117. St. Louis Argus, September 5, 1941; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 49. 118. S. Shaw, What a Woman Ought to Be and to Do, 14, 119, argues that it was unusual for African American women to not work outside the home to support the family. 119. St. Louis American, June 25, 1942; St. Louis Argus, June 26, 1942; Militant, July 4, 1942; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 117–18. On occupational sex labeling in war industries, see Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II, 5, 56–64.

Notes to Chapter 4  • 251

120. For statistics on women’s employment, see National Urban League, “A Summary Report of the Industrial Relations Laboratory: Part 1—Performance of Negro Workers in Three Hundred War Plants,” June 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 121. P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 72; Honey, Bitter Fruit, 7–8, 12; Takaki, Double Victory, 42–50; Barbara Dianne Savage, Broadcasting Freedom: Radio, War, and the Politics of Race, 1938–1948, 168–77. 122. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 110; Shockley, “We, Too, Are Americans,” 71–72. 123. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 16, 1942; St. Louis Argus, June 12, 1942; David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 124. St. Louis Argus, June 26, 1942; David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis American, May 6, 1943; “Pamphlet Distributed by Solicitors,” 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 125. St. Louis Argus, April 30, 1943; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 1943; St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, May 11, 1943. 126. St. Louis Argus, April 30, 1943; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 1943; St. Louis GlobeDemocrat, May 11, 1943; St. Louis American, May 13, 1943. For discussions of race relations in AFL and CIO affiliates prior to 1955, see Mark Karson and Ronald Radosh, “The American Federation of Labor and the Negro Worker, 1894–1949”; and Rosen, “The CIO Era, 1935–1955.” See also P. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 158–76, 215–37; and Herbert Hill, “The Problem of Race in American Labor History.” 127. St. Louis Argus, May 14, 1943; Chicago Defender, May 22, 1943. For a table of wartime hate strikes, see Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 143–44. On hate strikes during the Roosevelt era, see P. Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 255–57, 265–68; Joshua Freeman, “Delivering the Goods: Industrial Unionism during World War Two,” 585–87; and Nelson Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II, 124–26. See also David Roediger, Towards the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and Working Class History, 29. 128. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 55–56; Corbett, In Her Place, 272; St. Louis Argus, May 14, 1943; “Labor’s Record Speaks,” pamphlet (1943), Box 2, Folder: Education Department Pamphlets, ILGWU. 129. Chicago Defender, May 22, 1943; Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 149. 130. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 131. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 10, 1943; St. Louis Star-Times, May 10, 1943; Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1943. 132. Eileen Boris, “‘You Wouldn’t Want One of ’Em Dancing with Your Wife’: Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II,” 92; Durr, Behind the Backlash, 6–31; K. Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired,” 86; Kersten, “Jobs and Justice,” 91. 133. Martin Glaberman, Wartime Strikes: The Struggle against the No-Strike Pledge in the UAW during World War II; Nelson Lichtenstein, Walter Reuther: The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 211–19; Joel Seidman, American Labor from Defense to Reconversion, 29–30; Andrew E. Kersten, Labor’s Home Front: The American Federation of Labor during World War II, 23, 39; Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 100.

252  •  Notes to Chapter 4 134. Schneider, We Return Fighting, 373. For the Hoffa quote, see Kersten, “Jobs and Justice,” 98. For a historiographic overview of the many studies exploring racial issues in American labor unions, see Eric Arnesen, “Up from Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of American Labor History.” Also of interest are Eric Arnesen, “Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930”; Michael Goldfield, “Race and the CIO: The Possibilities for Racial Egalitarianism during the 1930s and 1940s”; and Robert J. Norrell, “Case in Steel: Jim Crow Careers in Birmingham, Alabama.” On racial matters in Communist-led unions, see August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, “Communist Unions and the Black Community: The Case of the Transport Workers Union, 1934–1944”; and Donald T. Critchlow, “Communist Unions and Racism: A Comparative Study of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers and the National Maritime Union to the Black Question during World War II.” 135. Daniel Letwin, The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878–1921, 7, 154–55. For other studies of how gender influenced racial integration at job sites, see Edward L. Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction, 140; and James R. Green, “The Brotherhood of Timber Workers, 1919–1913: A Radical Response to Industrial Capitalism in the Southern U.S.A.” For a contemporary literary description of the racial and gender tensions arising when African American men and white women worked together, see Chester Himes, If He Hollers Let Him Go, 18. 136. T. Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity, 151; Allan M. Winkler, “The Philadelphia Transit Strike of 1944”; Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 142–73. For St. Louis newspaper coverage, see St. Louis Star-Times, August 5, 1944; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, August 6, 1944; and St. Louis Argus, August 11, 1944. 137. National Urban League, “A Summary Report of the Industrial Relations Laboratory: Part 1—Performance of Negro Workers in Three Hundred War Plants,” June 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 138. George Lipsitz, A Rainbow at Midnight: Class and Culture in the 1940s, 69–95; Goldfield, Color of Politics, 216–18; H. Hill, “Problem of Race in American Labor History,” 198–208; Boris, “Black Workers, Trade Unions, and Labor Standards,” 258–61. For a counterpoint emphasizing racially progressive labor unions, see Robert Rodgers Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South. 139. Randolph quoted in Bynum, A. Philip Randolph, 162. 140. Bruce Nelson, Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality, xx. See also Bruce Nelson, “Class, Race, and Democracy in the CIO: The New Labor History Meets the ‘Wages of Whiteness.’” 141. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 120. 142. St. Louis Star-Times, May 11, 1943; St. Louis American, May 13, 14, 1943. 143. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 3, 1943; St. Louis Star-Times, June 3, 1943; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 127; Boris, “‘You Wouldn’t Want One of ’Em Dancing with Your Wife,” 92; Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 149. This was not the only African American– led strike in St. Louis that year. St. Louis Star-Times, November 17, 1943, reports that an entire shift of 175 black workers at Monsanto Chemical Company refused to get out of

Notes to Chapter 4  • 253

the locker room “in protest over failure of the management to fire a white man who had engaged in an altercation with a Negro worker in the plant cafeteria.” 144. St. Louis Argus, June 4, 1943; Chicago Defender, June 12, 1943. 145. St. Louis Star-Times, June 3, 1943; “No Strike Pledge by ILGWU,” December 17, 1941, Folder: David Dubinsky, 1942–1966, Box 1, ILGWU; Zieger, The CIO, 1935–1955, 141–211. 146. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 3, 1943; St. Louis Argus, June 4, 1943; St. Louis American, July 15, 1943. 147. St. Louis American, June 10, 1943. 148. Daily Worker, June 23, 1943. 149. “An Appeal from the March on Washington Committee,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 150. On antiracism among UE Local 825 organizers, see Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 149; and Fuerer, St. Louis Labor History Tour, 33. 151. Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 285n55. 152. Chicago Defender, June 12, 1943; Pittsburgh Courier, June 12, 1943; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 56–57. 153. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 3, 1943; St. Louis Star-Times, June 4, 1943; St. Louis American, June 10, 1943; “An Appeal from the March on Washington Committee,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 154. St. Louis American, July 15, 1943. 155. St. Louis Argus, February 5, 1943. 156. St. Louis American, July 15, 1943. 157. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 116. 158. Merl Reed, “Black Workers, Defense Industries, and Federal Agencies in Pennsylvania, 1941–1945”; Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 103–4; Philip Scranton and Walter Licht, Work Sights: Industrial Philadelphia, 1890–1950, 244–46. See also Bruce Nelson, “Organized Labor and the Struggle for Black Equality in Mobile during World War II.” 159. P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 62. 160. Statement before the Fair Employment Practices Committee’s Hearings in St. Louis, Missouri, on August 2, 1944, Folder 2, Box 5, WS. 161. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; “March on Washington Believes in Action to Get Results,” handbill, n.d., Folder: March on Washington 1941–43, HG. 162. John Clark, St. Louis Urban League, to B. E. Bassett, U.S. Cartridge, August 7, 1944, Reel 1, TDM, published in St. Louis American, August 17, 1944. 163. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 52. Unit 202’s low absenteeism is consistent with patterns established by African American workers in wartime St. Louis. See R. N. Dutton, “Race Problems in Our Community,” in “St. Louis—White and Black: Two Addresses Delivered at the St. Louis Institute on Race Relations and Non-violent Solutions Held at Central Baptist Church, April 9–11, 1943,” Reel 1, TDM. 164. St. Louis American, June 10, 1943. 165. Chicago Defender, November 27, 1943.

254  •  Notes to Chapter 5 Chapter 5. “These Women Really Did the Work” 1. “Letter and Report on Negro Employees in Public Utilities by the Fellowship of Reconciliation,” Reel 1, TDM; Anna Astroth to Leyton Weston, April 20, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 2. Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 165. For an overview of women in the World War II labor force, see Kersten, Labor’s Home Front, 100–108. 3. St. Louis American, May 11, 1944. 4. Gershenhorn, “Double V in North Carolina,” 164; Chabot, Transnational Roots, 99. 5. Phillips, Alabama North, 238; Charles H. Loeb, The Future Is Yours: The History of the Future Outlook League, 75–87. 6. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 101, 131–32; Chicago Defender, May 1, 1943; “Randolph Says Negroes Should Picket Metropolitan Insurance Company to Force Change in Policy on Proposed Lily-White Stuyvesant Town,” press release, May 28, 1943, Reel 2, TDM; Folder: MOWM Metropolitan Life Insurance Case, 1944, Reel 21, APR. On “Don’t Buy” campaigns, see Drake and Cayton, Black Metropolis, 84–85, 197, 209, 285, 295, 399, 412, 733, 743; Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, “Or Does It Explode”: Black Harlem in the Great Depression, 114–39; Gary Jerome Hunter, “Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work: Black Urban Boycott Movements during the Depression”; Loeb, Future Is Yours, 31–38; Nancy MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough: The Opening of the American Workplace, 26; Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis, reprinted in Negro Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century, edited by Francis L. Broderick and August Meier, 109–18; Michele F. Pacifico, “‘Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work’: The New Negro Alliance of Washington”; Phillips, Alabama North, 190–225; and Andor Skotnes, “‘Buy Where You Can Work’: Boycotting for Jobs in African-American Baltimore, 1933–1934.” On similar boycotts in Depression-era St. Louis and East St. Louis, see Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 134–35; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 38–39, 46; and Lumpkins, American Pogrom, 180–81. 7. Chicago Defender, April 28, 1945. On Tolson, see Robert M. Farnsworth, Melvin B. Tolson, 1898–1966: Plain Talk and Prophetic Prophecy; Robert M. Farnsworth, ed., Caviar and Cabbage: Selected Columns by Melvin B. Tolson from the “Washington Tribune,” 1937–1944; Philip Bader, ed., African American Writers, 224–25; and David Gold, “‘Nothing Educates Us Like a Shock’: The Integrated Rhetoric of Melvin B. Tolson.” 8. Chicago Defender, April 24, 1943; Flora Bryant Brown, “NAACP Sponsored Sit-ins by Howard University Students in Washington, D.C., 1943–1944”; Murray, Song in a Weary Throat, 203–8, 230–31; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 387–93; Donna Hightower-Langston, ed., A to Z of American Women Leaders and Activists, 160–61; W. Jones, March on Washington, 64; Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America, 24–25; Mullenbach, Double Victory, 56–60; Lynne Olson, Freedom’s Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830–1970, 18–21; Yellin, Our Mother’s War, 202–4; Jessie Carney Smith and Linda T. Wynn, eds., Freedom Facts and Firsts: 400 Years of the African American Civil Rights Experience, 154. 9. Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Message to Congress on the State of the Union” (1944), in The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 13:41–42; MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough, 40; Thomas J. Sugrue, “Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, the Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, 1945–1969,” 148; Steve Fraser, “The Labor Question.”

Notes to Chapter 5  • 255

10. “The Position of the March on Washington Committee Concerning Employment of Negroes by the Southwest Bell Telephone Company,” October 23, 1943, Reel 2, TDM; “Pamphlet Passed Out to Public at March on Bell Telephone Co.,” June 12, 1943, Reel 1, TDM; card sent to all MOWM, June 9, 1943, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Argus, May 28, June 4, 1943; Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1943; St. Louis Argus, June 25, 1943. 11. L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 73. 12. St. Louis American, June 3, 1943. 13. St. Louis American, June 10, 1943. 14. Walter A. Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and America’s Conscience: Social Engineering and Racial Liberalism, 1938–1987, 231–71; John T. Kneebone, Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race, 1920–1944, 199–202; Sullivan, Days of Hope, 167–68. 15. Chicago Defender, June 19, 1943. 16. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 4. 17. Leon F. Litwack, How Free Is Free? The Long Death of Jim Crow, 89–94. 18. “Pamphlet Passed Out to Public.” 19. St. Louis American, April 16, May 27, 1943; Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1943; Eleanor Green, “Report on Meeting with Bell Telephone Company,” April 14, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. For a present-day account of this practice, see Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. Also of interest is the phenomenon of “smiling racism” elucidated upon in Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and Racial Inequality in Contemporary America, 25–52. 20. St. Louis American, June 17, 1943. 21. St. Louis American, July 29 1943. The St. Louis Argus, August 13, 1943, has a picture of the sticker on an envelope. Fellowship News, August 1943, reports that Nita Blackwell will be at St. Louis FOR’s next meeting and the stamps will be available. St. Louis American, September 23, 1943, called on MOWM to broaden awareness of the campaign by dispersing the stickers through existing social clubs throughout the city. 22. L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 78. As noted in Phillips, Alabama North, 238, this tactic was shared with Cleveland’s Future Outlook League. 23. Building on the eventual success at Southwestern Bell, MOWM printed and distributed a sticker that read “make f.e.p.c. permanent for Jobs and Justice—March on Washington Movement.” When the sticker was banned by the postal service because it was “of controversial nature,” Benjamin McLaurin lobbied assistant postmaster general Ramsey Black to reverse the decision by arguing that there was no plan to compromise national security by actually marching on the capital. Chicago Defender, December 23, 1944, January 13, 27, 1945; “March on Washington Movement Protests Post Office Ban on FEPC Stamps,” press release, December 29, 1944, Reel 22, APR; “Ban on FEPC Stamp Removed,” press release, n.d., Reel 17, APR; Ramsey Black to Benjamin McLaurin, January 13, 1945, Reel 20, APR. 24. St. Louis American, June 3, 1943; St. Louis Argus, June 4, 1943; Pittsburgh Courier, June 5, 1943. 25. St. Louis American, June 17, 1943, and Pittsburgh Courier, June 12, 1943, report more than 300 attended, but the Chicago Defender, June 19, 1943, reports 175, and the St. Louis

256  •  Notes to Chapter 5 Argus, June 18, 1943, estimates the crowd at 150. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 13, 1943; St. Louis Star, June 12, 1943. 26. Card sent to all MOWM, June 9, 1943, Reel 1, TDM; “The Position of the March on Washington Committee Concerning Employment of Negroes by the Southwest Bell Telephone Company,” October 23, 1943, Reel 2, TDM; “Pamphlet Passed Out to Public,” lists placard slogans, including: “$4,000 spent daily by St. Louis Negroes for phones! Yet not one decent job for us”; “Negro operators working in other cities, why not in St. Louis?”; “We sought a conference. Bell’s refusal forced us into the streets”; “Why harm us? We are your fellow Americans! Where is your conscience?”; and “Negroes are helping stop Hitler abroad. Let’s stop would-be Hitlers at home.” 27. St. Louis American, June 17, 1943. 28. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 14, 195, 211. 29. St. Louis American, June 17, 1943. 30. St. Louis Star, June 12, 1943; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 12, 1943. White mainstream media in St. Louis covered MOWM much more fairly than Alabama newspapers did regarding the 1942 Birmingham FEPC hearings. See “President’s Committee on Fair Employment Practice Press Clippings Digest,” no. 4, July 6, 1942, 14–24, Reel 10, Part 13, NAACP. 31. “101 Best Newspapers in the Negro Group,” n.d. (early 1940s likely because of surrounding documents), Reel 21, APR Papers. 32. St. Louis Argus, June 25, 1943. 33. “Negroes Protest Telephone Discrimination through Mass Payment of Telephone Bills,” press release, September 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 34. St. Louis American, September 2, 1943; St. Louis Argus, September 3, 4, 24, 1943; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 126. 35. St. Louis Argus, September 24, 1943; Chicago Defender, September 25, 1943. 36. “Negroes Protest Telephone Discrimination.” 37. K. Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired,” 89. 38. March on Washington Movement press release, December 9, 1943, Reel 2, TDM; St. Louis Argus, December 17, 1943. Although initial projections forecast this branch’s opening to occur in two months, it took twice that amount of time. In May 1944, the Vandeventer Avenue office opened with little fanfare and guarded praise from the African American press. On the delayed branch opening, see St. Louis Argus, May 26, 1944; St. Louis American, July 19, 1944; and Chicago Defender, July 20, 1944. 39. Lipsitz, Life in the Struggle, 89. 40. Chicago Defender, April 29, July 20, 1944. 41. T. D. McNeal to Laclede Gas Light Company, July 5, 1944; T. D. McNeal to Union Electric Company of Missouri, July 5, 1944; T. D. McNeal to Laclede Gas Company, November 16, 1943; J. W. McAfee to T. D. McNeal, November 18, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 42. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 80–81. 43. Savage, Broadcasting Freedom, 276; St. Louis American, June 8, 1944. 44. Corbett, In Her Place, 264–65; Mullenbach, Double Victory, 56, 60–62. 45. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 403.

Notes to Chapter 5  • 257

46. St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944. 47. “Job Situation for Women Here Serious,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 48. “The Spider’s Web,” a weekly column by Henry Winfield Wheeler, lists the following as participating at sit-ins: Pearl S. Maddox, Thelma Grant, Modestine Crute Thornton, Milton Thompson, Florence McCluskey, Birdie Beal Anderson, Myrtle Walker, Lillian Sawyer, Anabel Mayfield, Ross Smith, Rogers Smith, Shermine Smith, Vora Thompson, Evelyn Roberts, Ethel Haywood, Essie Martin, Ruth Mattie Wheeler, Mrs. Milton Thompson, Maggie White, Florence Harrison, Helen Elam, Hattie Bobo, Margaret Battles, Eula Evans, Jessie McMillan, and Juanita Ivory. 49. Antoinette Burton, “Small Stories and the Promise of New Narratives,” vii. 50. “Job Situation for Women Here Serious,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 51. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 28, 1943; St. Louis Argus, February 5, 1943; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 63–64. 52. Chicago Defender, February 6, 1943. For his efforts, Kenswil received a Merit Award at the 1943 Emancipation Celebration, an event that also honored Judge William Hastie. See St. Louis American, September 10, 23, 1943; and Sixth Annual Emancipation Celebration program, September 22, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 53. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 28, 1943; Chicago Defender, February 6, 1943. 54. St. Louis Argus, February 5, 1943. 55. St. Louis American, April 6, 1944, St. Louis Argus, April 7, 1944; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 6, 1944. 56. St. Louis Argus, December 11, 1942; St. Louis Star-Times, November 17, 1943; St. Louis American, November 18, 1943; St. Louis Argus, November 19, 1943; Citizens Civil Rights Committee Statement, August 1, 1944, and “Job Situation for Women Here Serious,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 57. St. Louis Argus, May 6, 1944; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 63–65; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 374–76. 58. “Non-violent Direct Action: A Digest of the Findings of the National Committee on Mass Action and Strategy,” 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 59. E. Pauline Myers to T. D. McNeal, June 1, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 60. “The March on Washington Movement and Non-violent Civil Disobedience,” press release, February 23, 1943, Reel 22, APR. 61. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 10, 1943. 62. “Notes: Bayard Rustin Papers,” Folder 2, Box 59, AM; R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 470. 63. “Non-violent Direct Action: A Digest of the Findings.” 64. St. Louis American, April 15, 1943; St. Louis Institute on Race Relations and Nonviolent Solutions, April 9–11, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 65. “Outline of Summer Training Course in Non-violent Direct Action,” n.d. (1943 likely because of other documents in this series), Reel 21, APR. Even though small in numbers and with little influence, the Harlem Ashram led a series of demonstrations in the 1940s that included a protest in the capital against the poll tax, a push to end discrimination in housing at New York’s YMCA branches, and an interracial pilgrimage to the Lincoln Memorial. See Case, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 209.

258  •  Notes to Chapter 5 66. Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America, 11. On Muste, see Nat Henthoff, Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J. Muste; Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson, Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J. Muste; and Kosek, Acts of Conscience, 71, 146–90. On Rustin’s work in FOR and MOWM, see Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, a Biography, 17–19; D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 47, 237, 358; Levine, Bayard Rustin, 3–4; and Jerald E. Podair, Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer, 7–8. 67. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 11, 1943; Anna Astroth to Leyton Weston, April 20, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; “Council for Democracy,” newsletter, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; Fellowship News, June 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 68. P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 66. 69. St. Louis Institute on Race Relations and Non-violent Solutions, April 9–11, 1943, Reel 1, TDM; Fellowship News, June 1943, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Regional Fellowship of Reconciliation, Folders 10–11, Box 1, WHMC. 70. “March on Washington Opens 1944 Financial Drive,” press release, May 12, 1944, and “MOWM Drive Off to a Good Start,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis American, May 18, June 1, 1944; St. Louis Argus, May 19, 26, June 1, 1944; Citizens Civil Rights Committee Statement, August 1, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 71. Theodore D. McNeal, Interview by Bill Morrison, May 20, 1974, Oral History T-343, WHMC. 72. Theodore McNeal, Interview by Richard Resh and Franklin Rother, July 22, 1970, T-024, WHMC; Theodore D. McNeal, Interview by Bill Morrison, May 20, 1974, T-343, WHMC; Chicago Defender, July 22, 1944; P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 70–71. 73. St. Louis Argus, May 26, 1944; St. Louis American, June 1, 1944; “MOWM Drive Off to a Good Start,” n.d., and Citizens Civil Rights Committee Statement, August 1, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 74. T. D. McNeal to Pauline Myers, June 25, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 75. St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944. 76. St. Louis American, May 18, 1944; Shockley, “We, Too, Are Americans,” 29–34. 77. Quote from Paula Giddings, In Search of Sisterhood: Delta Sigma Theta and the Challenge of the Black Sorority Movement, 199. 78. St. Louis American, June 8, 1944; “MOWM Drive Off to a Good Start”; E. Pauline Myers to Leyton Weston, October 20, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 79. St. Louis American, May 18, 1944. 80. St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944. 81. “Non-violent Direct Action: A Digest of the Findings.” 82. “A Suggested Pattern for Good Will Direct Action to Take,” n.d. (1943 likely because of other documents in this series), Reel 21, APR. 83. Citizens Civil Rights Committee Statement, August 1, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 84. Leyton Weston to Famous-Barr, January 11, 1944, and Leyton Weston to Scruggs, Vandervoort, and Barney, January 11, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 85. “Non-violent Direct Action: A Digest of the Findings.” 86. St. Louis Argus, May 19, 1944; P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 69–70; Jolly, “It Happened Here Too,” 75–76; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 66.

Notes to Chapter 5  • 259

87. St. Louis Argus, May 19, 1944. The November 12, 1943, edition of the St. Louis Argus mentions Anderson’s and Maddox’s roles on the St. Louis NAACP Executive Committee. 88. Citizens Civil Rights Committee Statement, August 1, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 89. St. Louis American, May 25, 1944; Hugh Gilmartin to Franklin D. Roosevelt, June 12, 1944, and Leonard Russell to Hugh Gilmartin, June 23, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. Gilmartin also petitioned the St. Louis director of parks and recreation to ensure that attendants monitoring the city’s tennis courts clearly understood that courts were open to voluntarily integrated players for single and doubles matches. See St. Louis American, September 28, 1944. 90. St. Louis Argus, May 19, 1944. 91. St. Louis Argus, April 12, 1940. 92. St. Louis American, June 8, 1944. 93. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, Folder 9, SL 552, WHMC, 30–31. 94. St. Louis Regional Fellowship of Reconciliation, “Meeting Reports and Notes, 1940s,” Folder 12, Box 1, WHMC. 95. St. Louis American, June 8, 1944; Citizens Civil Rights Committee Statement, August 1, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 96. St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944. Other signs used at the sit-ins included “why can’t i eat here?”; “what does democracy mean to you?”; “my dollars are spent in other departments why not here?“; and “in christ there is no black and white—a nazis bullet knows no prejudice.” 97. Chicago Defender, July 22, 1944. “Job Situation for Women Here Serious” reports that the woman with this sign was Hattie Duvall of 4726 McMillan Street, but the St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944, reports that this woman was Eula Harris. 98. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 106. 99. St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944. 100. “Job Situation for Women Here Serious”; St. Louis Argus, July 14, 1944. 101. St. Louis American, “Spider’s Web,” May 25, 1944; “MOWM Drive Off to a Good Start.” 102. “Report of Committee on Resolutions to We Are Americans Too Conference,” 1943, Reel 2, TDM; Kimbrough and Dagen, Victory without Violence, 46; Jolly, “It Happened Here Too,” 77, argues that using white allies proved effective in St. Louis’s early-1950s sit-ins. 103. St. Louis American, May 25, 1944, reports of a sit-in at Katz Drug Store in which the manager, Mr. Francis, “lifted” Shermine Smith “from her seat by the arm” and “took a half-eaten sandwich from her hand.” Smith responded to this affront with “poise. . . . [S] he never resisted or uttered one word.” 104. St. Louis American, May 18, 25, 1944. 105. “Job Situation for Women Here Serious.” 106. Citizens Civil Rights Committee Statement, August 1, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 107. St. Louis Star-Times, July 20, 1944. 108. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, June 11, 1990; Kimbrough and Dagen, Victory without Violence, 3–4, 8; Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest, 18; Florence R. Beatty-Brown, “The Negro as Portrayed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1920–1950.” Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 48,

260  •  Notes to Chapter 5 recognizes the tendency of white daily papers to rarely cover events that made front-page news in African American newspapers. 109. D. Greene, “Published in the Interest of Colored People,” 138; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 57, 65. 110. St. Louis American, July 19, May 25, June 8, 1944. 111. P. Adams, “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis,” 67; Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 12; Sitkoff, “African American Militancy in the World War II South,” 87; Robert C. Weaver, “Whither Northern Race Relations Committees?” 112. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 59–60; Harvard Sitkoff, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War”; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 268–69. The 1942 housing riot in Detroit was the most famous of the wartime conflagrations, but more than 240 racial incidents occurred in forty-seven cities during 1943. On racial unrest in Detroit and other cities during the war, see “Detroit Is Dynamite,” Life, August 17, 1942, 15–23; White, Man Called White, 224–41; Dominic Capeci Jr. and Martha Wilkerson, Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943; Marilynn S. Johnson, “Gender, Race, and Rumours: Re-examining the 1943 Race Riots”; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 373; and Neil A. Wynn, “‘The Good War’: The Second World War and Postwar American Society,” 473. 113. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 14, 1943; St. Louis Star-Times, July 14, 15, 1943; St. Louis American, August 24, 1944; St. Louis Argus, August 25, 1944. 114. “St. Louis Race Relations Commission: Executive and Committee Personnel,” n.d.; T. D. McNeal to A. P. Kauffman, September 17, 1943; Charles Riley to T. D. McNeal, September 20, 1943, Reel 2, TDM; Chicago Defender, April 29, 1944. 115. St. Louis Race Relation’s Commission Minutes, April 18, 1944, and Housing and Living Conditions Committee: Progress Report, March 17, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 116. David Grant to Layle Lane, July 13, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 117. St. Louis American, June 8, 1944. 118. St. Louis American, June 8, 1944; St. Louis Argus, September 8, 1944. 119. “Job Situation for Women Here Serious.” 120. St. Louis Argus, September 8, 1944. 121. Collier-Thomas, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice, 384. 122. Chicago Defender, April 29, 1944. 123. T. D. McNeal to A. P. Kauffman, September 17, 1943, and Charles Riley to T. D. McNeal, September 20, 1943, Reel 2, TDM. 124. St. Louis American, April 27, 1944; T. D. McNeal to Employees of the St. Louis Car Company, April 3, 1944, and David Grant to Edwin Meissner, March 31, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 3. 125. Chicago Defender, June 28, 1945. 126. Chicago Defender, September 16, 1944; St. Louis American, September 21, 1944. 127. St. Louis American, August 31, September 7, 1944; St. Louis Argus, September 8, 1944. 128. St. Louis American, September 28, 1944. 129. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 67; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 107. 130. Kimbrough and Dagen, Victory without Violence, 22–26, 73–77. 131. St. Louis Argus, September 8, 1944.

Notes to Chapters 5 and 6  • 261

132. St. Louis American, August 24, 1944; Pauli Murray, “A Blueprint for First-Class Citizenship,” Crisis, November 1944, 358–59. 133. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, Folder 9, SL 552, WHMC; L. Greene, Kremer, and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage, 159–60.

Chapter 6. “An Economic D-Day for Negro Americans” 1. Chicago Defender, September 9, 1944. 2. Weaver, Negro Labor, 78–179. 3. Chicago Defender, May 19, 1945. 4. “Report on Initial Conference with St. Louis Public Service Company,” April 13, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 5. Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided, 113–73. 6. Gellman, “Carthage Must Be Destroyed.” 7. Stanley Buder, Pullman: An Experiment in Industrial Order and Community Planning, 15–17; Kempton, Part of Our Time, 259. Alternatively, it is also possible that such exposure reinforced stereotypes of African Americans as subservient and furthered the confinement of black workers into certain occupational sectors. 8. St. Louis Institute on Race Relations and Non-violent Solutions, April 9–11, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 9. St. Louis American, September 7, 1944. 10. “Straighten Up—and Come to the March on Washington Movement,” handbill, n.d., FSN Sc 002, 968-5, SCF. For historical discussions of postwar employment prospects, see Chamberlain, Victory at Home, 154–80; and Kersten, Labor’s Home Front, 191. 11. Bobbie Arnold to A. Philip Randolph, April 24, 1946, Reel 15, APR. 12. Goldfield, Color of Politics, 235–37. 13. Ervin, “A Decent Living Out of Our Work,” 196. 14. Welch quoted in Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 24. 15. William H. Harris, The Harder We Run: Black Workers since the Civil War, 125. 16. K. Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired,” 82–83, 93, 96; Kersten, Labor’s Home Front, 130–35; Shockley, “We, Too, Are Americans,” 155–57; Yellin, Our Mother’s War, 205. 17. Quote from James Rorty, Brother Jim Crow, pamphlet (New York: Post War World Council, 1943), Reel 1, TDM, 5. On the National Council for a Permanent FEPC, see Kevin M. Schultz, “The FEPC and the Legacy of the Labor-Based Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s,” 77–79, 81; Dona C. Hamilton and Charles V. Hamilton, The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil Rights Organizations, 54–66; Nina Mjagkij, ed., Organizing Black America: An Encyclopedia of African American Associations, 382–85; and Eileen Boris, “‘The Right to Work Is the Right to Live!’: Fair Employment and the Quest for Social Citizenship,” 130–36. 18. John Morton Blum, V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II, 196. 19. Kersten, “Jobs and Justice,” 78, 99. 20. Walter W. Head to T. D. McNeal, June 13, 1944; Minutes of Meeting of St. Louis Race Relations Commission, June 20, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Argus, June 9, 23, 1944; St. Louis American, June 8, 1944.

262  •  Notes to Chapter 6 21. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 22. Ibid.; St. Louis Star-Times, June 7, 1944; St. Louis American, June 8, 1944. 23. Washington Post, May 26, 2004, B1. Survey results indicate that 43 percent of African American veterans expected improved social and material circumstances after the war. 24. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 25. Ibid. The only significant work on Hoffman is Donald Edwin Walker, “The Congressional Career of Clare E. Hoffman, 1935–1963.” 26. Chen, Fifth Freedom, 100. 27. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 18–19. 28. Roy Hoglund to T. D. McNeal, January 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 29. Quoted in Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 182. 30. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 75; St. Louis Argus, November 19, 1943, June 9, 1944. 31. Chicago Defender, August 1, 1942. 32. Kersten, “Jobs and Justice”; Chicago Defender, May 6, 1944. 33. “Skit Read at Meeting—Block Captains,” n.d., Reel 2, TDM; St. Louis Argus, November 12, 1943. 34. “Speech Delivered by Lawrence Ervin, Eastern Regional Director of the March on Washington Movement, at the We Are Americans, Too, Conference, Held at the Metropolitan Community Church, Chicago, Ill., June 30, 1943,” Reel 2, TDM. 35. PM, April 13, 1943. 36. St. Louis Argus, January 30, 1942. 37. St. Louis American, June 3, 1943. 38. William H. Harris, “Federal Intervention in Union Discrimination: FEPC and West Coast Ship Yards during World War II,” 326–29; Merl E. Reed, “The FEPC, the Black Worker, and the Southern Shipyards.” 39. St. Louis American, July 27, 1944. 40. St. Louis Argus, June 9, 1944; untitled, n.d. (likely 1944), Reel 1, TDM. 41. Chicago Defender, July 20, 1944. 42. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 25, August 1, 1944; Chicago Defender, July 15, 1944. 43. Chicago Defender, July 20, 1944. 44. St. Louis American, May 18, 1944. 45. Untitled, n.d. (likely 1944), Reel 1, TDM. 46. St. Louis Argus, June 9, 1944. 47. Theodore Brown to Leyton Weston, January 17, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 48. Valeria Sarilla Brooles to T. D. McNeal, March 17, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 49. Christine Barry Morgan to March on Washington, June 15, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 50. “Complaint against 410 Broadway,” March 16, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 51. Complaint from a General Cable Employee, June 14, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 52. E. Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 182; W. Harris, “Federal Intervention in Union Discrimination,” 334.

Notes to Chapter 6  • 263

53. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 25, 1944; St. Louis American, July 27, 1944. 54. W. Harris, “Federal Intervention in Union Discrimination,” 330–31. 55. Minutes of Meeting of St. Louis Race Relations Commission, March 21, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 121. 56. St. Louis Star-Times, October 7, 1944; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 10, 1944; St. Louis American, October 12, 1944; Chicago Defender, May 19, 1945; St. Louis American, May 29, 1942. 57. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 121–22. 58. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 28, 1944; St. Louis Star-Times, July 28, 1944. 59. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 28, 1944; St. Louis Star-Times, July 24, 27, 1944. 60. Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 261; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 44; St. Louis American, April 6, 1944; Call, June 19, 1942, FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 61. Yellin, Our Mothers’ War, 41; St. Louis American, February 4, 1943; St. Louis Star-Times, February 5, 1943; St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 5, 1943; “Riveting the Sinews of Democracy,” n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 62. Chicago Defender, January 29, 1944. 63. Lipsitz, A Life in the Struggle, 80–81, demonstrates that a similar effect occurred in St. Louis during a 1964 CORE campaign to integrate the employment ranks of Jefferson Bank. At first the company hired five African American employees, but within months almost one hundred black workers had integrated into other previously all-white banking institutions. 64. Randolph, “Are Negroes American Citizens?,” speech, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF. 65. St. Louis Star-Times, April 26, 1944; St. Louis American, April 27, May 18, 1944; St. Louis Argus, April 28, 1944; Pittsburgh Courier, May 6, 1944. 66. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 64, 78–79. 67. R. James, Root and Branch, 104. 68. L. Greene, Kremer, and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage, 155–56; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 109–10. 69. R. N. Dutton, “Race Problems in Our Community,” in “St. Louis—White and Black: Two Addresses Delivered at the St. Louis Institute on Race Relations and Non-violent Solutions Held at Central Baptist Church, April 9–11, 1943,” Reel 1, TDM. 70. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 26, 1944; Pittsburgh Courier, May 6, 1944. 71. Kemper, “Catholic Integration in St. Louis,” 11; St. Louis American, September 21, 28, 1944; St. Louis Star-Times, October 4, 1944. 72. Midwest Labor World, February 23, 1944; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 272. 73. Chicago Defender, May 6, 1944; William Barnaby Faherty, Better the Dream: St. Louis— University and Community, 1818–1968, 340–44. 74. St. Louis Argus, February 18, 1944; St. Louis Star, February 21, 1944; St. Louis American, February 17, 1944; and Midwest Labor World, February 23, 1944, reprint Heithaus’s sermon in full text with only slight discrepancies between accounts. 75. William Sentner to Claude Herman Heithaus, February 16, 1944, Folder 5, Box 5, WS. 76. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis American, April 27, 1944.

264  •  Notes to Chapter 6 77. Minutes of Meeting of St. Louis Race Relations Commission, June 20, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; on Ridgel, see Jet, February 22, 1973; Peter Wallenstein, “Black Southerners and Non-black Universities: Desegregating Higher Education, 1935–1967,” 127. 78. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 14, 1944; St. Louis Star-Times, April 26, 1944. 79. Chicago Defender, February 5, 1944. 80. Chicago Defender, December 27, 1941. For a summary of the Gaines decision, see Larry Grothaus, “‘The Inevitable Mr. Gaines’: The Long Struggle to Desegregate the University of Missouri, 1936–1950”; and Egerton, Speak Now against the Day, 152–53. St. Louis NAACP leader Sidney Redmond worked on the Gaines case. See Kimbrough and Dagen, Victory without Violence, 78–81; and Leland Ware, “Contributions of Missouri’s Black Lawyers to Securing Equal Justice.” 81. St. Louis American, April 6, 27, May 4, 1944. 82. St. Louis Argus, February 4, 1944. 83. Coordinating Council of Negro Organizations, January 29, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 30, 1944. 84. St. Louis Argus, February 18, 1944; St. Louis American, January 20, March 30, 1944. 85. “Letter Mailed to Churches about Mass Meeting,” January 29, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, January 14, 1944; St. Louis American, February 10, March 30, 1944; St. Louis Argus, February 11, 1944; St. Louis Star-Times, February 24, 1944. 86. St. Louis American, February 3, 1944; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 30, 1944; Robert L. Carter, “Brown’s Legacy: Fulfilling the Promise of Equal Education,” 243; Kimberley Johnson, Reforming Jim Crow: Southern Politics and State in the Age before “Brown,” 165; “Memorandum to the National Legal Committee from the Legal Department,” May 7, 1942, FSN Sc 003,430-1, SCF. 87. St. Louis American, May 4, 1944; Chicago Defender, May 13, 1944; St. Louis American, April 13, 1944. 88. St. Louis American, September 21, 1944; Minutes of Meeting of St. Louis Race Relations Commission, May 16, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 89. Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 332; Arnold Rampersad, Jackie Robinson: A Biography, 174–75, 178; Joseph Stanton, Stan Musial: A Biography, 52. 90. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 32–36. 91. Phillies at Cardinals Boxscore and Play by Play, August 29, 1942, http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SLN/SLN194208290.shtml. 92. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 93. T. Reed, Not Alms but Opportunity, 146–47. 94. Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 202; W. Jones, March on Washington, 50; Schultz, “Legacy of the Labor-Based Civil Rights Movement,” 77–78. 95. St. Louis Argus, January 7, 1944; Pittsburgh Courier, August 26, 1944. 96. Weaver, Negro Labor, 256–67, 302. 97. St. Louis American, August 17, 1944; St. Louis Argus, August 18, 1944. Census figures indicate that African Americans constituted 2.7 percent of Los Angeles County’s total population and that the percentage of African American defense workers rose from 1.1 percent to 2.6 percent during the war.

Notes to Chapter 6  • 265

98. Rorty, Brother Jim Crow, 6. 99. Kersten, A. Philip Randolph, 63–67; Chicago Defender, September 9, 1944. 100. St. Louis Argus, March 26, 1943. 101. National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Committee, “Manual of Strategy: A Handbook of Suggestions for Local Council Operations,” October 1945, Reel 17, APR. 102. Janken, Walter White, 261; Boris, “Black Workers, Trade Unions, and Labor Standards,” 254–55. 103. Gerald Horne, Black & Red: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963, 71. 104. Pittsburgh Courier, August 26, 1944. 105. Chicago Defender, June 30, 1945; William C. Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration, 24–28; Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 130–32. 106. St. Louis Argus, July 5, 1946. 107. Schultz, “Legacy of the Labor-Based Civil Rights Movement,” 71, 75. 108. Monroe Billington, “Civil Rights, President Truman, and the South”; R. James, Double V, 199–202. See also Robert Shogan, Harry Truman and the Struggle for Racial Justice. 109. Washington Post, February 6, 1946; Berman, Politics of Civil Rights, 31–39, 185–86; Gary A. Donaldson, Truman Defeats Dewey, 114–15; Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890–2000, 195; Alonzo L. Hamby, Beyond the New Deal: Harry S. Truman and American Liberalism, 441; Norgrent and Hill, Toward Fair Employment, 149. 110. Paul Burstein, Discrimination, Jobs, and Politics: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity in the United States, 18–39; Chen, Fifth Freedom, 14; “Southern Senators Threaten Filibuster to Kill FEPC,” PM, June 13, 1944; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 20, 1944; St. Louis Star-Times, July 24, 25, 1944. On Marcantonio, see Gerald Meyer, Vito Marcantonio: Radical Politician, 1902–1954; and Alan Schaffer, Vito Marcantonio, Radical in Congress. 111. Chen, Fifth Freedom, 88–114; Moreno, From Direct Action to Affirmative Action, 107–34; M. Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement, 10; Charles W. Cobb Jr., “The Outlook Regarding State FEPC Legislation.” 112. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 268; Chen, Fifth Freedom, 114–21; Marshall, Negro and Organized Labor, 274; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 119–20, 129; Brailsford R. Brazeal, “The Present Status and Programs of Fair Employment Practices Commissions—Federal, State, and Municipal”; James Rorty, “FEPC in the States: A Progress Report.” 113. Milton Webster to A. Philip Randolph, October 4, 1944, Reel 8, APR. 114. Hedgeman, Trumpet Sounds, 87–89; Martin Luther King Jr., Stride toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story, 88. 115. “Statement of Walter White, Secretary National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, before the Labor Committee of the House of Representatives,” June 13, 1944, Reel 25, Part 13, NAACP; Kersten, A. Philip Randolph, 64–67. 116. Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 64–65; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 89–132. 117. Chicago Defender, October 2, 1943. 118. W. Jones, March on Washington, 72–78; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 93–96. 119. Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 16–19; Hedgeman, Trumpet Sounds, 17, 87; “Bayard Rustin Interview,” May 29, 1974, Folder 4, Box 58, AM.

266  •  Notes to Chapter 6 120. Sidney Wilkerson to A. Philip Randolph, December 20, 1945, Reel 17, APR. 121. Anna Arnold Hedgeman to A. Philip Randolph, July 16, 1946, Reel 15, APR. 122. “Minutes of a Meeting of the National Board of Directors, National Council for a Permanent FEPC,” August 2, 1946, Reel 17, APR. 123. Anna Arnold Hedgeman to A. Philip Randolph, 1947, Reel 15, APR. 124. Chicago Defender, August 31, September 7, 1946. 125. Arnold Aronson to A. Philip Randolph, n.d., Reel 3, APR. 126. M. Reed, Seedtime for the Modern Civil Rights Movement, 128, 342; Boris, “Black Workers, Trade Unions, and Labor Standards,” 254, puts the proportion of FEPC cases involving African Americans at 90 percent. 127. Weaver, Negro Labor, 140–51; Chen, Fifth Freedom, 17; quote from St. Louis Argus, February 22, 1944. For more on the Democratic Party in the Roosevelt and Truman years, see Goldfield, Color of Politics, 249–61; Kari Frederickson, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1932–1968, 28–66; and Harvard Sitkoff, “Harry Truman and the Election of 1948: The Coming of Age of Civil Rights in American Politics.” 128. Chen, Fifth Freedom, 117–20. 129. Hill quoted in MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough, 76. 130. J. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 275–82; D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 144–60; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 133–68. 131. Randolph, “March on Washington Movement Presents Program,” 153. 132. “For Manhood in National Defense,” Crisis, December 1940. 133. “Air Pilots, but Segregated,” Crisis, February 1941. 134. Steven F. Lawson, ed., To Secure These Rights: The Report of President Harry S. Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights, 80, 84, 176–77. 135. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, 148–74; Phillips, War!, 103–11. 136. Crisis, February 1948. 137. Chabot, Transnational Roots, 120–22; Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America, 50–51. 138. “Minutes of Local Unit of Negro March-on-Washington Committee,” June 14, 1941, Reel 22, Part 13, NAACP; Barber, Marching on Washington, 127; Julian E. Zelizer, “Confronting the Roadblock: Congress, Civil Rights, and World War II.” 139. Richard Dalfiume, “Military Desegregation and the 1940 Presidential Election.” 140. Norgrent and Hill, Towards Fair Employment, 181. 141. Buchanan, Black Americans in World War II, 67. 142. R. J. C. Burtow, “The FDR Tapes: Secret Recordings Made in the Oval Office of the President in the Autumn of 1940,” 24; Doyle, Inside the White House, 15. 143. Robert Patterson to Edwin Watson, June 3, 1941, OF 391, FDR. 144. Kryder, Divided Arsenal, 31. 145. Bayard Rustin, Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest, 16. 146. Chicago Defender, September 13, 1941. 147. Gerald Astor, The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military, 145–64. 148. “Randolph Says President Roosevelt Should Issue National Proclamation to Abolish Segregation and Discrimination in the Armed Forces,” press release, July 14, 1944; “Full Text of Timely Speech Delivered by Hon. W. H. Hastie at Emancipation

Notes to Chapter 6 and Conclusion  • 267

Celebration,” September 22, 1943; A. Philip Randolph to T. D. McNeal, April 25, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 149. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, 52–53; Dwight Macdonald, “The Novel Case of Winfred Lynn,” Nation, February 20, 1943, 268–70. 150. E. Pauline Myers to T. D. McNeal, April 17, 1943, Reel 1, TDM; Dwight and Nancy Macdonald, “The War’s Greatest Scandal: The Story of Jim Crow in Uniform,” pamphlet, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF; Gregory D. Sumner, Dwight Macdonald and the Politics Circle: The Challenge of Cosmopolitan Democracy, 100–102; Michael Wreszin, A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Macdonald, 115–16. 151. Folder: Winfred Lynn Case, 1943 and n.d., Reel 21, APR; “Report of Committee on Resolutions to We Are Americans Too Conference,” 1943, Reel 2, TDM; Layle Lane to A. Philip Randolph, September 12, 1943, and Dwight Macdonald to A. Philip Randolph, April 13, 1943, Reel 20, APR. 152. Sherie Mershon and Steve Schlossman, Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces; Astor, Right to Fight, 350–73; Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, 201–19; Phillips, War!, 112–51. 153. “Testimony of A. Philip Randolph, Prepared for Delivery before the Senate Armed Services Committee,” March 31, 1948, Reel 28, APR. 154. “Testimony of A. Philip Randolph, National Treasurer of the Committee against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training . . . Prepared for Delivery before the Senate Armed Services Committee,” March 31, 1948, Reel 9, CORE; Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy, 85. 155. Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, 169. 156. Harry S. Truman, “Executive Order 9981,” 741; Gardner, Harry Truman and Civil Rights, 105–21; Dalfiume, Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces, 173–74. 157. Berman, The Politics of Civil Rights, 239.

Conclusion 1. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 33. 2. Carolina Times, April 6, 1940; Pauli Murray to Dr. Robinson, NAACP Branch, Hopewell, Va., March 24, 1940, Folder 85, Box 4, PM; Pittsburgh Courier, April 13, 1940; Murray, Song in a Weary Throat, 140–49; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 316–29; Mollin, Radical Pacifism in Modern America, 25–26; Slate, Colored Cosmopolitanism, 205–8; Yellin, Our Mother’s War, 203–4. 3. Lawrence P. Scott and William Womack Sr., Double V: The Civil Rights Struggle of the Tuskegee Airmen, 195–248. 4. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 4–10; Kosek, Acts of Conscience, 188–89. 5. St. Louis Argus, June 25, 1943. 6. Phillips, Alabama North, 226–52; Loeb, Future Is Yours, 93–107. 7. Quote from Powell, Marching Blacks, 143. See also Beth Tompkins Bates, “A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda of the Old Guard in the NAACP, 1933–1941.” 8. Patricia Sullivan, “Movement Building during the World War II Era: The NAACP’s Legal Insurgency in the South,” 71.

268  •  Notes to Conclusion 9. Sitkoff, “Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence,” 662–63; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 40–41; Dalfiume, “Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution,” 99–100. 10. James Farmer, “The Coming Revolt against Jim Crow.” 11. Cook, Mrs. Palmer’s Honey, 159. 12. “8 Point Program—March on Washington Movement.” See appendix C. 13. “Keynote Address to the Policy Conference of the March on Washington Movement, Detroit, Michigan, September 26, 1942,” FSN Sc 002, 968-2, SCF. 14. MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough, 13–14. 15. L. Grant, “St. Louis Unit,” 102. 16. Chateauvert, Marching Together, 177; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 78. 17. Anna Arnold Hedgeman, New York Age, n.d. (1969 likely, as the article mentions Randolph’s seventieth birthday), Folder 1, Box 4, BSCP. 18. Weaver, Negro Labor, 93–97. 19. Sparrow, “Freedom to Want,” 19; Lingeman, Don’t You Know There’s a War On?, 162. 20. Collins, “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production,” 281–84. 21. Charles Kennedy and Eugene Wood, “Letter Sent to All March Members,” April 1, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 22. Loeb, Future Is Yours, 109. 23. Yellin, Our Mother’s War, 67. 24. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 210. 25. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 22. 26. Chicago Defender, July 7, December 1, 1945. 27. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 1, 12. 28. “1941: The Pullman Porters March on Washington,” New Leader, July 11, 1955, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF. 29. Ransby, Ella Baker, 137. 30. Rustin, Strategies for Freedom, 42. 31. L. Bennett, Confrontation: Black and White, 186. 32. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 12, 1944. 33. On segregation and social cohesion, see Fairclough, Class of Their Own, 389. 34. Washington Tribune, July 12, 1941, Box 5, BSCP. 35. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, Folder 9, SL 552, WHMC, 52. 36. W. Harris, “Randolph as a Charismatic Leader,” 301–2. 37. A. Philip Randolph to Herbert Garfinkel, July 19, 1956, Reel 22, APR. 38. Layle Lane to A. Philip Randolph, April 27, 1944, Reel 21, APR. 39. Quote from Quarles, “A. Philip Randolph,” 140; Bates, Pullman Porters, 153. 40. D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 339. 41. J. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 26; L. Bennett, Confrontation: Black and White, 278–79; August Meier, “Lecture and Discussion—Sunday Evening: The March on Washington Movement and the Detroit and Harlem Riots,” October 13, 1943, Folder 12, Box 38, AM. 42. Barber, Marching on Washington, xiii; Charles Euchner, Nobody Turn Me Around: A People’s History of the 1963 March on Washington, 154–55; W. Jones, March on Washington, xv– xvi; Kersten, A. Philip Randolph, 91–97.

Notes to Conclusion  • 269

43. Harvard Sitkoff, Toward Freedom Land: The Long Struggle for Racial Equality in America, 93–94. 44. Paul Ortiz, Emancipation Betrayed: The Hidden History of Black Organizing and White Violence in Florida from Reconstruction to the Bloody Election of 1920, xx. 45. Garland, “A. Philip Randolph.” 46. Arnold Aronson to A. Philip Randolph, n.d., Reel 3, APR. 47. John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement, 202. 48. “Interview with Mr. A. Philip Randolph by Wendell Wray, New York City, June 20, 1972,” Columbia Center for Oral History, 201. 49. James Forman, The Making of Black Revolutionaries, 30; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 88. 50. Aniko Bodroghkozy, Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement, 41–60; Rustin, Strategies for Freedom, 44–45. 51. Chabot, Transnational Roots, 102; Kosek, Acts of Conscience, 183–84. 52. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 9. 53. Theodore D. McNeal, Interview by Bill Morrison, May 20, 1974, Oral History T-343, WHMC. 54. Pittsburgh Courier, April 21, 1945. 55. A. Philip Randolph to “Dear Fellow Marcher,” September 10, 1946, and Benjamin McLaurin to “Dear Fellow Marcher,” October 9, 1946, Reel 21, APR. 56. Rustin, “The Negro and Nonviolence,” in Fellowship: The Journal of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, October 1942, reprinted in Down the Line, edited by Woodward, 8–12. 57. Powell, Marching Blacks, 159. 58. David Grant, Testimony to House of Representatives Committee on Labor, June 6, 1944, Reel 1, TDM; St. Louis Argus, January 26, 1945. 59. “Report on the Special Committee,” October 19, 1946, FSN Sc 002, 968-4, SCF. Many branches responded with regrets that they could not come to the conference because they were inactive. For example, see C. S. Wells to A. Philip Randolph, October 16, 1946, and Jesse Taylor to A. Philip Randolph, October 19, 1946, Reel 21, APR. 60. L. Hill, Deacons for Defense, 54. 61. Kersten, Race, Jobs, and the War, 117. R. Hill, FBI’s RACON, 237–38, places NAACP and MOWM membership at four thousand. Extensive archival research failed to uncover a comprehensive list of St. Louis MOWM’s membership, even though the national office wrote requesting one. See B. F. McLaurin to T. D. McNeal, February 21, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. If the above-mentioned list exists, it is likely in the uncataloged Benjamin McLaurin Papers at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 62. E. Pauline Myers to Leyton Weston, October 20, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 63. D. Greene, “Published in the Interest of Colored People,” 110. Chicago Defender, March 29, 1941, recognizes Chambers’s function as a “boss” in Missouri’s Democratic politics. 64. “March on Washington Opens 1944 Financial Drive,” press release, May 12, 1944, Reel 1, TDM. 65. Name illegible to David Grant, n.d., Reel 1, TDM. 66. Roy Wilkins to Walter White, June 24, 1942, Reel 23, Part 13, NAACP. 67. Chicago Defender, October 2, 1943; Norgrent and Hill, Toward Fair Employment, 69. 68. St. Louis American, June 1, 1944.

270  •  Notes to Conclusion 69. Charles Kennedy and Eugene Wood, “Letter Sent to All March Members,” April 1, 1943, Reel 1, TDM. 70. Eugenie Settles to A. Philip Randolph, February 15, 1943, Reel 7, APR. 71. Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 64. 72. Lipsitz, Life in the Struggle, 68. 73. Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography, 39, 274n10. 74. L. Greene, Kremer, and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage, 161. 75. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 156–69; Lang, “Between Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Mason-Dixon Line,” 231–45; Robert J. Moore Jr., “Showdown under the Arch: The Construction Trades and the First ‘Pattern or Practice’ Equal Employment Suit, 1966”; Grace Palladino, Dreams of Dignity, Workers of Vision: A History of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, 255; Brian Purnell, “‘Revolution Has Come to Brooklyn’: Construction Trade Protests and the Negro Revolt of 1963.” 76. Kimbrough and Dagen, Victory without Violence, 23–30, 41–69, 106–7; Jolly, Black Liberation in the Midwest, 21–27; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 55. 77. Meier and Rudwick, Along the Color Line, 349–63; Fairclough, “Louisiana,” 146–47; Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty, 256. Steven F. Lawson, Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the South, 1944–1969, and J. Mills Thornton III, Dividing Lines: Municipal Politics and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma, make a case that the expansion of suffrage was key to the evolution of a national movement. 78. Michael J. Klarman, Unfinished Business: Racial Equality in American History, 134–36. 79. On Smith v. Allwright, see Charles L. Zelden, The Battle for the Black Ballot: “Smith v. Allwright” and the Defeat of the Texas All-White Primary. On 1940s bus desegregation efforts, see Raymond Arsenault, “‘You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow’: CORE and the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation”; Raymond Arsenault, Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice, 11–21, 33–55; and Derek Charles Catsam, Freedom’s Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides, 14–66. 80. For a summary of the argument that socioeconomic forces influenced the development of the civil rights movement, see Goldfield, Color of Politics, 277–79. On structural transitions and cultural transformations in the post–World War II South, see Daniel, Lost Revolutions, 1–21; and Jack Temple Kirby, Rural Worlds Lost: The American South, 1920–1960. 81. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 35, quotes Thurgood Marshall commenting in November 1946, “A disobedience movement on the part of Negroes and their white allies, if employed in the South, would result in wholesale slaughter with no good achieved.” 82. Frank E. Smith, Congressman from Mississippi, 64. See also Neil R. McMillen, “Fighting for What We Didn’t Have: How Mississippi’s Black Veterans Remember World War II”; Jennifer E. Brooks, “Winning the Peace: Georgia Veterans and the Struggle to Define the Political Legacy of World War II”; and Jennifer E. Brooks, Defining the Peace: World War II Veterans, Race, and the Remaking of Southern Political Tradition. 83. Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 355–57; Shockley, “We, Too, Are Americans,” 201–4; Tuck, We Isn’t What We Ought to Be, 229. 84. Egerton, Speak Now against the Day, 366.

Notes to Conclusion  • 271

85. Gail Williams O’Brien, The Color of Law: Race, Violence, and Justice in the Postwar South, 7–33; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 363–67. 86. Crisis, September 1946; Kari Frederickson, “‘The Slowest State’ and ‘Most Backward Community’: Racial Violence in South Carolina and Federal Civil-Rights Legislation, 1946–1948”; Brian Dolinar, The Black Cultural Front: Black Writers and Artists of the Depression Generation, 203–11; R. James, Double V, 221–24. 87. J. Brooks, Defining the Peace, 154–68; Egerton, Speak Now against the Day, 366–69; Sullivan, Lift Every Voice, 318–20. 88. New York Times, December 8, 1946; Dittmer, Local People, 3–9; Klarman, Unfinished Business, 129–31; Sullivan, “Southern Reformers, the New Deal, and the Movement’s Foundation,” 97. 89. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America; Margot Henricksen, Dr. Strangelove’s America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War; Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era; Stephen J. Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War. Standouts among the many general studies on the Red Scare are Richard Fried, Nightmare in Red: The McCarthy Era in Perspective; Ted Morgan, Reds: McCarthyism in Twentieth-Century America; and Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America and Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. On the CPUSA’s internal activities during the postwar years, see Joseph Starobin, American Communism in Crisis, 1943–1957, 195–213. 90. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 137. 91. David M. Lewis-Colman, Race against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit, 42–51; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 417. 92. Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II, 54–58, 74, 88, 91–92; Joshua B. Freeman, In Transit: The Transport Workers Union in New York City, 1933–1966, 267–317; Morris Dickstein, Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, 443. 93. Quoted in MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough, 30. The Baltimore Afro-American, July 25, 1942, quotes Pegler speaking out against segregation, “If I were colored, I would live in constant fury and probably would batter myself to death against the bars enclosing my condition.” 94. Susan M. Hartman, Truman and the 80th Congress, 8–9. See also David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower. 95. Eric Arnesen, “No ‘Graver Danger’: Black Anticommunism, the Communist Party, and the Race Question,” 51; Eric Arnesen, “The Final Conflict? On the Scholarship of Civil Rights, the Left, and the Cold War”; Manfred Berg, “Black Civil Rights and Liberal Anticommunism: The NAACP in the Early Cold War,” 76; Martha Biondi, “How New York Changes the Story of the Civil Rights Movement,” 17; Erik S. McDuffie, “Black and Red: Black Liberation, the Cold War, and the Horne Thesis”; Lawson, “Long Origins of the Short Civil Rights Movement,” 14–17. For a summary of the extensive scholarship that debates McCarthyism’s impact on the struggle for civil rights, see Alex Lichtenstein, “Consensus? What Consensus?”

272  •  Notes to Conclusion 96. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights, 79–114; Mary L. Dudziak, “Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative”; Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena, 45–60; John Skrentny, The Minority Rights Revolution, 143–64; Penny Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957, 112–21; Kruse and Tuck, Fog of War, 6. 97. Carol Anderson, Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955, 113–65; Gerald Horne, Communist Front? Civil Rights Congress, 1946–1956; Kevin Boyle, “Labour, the Left, and the Long Civil Rights Movement”; Sarah Hart Brown, “Communism, Anti-communism, and Massive Resistance: The Civil Rights Congress in Southern Perspective”; Fuerer, Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 177–223; Sara Rzeszutek Haviland, “James and Esther Cooper Jackson, Communism, and the 1950s Black Freedom Movement,” 112–15; Theoharis, The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks, 145–48. For longer studies detailing the splintering of progressive groups during the Cold War, see Sullivan, Days of Hope; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe; and Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis. 98. Dayo F. Gore, “‘The Danger of Being an Active Anti-Communist’: Expansive Black Left Politics and the Long Civil Rights Movement,” 48. 99. Clarence Lang, “Freedom Train Derailed: The National Negro Labor Council and the Nadir of Black Radicalism.” 100. For an overview of voluminous recent scholarship about the Cold War’s impact on the Civil Rights Movement, see Eric Arnesen, “Civil Rights and the Cold War at Home: Postwar Activism, Anticommunism, and the Decline of the Left.” 101. Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads; Fairclough, Better Day Coming, 211–17; Singh, Black Is a Country, 52–54; Peter Lau, Democracy Rising: South Carolina and the Fight for Black Equality since 1865, 145–86. 102. Erik S. McDuffie, “‘No Small Amount of Change Could Do’: Esther Cooper Jackson and the Making of a Black Left Feminist”; McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom, 193–220. 103. Lipsitz, Life in the Struggle, 14. Robin D. G. Kelley, in Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, ix, argues, “Too often our standards for evaluating social movements pivot around whether or not they ‘succeeded’ in realizing their visions rather than on the merits or power of the visions themselves. . . . And yet it is precisely these alternative visions and dreams that inspire new generations to continue to struggle for change.” 104. Quote from Garland, “A. Philip Randolph.” See also J. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 319–52; Kersten, A. Philip Randolph, 106–9; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 240–81; J. Anderson, Troubles I’ve Seen, 183–264; D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 223–48, 326–57; and Earl Lewis, “More than Race Relations: A. Philip Randolph and the African American Search for Empowerment.” 105. New York Daily News, May 18, 1979; New York Times, May 18, 1979. 106. New York Times, February 11, 1974; Hedgeman, Gift of Chaos, 65–67; Collier-Thomas, Jesus, Jobs, and Justice, 458; Darlene Clark Hine, ed., Black Women in America, 2:37–38; Susan Ware, ed., Notable American Women: A Biographical Dictionary Completing the Twentieth Century, 285–86; Murray, Song in a Weary Throat, 259–68; Gilmore, Defying Dixie, 416, 439–44; Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads, 53; Michelle Burgen, “Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray”; Sarah Azaransky, The Dream Is Freedom: Pauli Murray and the American Democratic Faith; Mack, Representing the

Notes to Conclusion  • 273

Race, 207–33; Flora Renda Bryant, “An Examination of the Social Activism of Pauli Murray.” 107. Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, “‘Am I a Screwball or a Pioneer?’: Pauli Murray’s Civil Rights Movement,” 273–75; MacLean, Freedom Is Not Enough, 120. 108. Chicago Defender, October 22, 1949; Yevette Richards, “Race, Gender, and Anticommunism in the International Labor Movement: The Pan-African Connections of Maida Springer.” 109. Joyce L. Kornbluth, “‘We Did Change Some Attitudes’: Maida Springer-Kemp and the International Ladies Garment Workers Union”; “Talk by Maida Springer, March 4th, 1949, Freedom House,” Box 1, MSK. 110. Schierenbeck, “Lost and Found”; New York Times, March 5, 1976. 111. Jack Rummel, ed., African American Social Leaders and Activists, 42–43; Irwin Marcus, “Frank Crosswaith: Black Scholar, Labor Leader, and Reformer”; “Interview: A. Philip Randolph & Richard Parrish,” May 1, 1975, Box 1, Interviews, APR NYPL. 112. New York Amsterdam News, June 26, 1993; Richard Grupenhoff, “Campbell Birthday Bash—Draft,” n.d. (1993 likely), 3–4, DC; Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together, 100–101; Ossie Davis, “Fingerprints,” 58. 113. Levine, Bayard Rustin, 22–24; Podair, Bayard Rustin, 18–20. 114. Rustin quoted in D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 60; Bayard Rustin to August Meier, April 16, 1973, Folder 2, Box 58, AM. 115. For a picture of Randolph and Rustin together on the cover of Life, see Life, September 6, 1963. For writings about Randolph and Rustin as friends and collaborators, see J. Anderson, Bayard Rustin, 57–61, 186–89, 239–40, 286–90; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963, 255, 846–50; Taylor Branch, At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968, 383–85; Thomas Brooks, Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor, 312–13; D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 265–66, 300–301, 321–57, 373–74, 414–15; Kersten, A. Philip Randolph, 80–83, 91–112; Levine, Bayard Rustin, 19–22; Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 185–87, 281–83; Podair, Bayard Rustin, 67–94; Larry Isaac and Lars Christiansen, “How the Civil Rights Movement Revitalized Labor Militancy,” 727; and Larry Isaac, Steve McDonald, and Greg Lukasik, “Takin’ It from the Streets: How the Sixties Mass Movement Revitalized Unionization,” 53. The literature on conscientious objectors and draft resistance during World War II is voluminous. A good starting point is Scott H. Bennett, “American Pacifism, the ‘Greatest Generation,’ and World War II.” 116. Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 77, 91. 117. “Report of Branch Activities—1941” and “Annual Report of Branch Activities—1947,” Folder: Missouri, Kansas City–Springfield, 1941–1953, Reel 19, Part 25, NAACP; Chicago Defender, November 16, 1946. 118. Chicago Defender, November 17, December 1, 1945. 119. “David Marshall Grant: 1961 Memoir Draft,” Folder 1, SL 552, DG; Christensen et al., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 344; G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 107–8; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 107–10. 120. Christensen et al., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 540; Chicago Defender, September 20, 1965.

274  •  Notes to Conclusion 121. Black Worker, January 15, 1954. 122. G. Grant, At the Elbows of My Elders, 129–30. 123. Black Worker, March 1960, August 1960. 124. Black Worker, August 1961; “The McNeal Story,” April 1, 1966, Reel 1, TDM; Christensen et al., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 540. 125. “The McNeal Story,” April 1, 1966, Reel 1, TDM, reveals that McNeal’s campaign director is Ernest Calloway, “former NAACP director,” joined by Citizen’s Committee vice chairman David Grant. On Calloway, see Christensen et al., Dictionary of Missouri Biography, 145–46; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 101; and W. Jones, “Unknown Origins,” 37. 126. Charles E. Menifield, “Black Political Life in the Missouri General Assembly,” 23, 33. 127. “The McNeal Story,” published by the Citizen’s Committee for Senator McNeal, April 1, 1966, Reel 1, TDM. 128. Biondi, To Stand and Fight, 38–59; Gallagher, “Women of Action, in Action,” 82–94; Ransby, Ella Baker, 67–75. 129. “Address of Milton P. Webster before the Madison Square Garden Meeting, under Auspices of Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practice Commission, February 28, 1946,” Speech #57, APR NYPL. 130. L. Greene, Kremer, and Holland, Missouri’s Black Heritage, 159–73; Kimbrough and Dagen, Victory without Violence, ix, 41–54, 78–81; Kirkendall, A History of Missouri, 270–76, 370–71; Lang, Grassroots at the Gateway, 97–126, 186–216. 131. Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow, 225. 132. Chicago Defender, May 1, 1954, reprinted in Ain’t but a Place, edited by Early, 347–49. 133. “Address by Walter White, Executive Secretary, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, at Closing Meeting of Wartime Conference, Sunday, July 16, 1944, Washington Park, Chicago, Illinois,” FSN Sc 003-437-2, SCF. 134. “The McNeal Story,” April 1, 1966, Reel 1, TDM. 135. David Grant, Interview by Barbara Woods, June 2, 1979, Folder 9, SL 552, WHMC.

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Newspapers and Periodicals American Labor Amsterdam News Baltimore Afro-American Black Dispatch Black Worker California Eagle Chicago Defender Citizen’s Protector Crisis Daily Intelligencer Daily Worker Des Moines Sunday Register Ebony Fourth International Interracial Review Jet Kansas City Call Life Messenger Midwest Labor World Militant

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Books, Articles, and Other Texts Adams, Francis D., and Barry Sanders. Alienable Rights: The Exclusion of African Americans in a White Man’s Land, 1619–2000. New York: HarperCollins, 2003. Adams, Patricia L. “Fighting for Democracy in St. Louis: Civil Rights during World War II.” Missouri Historical Review 80, no. 1 (1985): 58–75. Alexander, Robert J. The Right Opposition: Lovestoneites and the International Communist Opposition of the 1930s. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. Allen, Ernest, Jr. “Waiting for Tojo: The Pro-Japan Vigil of Black Missourians, 1932–1943.” Gateway Heritage 16 (Fall 1995): 38–55. ———. “When Japan Was Champion of the Darker Races: Satokata Takahashi and the Flowering of Black Messianic Nationalism.” Black Scholar 24 (Winter 1994): 23–46. Alves, Andre J. and Evan Roberts. “Rosie the Riveter’s Job Market: Advertising for Women Workers in World War II Los Angeles.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 9, no. 3 (2012): 53–68. Anderson, Carol. Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944–1955. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Anderson, Jervis. A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. ———. Bayard Rustin: Troubles I’ve Seen, a Biography. New York: HarperCollins, 1997. Anderson, Karen Tucker. “Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers during World War II.” Journal of American History 69, no. 1 (1982): 82–97.

278  •  Bibliography Anderson, Marian. My Lord, What a Morning: An Autobiography. New York: Viking Press, 1956. Aptheker, Herbert, ed. A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States. Vol. 3, From the N.A.A.C.P. to the New Deal. New York: Citadel Press, 1973. Arnesen, Eric. “A. Philip Randolph: Labor and the New Black Politics.” In The Human Tradition in American Labor History, edited by Eric Arnesen, 173–92. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2004. ———. Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. ———. “Civil Rights and the Cold War at Home: Postwar Activism, Anticommunism, and the Decline of the Left.” American Communist History 11, no. 1 (2012): 5–44. ———. “The Final Conflict? On the Scholarship of Civil Rights, the Left, and the Cold War.” American Communist History 11, no. 1 (2012): 63–80. ———. “Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930.” Radical History 55 (Winter 1993): 43–87. ———. “No ‘Graver Danger’: Black Anticommunism, the Communist Party, and the Race Question.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 3, no. 4 (2006): 13–52. ———. “Reconsidering the ‘Long Civil Rights Movement.’” Historically Speaking 10, no. 2 (2009): 31–34. ———. “Up from Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of American Labor History.” Reviews in American History 26, no. 1 (1998): 146–74. Arsenault, Raymond. Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. ———. The Sound of Freedom: Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2009. ———. “‘You Don’t Have to Ride Jim Crow’: CORE and the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation.” In Before “Brown”: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South, edited by Glenn Feldman, 44–67. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004. Astor, Gerald. The Right to Fight: A History of African Americans in the Military. Novato, Calif.: Presido, 1998. Ayers, Edward L. The Promise of the New South: Life after Reconstruction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Azaransky, Sarah. The Dream Is Freedom: Pauli Murray and the American Democratic Faith. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Bader, Philip, ed. African American Writers. New York: Facts on File, 2004. Bailey, Beth, and David Farber. “The Double V Campaign in World War II Hawaii: African Americans, Racial Ideology, and Federal Power.” Journal of Social History 26, no. 4 (1993): 817–43. Baker, Houston, Jr. Betrayal: How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008. Baldwin, James. The Fire Next Time. New York: Dell, 1964. ———. Notes of a Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Baldwin, Lewis, and Aprille Woodson. Freedom Is Never Free: A Biographical Portrait of Edgar Daniel Nixon. Atlanta: Offices of Minority Affairs, 1992.

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Banner-Haley, Charles. To Do Good and to Do Well: Middle-Class Blacks and the Depression, Philadelphia, 1929–1941. New York: Taylor & Francis, 1993. Barber, Lucy G. Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Bates, Beth Tompkins. The Making of Black Detroit in the Age of Henry Ford. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012. ———. “Mobilizing Black Chicago: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Community Organizing, 1925–35.” In The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation, edited by Eric Arnesen, 195–221. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007. ———. “A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda of the Old Guard in the NAACP, 1933–1941.” American Historical Review 102, no. 2 (1997): 340–77. ———. Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925–1945. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Beatty-Brown, Florence R. “The Negro as Portrayed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from 1920–1950.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, 1951. Belafonte, Harry, with Michael Shnayerson. My Song: A Memoir. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Bennett, Lerone. Confrontation: Black and White. Chicago: Johnson, 1965. ———. “The Day They Didn’t March: Protest Threat Forced President Roosevelt’s Hand.” Ebony, February 1977, 28–130, 132–34. Bennett, Scott H. “American Pacifism, the ‘Greatest Generation,’ and World War II.” In The United States and the Second World War, edited by G. Kurt Piehler and Sidney Pash, 259–92. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Berg, Manfred. “Black Civil Rights and Liberal Anticommunism: The NAACP in the Early Cold War.” Journal of American History 94, no. 1 (2007): 75–96. Berman, William C. The Politics of Civil Rights in the Truman Administration. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1970. Bethune, Mary McLeod. “Certain Unalienable Rights.” In What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford Logan, 248–58. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944. Billington, Monroe. “Civil Rights, President Truman, and the South.” Journal of Negro History 58, no. 2 (1973): 127–39. Biondi, Martha. “How New York Changes the Story of the Civil Rights Movement.” AfroAmericans in New York Life and History 31, no. 2 (2007): 15–31. Black, Allida, ed. What I Hope to Leave Behind: The Essential Essays of Eleanor Roosevelt. Brooklyn: Carlson, 1995. Blassingame, John W., ed. The Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates, and Interviews. Vol. 3, 1855–63. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1985. Blum, John Morton. V Was for Victory: Politics and American Culture during World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1977. Bodroghkozy, Aniko. Equal Time: Television and the Civil Rights Movement. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Boggs, Grace Lee. Living for Change: An Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

280  •  Bibliography Boggs, James. The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1963. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists: Color-Blind Racism and Racial Inequality in Contemporary America. 3rd ed. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Bontemps, Arna. 100 Years of Negro Freedom. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1961. Bontemps, Arna, and Jack Conroy. They Seek a City. New York: Doubleday, 1945. Boris, Eileen. “Black Workers, Trade Unions, and Labor Standards: The Wartime FEPC.” In Historical Roots of the Urban Crisis: African Americans in the Industrial City, 1900–1950, edited by Henry Louis Taylor Jr. and Walter Hill, 251–73. New York: Garland, 2000. ———. “‘The Right to Work Is the Right to Live!’: Fair Employment and the Quest for Social Citizenship.” In Two Cultures of Rights: The Quest for Inclusion and Participation in Modern America and Germany, edited by Manfred Berg and Martin H. Geyer, 121–42. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ———. “‘You Wouldn’t Want One of ’Em Dancing with Your Wife’: Racialized Bodies on the Job in World War II.” American Quarterly 50, no. 1 (1998): 77–108. Borstelmann, Thomas. The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. Boyle, Kevin. “Labour, the Left, and the Long Civil Rights Movement.” Social History 30, no. 3 (2005): 366–72. Bracey, John H., Jr., and August Meier. “Allies or Adversaries? The NAACP, A. Philip Randolph, and the 1941 March on Washington.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 75, no. 1 (1991): 1–17. Bracey, John H., Jr., August Meier, and Elliot Rudwick, eds. Black Nationalism in America. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970. Branch, Taylor. At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–1968. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006. ———. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–1963. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Brandt, Nat. Harlem at War: The Black Experience in WWII. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1996. Brazeal, Brailsford R. The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: Its Origin and Development. New York: Harper, 1946. ———. “The Present Status and Programs of Fair Employment Practices Commissions— Federal, State, and Municipal.” Journal of Negro Education 30, no. 3 (1951): 378–97. Brearley, H. C. “The Negro’s New Belligerency.” Phylon 5, no. 4 (1944): 339–45. Broderick, Francis L., and August Meier, eds. Negro Protest Thought in the Twentieth Century. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. Brooks, Jennifer E. Defining the Peace: World War II Veterans, Race, and the Remaking of Southern Political Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. ———. “Winning the Peace: Georgia Veterans and the Struggle to Define the Political Legacy of World War II.” In Before “Brown”: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South, edited by Glenn Feldman, 238–67. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004. Brooks, Thomas. Toil and Trouble: A History of American Labor. 2nd ed. New York: Dell, 1971.

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282  •  Bibliography Capeci, Dominic, Jr., and Martha Wilkerson. Layered Violence: The Detroit Rioters of 1943. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Carmichael, Stokely, with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture]. New York: Scribner, 2003. Carson, Clayborne. “Civil Rights Reform and the Black Freedom Struggle.” In The Civil Rights Movement in America, edited by Charles W. Eagles, 19–32. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986. Carter, Robert L. “Brown’s Legacy: Fulfilling the Promise of Equal Education.” Journal of Negro Education 76, no. 3 (2007): 240–49. ———. A Matter of Law: A Memoir of Struggle in the Cause of Equal Rights. New York: New Press, 2005. Catsam, Derek Charles. Freedom’s Main Line: The Journey of Reconciliation and the Freedom Rides. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2009. Caute, David. The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge under Truman and Eisenhower. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978. Cayton, Horace R., and George S. Mitchell. Black Workers and the New Unions. 1939. Reprint, College Park, Md.: McGrath, 1969. Chabot, Sean. Transnational Roots of the Civil Rights Movement: African American Explorations of the Gandhian Repertoire. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2012. Chafe, William. Civilities and Civil Rights: Greensboro, North Carolina, and the Black Struggle for Equality. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Cha-Jua, Sundiata, and Clarence Lang. “The Long Movement as Vampire: Temporal and Spatial Fallacies in Recent Black Freedom Studies.” Journal of African American History 92, no. 2 (2007): 265–88. Chamberlain, Charles. Victory at Home: Manpower and Race in the American South during World War II. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2003. Chappell, David L. A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Chateauvert, Melinda. Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998. Chatfield, Charles. For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971. Chen, Anthony S. The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, Politics, and Civil Rights in the United States, 1941–1972. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2009. Christensen, Lawrence O. “Black St. Louis: A Study in Race Relations, 1865–1916.” Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri, 1972. Christensen, Lawrence O., et al., eds. Dictionary of Missouri Biography. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999. Clark, Kenneth B. “Morale of the Negro on the Home Front: World Wars I and II.” Journal of Negro Education 12, no. 3 (1943): 417–28. Cobb, Charles W., Jr. “The Outlook Regarding State FEPC Legislation.” Journal of Negro History 31, no. 3 (1946): 247–53. Cohen, Lizabeth. A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. New York: Vintage, 2003.

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Cohen, William. “The Great Migration as a Lever for Social Change.” In Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South, edited by Alferdteen Harrison, 72–82. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991. Collins, William J. “Race, Roosevelt, and Wartime Production: Fair Employment in World War II Labor Markets.” American Economic Review 91, no. 1 (2001): 272–86. Cone, James. For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1984. Cook, Fannie. Mrs. Palmer’s Honey. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1946. Corbett, Katharine T. In Her Place: A Guide to St. Louis Women’s History. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Press, 1999. Corbett, Katherine T., and Mary E. Seematter. “No Crystal Stair: Black St. Louis, 1920– 1940.” Gateway Heritage 8, no. 2 (1987): 8–15. Cornter, Richard C. A Mob Intent on Death: The NAACP and the Arkansas Riot Cases. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988. Critchlow, Donald T. “Communist Unions and Racism: A Comparative Study of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers and the National Maritime Union to the Black Question during World War II.” Labor History 17, no. 2 (1976): 230–44. Crosby, Emilye, ed. Civil Rights History from the Ground Up: Local Struggles, a National Movement. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Crossland, William August. Industrial Conditions among Negroes in St. Louis. St. Louis: Mendle, 1914. Dagbovie, Pero Gaglo. African American History Reconsidered. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2010. Dalfiume, Richard M. Desegregation of the U.S. Armed Forces: Fighting on Two Fronts, 1939–1953. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969. ———. “The Forgotten Years of the Negro Revolution.” Journal of American History 55, no. 1 (1968): 90–106. ———. “Military Desegregation and the 1940 Presidential Election.” Phylon 30, no. 1 (1969): 42–55. Daniel, Pete. Lost Revolutions: The South in the 1950s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Daniels, Lee A. “The Political Career of Adam Clayton Powell.” Journal of Black Studies 4, no. 2 (1973): 115–38. Davis, Daniel S. Mr. Black Labor: The Story of A. Philip Randolph, Father of the Civil Rights Movement. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972. Davis, Ossie. “Fingerprints.” In The Person Who Changed My Life: Prominent People Recall Their Mentors, edited by Mattilda Raffa Cuomo, 57–58. New York: Rodale, 2011. Davis, Ossie, and Ruby Dee. With Ossie and Ruby: In This Life Together. New York: Harper, 1998. Davis, Ralph N. “The Negro Newspapers and the War.” Sociology and Social Research (May– June 1943): 373–80. Degler, Carl N. “The Third American Revolution.” In Twentieth Century America: Recent Interpretations, edited by Barton J. Bernstein and Allen J. Matusow, 263–85. New York: Harcourt, 1969. D’Emilio, John. Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. New York: Free Press, 2003.

284  •  Bibliography Dickson, Paul, and Thomas B. Allen. The Bonus Army: An American Epic. New York: Walker, 2004. Dickstein, Morris. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression. New York: W. W. Norton, 2009. Dittmer, John. Local People: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. Dolinar, Brian. The Black Cultural Front: Black Writers and Artists of the Depression Generation. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012. Donaldson, Gary A. Truman Defeats Dewey. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999. Dowden, Priscilla. “Over This Point We Are Determined to Fight: The Urban League of St. Louis in Historical Perspective.” Gateway Heritage 13, no. 4 (1993): 32–47. Dowden-White, Priscilla. Groping toward Democracy: African American Social Welfare Reform in St. Louis, 1910–1949. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2011. Doyle, William. Inside the Oval Office: The Secret White House Tapes from FDR to Clinton. New York: Kodansha International, 1999. Drake, St. Claire, and Horace Cayton. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. 1945. Reprint, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Draper, Theodore. American Communism and Soviet Russia: The Formative Period. New York: Viking Press, 1960. Dray, Philip. At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America. New York: Modern Library, 2003. DuBois, Ellen Carol. Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848–1869. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1978. Du Bois, W. E. B. “A Chronicle of Race Relations.” Phylon 4, no. 2 (1943): 176–77. Dudziak, Mary L. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000. ———. “Desegregation as a Cold War Imperative.” Stanford Law Review 41, no. 1 (1988): 61–120. Durr, Kenneth D. Behind the Backlash: White Working-Class Politics in Baltimore, 1940–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Eagles, Charles W. “Two Double V’s: Jonathan Daniels, FDR, and Race Relations during World War II.” North Carolina Historical Review 59, no. 3 (1982): 252–70. Early, Gerald, ed. Ain’t but a Place: An Anthology of African American Writings about St. Louis. St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1998. Egerton, John. Speak Now against the Day: The Generation before the Civil Rights Movement in the South. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. Ehrenreich, Barbara. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2001. Ellis, Mark. “Closing Ranks and Seeking Honors: W. E. B. Du Bois and World War I.” Journal of American History 79, no. 1 (1992): 96–124. ———. “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Formation of Black Opinion in World War I: A Commentary on the Damnable Dilemma.” Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (1995): 1584–90. Ellison, Ralph. The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison. Edited by John F. Callahan. New York: Modern Library, 2003. Embree, Edwin. 13 against the Odds. New York: Viking Press, 1944.

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Index

Page numbers in italics indicate an illustration advertising: Kiel Auditorium rally, 102; slogans, 130, 144, 250n113, 256n26, 259n96; stamps or stickers, 132, 255n21, 255n23; St. Louis Prayer Demonstration, 113 African Americans: commitment to civil rights, 175; communal bonds, 50–51, 76, 102; cross-membership in organizations, 99, 102, 107; discrimination survey results, 136; Great Migration, 24; hate crimes and threats against, 87–88, 92–93; living conditions, 79–80; population, 24, 80, 83–84, 86, 96, 235n45, 236nn50–51, 242n165, 265n97; preparation for post-war economy, 83; unemployment, 28; voting rights, 54, 80, 113–14. See also defense work by African Americans; employment of African Americans African American owned businesses, 102 Aldridge Players, 106 Alves, Hazel, 173 American Civil Liberties Union, 152, 172–73 American Dilemma (Myrdal), 131 American Federation of Labor (AFL), 124 American Legion, 107 Ameritorp, 84

Amsterdam News (newspaper), 40 Anderson, Birdie Beal, 142, 257n48 Anderson, Marian, 39, 70 “Are Communists a Threat to Democratic Organizations?” (Randolph), 42 Aronson, Arnold, 169, 180 Association of Reform Rabbis, 152 Atlas Power Company, 84 Baker, Ella, 16, 56, 70, 176, 225n17 Baldwin, James, 24, 28 Baltimore, MD, 75, 130 Barnes, Don, 165 baseball, desegregation of teams and stadiums, 165 Bates, Beth, 52 Battles, Margaret, 257n48 Becker, William, 78, 146 Belafonte, Harry, 33, 188 Bell, William, 55 Bennett, Lerone, 178 Bethune, Mary McLeod, 6, 14, 38, 49, 141 Bibb, Joseph, 5 Bilbo, Theodore, 185–86 Biondi, Martha, 175 Black, Ramsey, 255n23 Black Dispatch (newspaper), 46

310  •  Index Blackwell, Juanita “Nita”: activism of, 178, 242n158; as MOWM leader, 15; public opinion poll, 140; and St. Louis MOWM unit, 75, 85, 94–95 Black Worker (magazine), 25, 68 Bobo, Hattie, 137, 257n48 Boggs, Grace Lee, 182 boycotts, 62, 132, 142, 184, 189 Bracy, James, 85, 106, 114 Bradley, E. J., 74, 76, 97, 104 Brazeal, Brailsford, 5 Breadon, Sam, 165 Brooklyn, NY, 183 Brooks, Robert, 106 Brooles, Valeria Sarilla, 156 Brophy, Alfred L., 79 Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP): Kiel Auditorium rally, 107; leadership of, 85; and the MOWM, 9, 23, 81–82, 168–69, 180–81; Randolph and, 41; and St. Louis MOWM unit, 97. See also McNeal, T. D. Brown, Colden, 193, 224n7 Brown, Margaret V., 224n7 Brown, Theodore, 157 Brown v. Board of Education, 17, 184 Bryant, Willie, 50 BSCP. See Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Buchanan v. Warley, 79 Bunche, Ralph, 30, 70 Burton, Charles Wesley, 24, 48, 52, 57, 81, 104 Business and Professional Girls Club, 107 Bussman (St. Louis), 124 Calloway, Ernest, 13 Campbell, Dick, 49, 50, 106, 188, 224n7 Carey, Archibald, 57 Carr, C. Sullivan, 75 Carson, Clayborne, 17 Carter, Robert, 88 Carter Carburetor: discriminatory hiring practices, 151, 154, 157; Kiel Auditorium rally, 101–8, 104; March on Carter, 108–11, 110–11, 165, 247n53, 250n113 Casey, Frank, 75 Caston, Jasper, 138 Catholic Church, 161–62 Catholic Interracial Council, 152 Cayton, Horace, 10, 18, 178 CCRC (Citizen’s Civil Rights Committee), 137, 140–49

Celestial Choristers, 106, 107 Center, Thos J., 97 Chalmers, Allan Knight, 168 Chambers, Jordan “Pops”: about, 93; on FEPC, 95; local power of, 13, 244n6; and March on Carter, 109; MOWM National Policy Conference, 52; and St. Louis MOWM unit, 21, 85, 182 Chandler, Owen, 237n74 Chaves, Dennis, 167 Chicago, IL: Chicago City Transit Corporation, 150; grassroots organizing and rallies, 48; MOWM branch, 73, 115; nonviolent civil disobedience, 139; post-war job losses, 177; vehicle parade, 244n13; “We Are Americans, Too” conference, 54–62, 227n54 Chicago Defender (newspaper): on desegregation of higher educational, 163; Kiel Auditorium rally, 105; on Meissner, 148; on MOWM’s all-black membership policy, 44, 48–49; on the MOWM’s National Policy Conference, 52; on post-war employment of African Americans, 150, 177; and racial justice, 26; on St. Louis, 78; on St. Louis MOWM branch, 76–77 Chicago Sun (newspaper), 46 Cincinnati, OH, 75 Citizen’s Civil Rights Committee (CCRC), 137, 140–49 Citizen’s Protector (newspaper), 109 civil disobedience, nonviolent: and desegregation of military, 173; MOWM as model, 1–4, 25, 57–60, 176, 179–80, 190–91; MOWM use of, 30–31, 52, 57–60, 139, 229n79; in New York City, 257n65; St. Louis sit-ins, 136–37, 140–49. See also protests, forms of; sit-ins Civil Liberties Committee, 140 civil rights: access to employment as, 77, 83, 130; activism of women, 176; and struggle for racial equality, 15–16 Civil Rights Act, Title VII, 170 Civil Rights Movement, 17–19, 176, 180 Civil War, 28 Clark, John T., 14, 81, 127 Clark, Noah, 112 Cleveland, OH, 130, 183 “Close Ranks” position, 26, 65, 105 Cold War, 186 Cole, J. C., 159

Index  • 311 Collier-Thomas, Bettye, 69 Colored Clerks’ Circle, 89 communism and the Communist Party, 42–44, 185–86, 221–22n165, 225nn17–18, 233n161 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 58–59, 98, 148, 175, 183 Connor, Eugene, 5 construction industry, African Americans in: impact of EO 8802, 74–75, 84, 95–96; Kiel Auditorium rally, 101–8, 104. See also defense work by African Americans Cook, Fannie, 116, 176 Cook, James E., 75, 78, 85, 94, 104, 104, 106 CORE (Congress of Racial Equality), 58–59, 98, 148, 175, 183 Coxey, Jacob, 1 Coy, Wayne, 33, 35–36, 217n96 Crisis (magazine), 11, 26 Crosswaith, Frank, 3, 34–35, 43, 49, 188 Current, Gloster, 52 Curtis, Mabel, 75 Curtiss-Wright Corporation, 84, 120, 154, 159 Daily Worker (newspaper), 43, 50, 125–26 Davis, John P., 32, 76 Davis, Ossie, 188 Dawson-Scanlon-LaFollette Bill, 152–53 decorum: NAACP, 247n47; nonviolent civil disobedience, 139; public behavior of Marchers, 31, 133–34; and sit-ins, 149, 259n103 Dee, Ruby, 188 defense work by African Americans: aircraft industry, 26; and EO 8802, 29, 35, 74–75, 84, 95–96; and FEPC, 154–57, 166–67; Kiel Auditorium rally, 101–8, 104; OPM memo on hiring practices, 33; post-war job losses, 150–53, 166, 177; racial tensions, 24; in St. Louis, 12; “St. Louis Plan,” 126–27; women, 115–16, 120, 155, 159–60. See also employment of African Americans; individual companies Dellums, C. L., 24 democracy: and discrimination, 136; dual goal of freedom abroad and racial equality at home, 55–56, 65, 82, 104, 113, 172, 173. See also protests, forms of Democratic Party, 13, 32, 36, 93–94, 169 Denver, CO, 73

department store sit-ins, 136–37, 140–49 De Reid, Ira, 57, 140 desegregation: of baseball teams and stadiums, 165; of educational institutions, 160–64, 263n70; of military, 38, 170–73; Missouri House Bill 47 (1943), 137–38; of public transit, 40, 123, 150–53, 261n7; of public utilities, 128, 130. See also Executive Order 8802; individual companies and industries Detroit, MI, 51–54, 177, 236n51, 260n112 Dewey, Thomas, 167 Dickerson, Earl, 57 Dillard, Jimmy, 50 Dillon, Ada, 224n7 direct action. See civil disobedience, nonviolent; protests, forms of discrimination survey results, 136 Dixon, Frank M., 104 Dixon, Walter, 109 Dodson, Thurman, 30, 45, 57, 70, 71–73 “Double V,” 15–16, 26, 55, 118, 172, 173. See also World War II Douglass, Frederick, 4 Du Bois, W. E. B., 18, 28, 65, 105 Dunjee, Roscoe, 37, 46 Duvall, Hattie, 144 Early, Robert, 224n7 Early, Stephen, 29, 35 Eden Seminary, 143 educational system: desegregation of, 160– 64, 263n70; dual wage system, 91 Elam, Helen, 257n48 Elks Lodge, 99, 107, 232n129 Ellison, Ralph, 5, 225n18 Emma Jane Lee v. Board of Education of Festus, 91 employment of African Americans: as a civil right, 77, 83, 130; dual wage system in educational system, 91; as goal of MOWM, 8, 11; and Jim Crow, 127; job discrimination and unemployment, 183; Kiel Auditorium rallies, 101–8, 104, 121–22, 122; opportunities for women, 233n147; post-war job losses, 150–53, 166, 177; preparation for post-war economy, 83, 128; public transit jobs, 40, 123, 150–53, 261n7; by Southwestern Bell Telephone, 130–36, 133; in St. Louis, 76–80, 82–84, 95–96; “St. Louis Plan,” 126–27; strikes, 252–53n143;

312  •  Index employment of African Americans (continued): wage gap, 177; women, 75, 115–16, 120, 129–49, 151, 155, 158–59; and the YMCA, 232–33n146. See also construction industry, African Americans in; defense work by African Americans Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 170 Ervin, Lawrence, 5, 24, 52, 57, 69, 224n7 Ethridge, Mark, 37–38 Evans, Eula, 257n48 Evers, Medgar, 185 Executive Order 8802: Roosevelt and Randolph, 6; FEPC enforcement, 13, 154–60; implementation of, 12; Kiel Auditorium rally, 101–8, 104; March on Carter, 108–11, 110–11; and MOWM, 4, 176–77; as New Deal program, 18–19; and public utilities, 130; and U.S. Cartridge, 115–28; Victory Rally, 70; writing of, 35–37. See also defense work by African Americans; employment of African Americans Executive Order 9981, 173. See also U.S. military Fairclough, Adam, 91 fair employment commissions, state, 167– 68, 170 Fair Employment Practices Act (MO, 1961), 190 Fair Employment Practices Act (U.S.), 152–53 Fair Employment Practices Commission. See FEPC fair employment practices legislation, state, 184–86, 190 Famous-Barr department store, 142–46, 148 Farmer, James, 57, 59–60, 139, 176 fascism, 130, 141 Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), 6, 43, 77, 101, 107 Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), 59, 84, 95, 139–40 FEPC (Fair Employment Practices Commission, U.S.): and African American employment, 166–67; creation of, 4, 37–38; dissolution of, 167, 191; effectiveness of, 13–14; and the MOWM, 96, 125, 176–77; post-war extension, 151–53, 166; public hearings, 154–57; St. Louis regional office,

21, 157–58; and U.S. Cartridge, 115–28; women complainants, 157–58 Ferguson, Perry, 52 flag, U.S., 3, 109–10, 110, 118, 130, 133–34, 247n47. See also patriotism FOR (Fellowship of Reconciliation), 59, 84, 95, 139–40 Ford Motor Company, 116, 120 Forman, James, 180 Forrestal, James, 37 Fort Leonard Wood (St. Louis), 78–79, 79 Four Freedoms, Atlantic Charter, 26 Frazier, E. Franklin, 59, 80 Freedom Rides, 184 Friends of MOWM, 61, 230n95 Friends of SNCC, 230n95 Future Outlook League, 98, 130, 175–76 Gaines, Irene, 57, 228n66 Gaines v. Canada, 163–64 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 52, 57–58, 229n74 Garfinkel, Herbert, 5, 14–15, 73, 180 General Cable Corporation, 156–58 General Steel Casting Corporation, 158 Gilbert, Mercedes, 50 Gill, Gerald, 59 Gilmartin, Hugh, 142–43, 259n89 Gilmore, Glenda, 38, 191 Goings, Kenneth, 15 Graham, Shirley, 24 Grand Leader department store, 144 Granger, Lester, 8, 53, 81 Granite City, MO, 158 Grant, David: cartoon, 88; and the Democratic Party, 93–94; on desegregation of baseball teams and stadiums, 165; on economic equality and social welfare, 91–92; on EO 8802, 12; and the Fair Employment Practices Act, 152–53; hate crimes and threats against, 92–93; and importance of grassroots campaigns, 100; and integration of St. Louis Universities, 162, 164; Kiel Auditorium rallies, 104–5; legal work, 90–91, 240n135; and March on Carter, 109; and March on U.S. Cartridge, 117–18; Mayor’s Race Relations Committee, 147– 48; on McNeal, 190; and MOWM National Policy Conference, 52; and the NAACP, 10, 180; and the National Executive Committee, 24; photos, 89–90, 104; post-MOWM

Index  • 313 accomplishments, 189; solidarity created by shared hardships, 82; on St. Louis, 80; and the St. Louis MOWM unit, 75, 85, 88–94; and St. Louis sit-ins, 143; on Unit 202, 127; and U.S. Cartridge strikes, 125; and “We Are Americans, Too” conference, 57; on World War II, 4 Grant, Gail Milissa, 93 Grant, Louise Elizabeth, 27, 176 Grant, Thelma, 52, 75, 137, 257n48 Grant, Vivian, 93 grassroots organizations and social movements: commitment to civil rights, 15–16, 175; effectiveness of, 177–78; and FEPC public hearings, 154; MOWM as, 5–7; need for constant engagement and victories, 111, 178–79; rallies, 48–50; sit-ins, 129–30, 136–37, 140–49 Great Depression, 82 Great Migration, 24, 80, 265n97. See also World War II, population shifts Green, Eleanor, 131–32 Green, William, 163 Griffith Park Rally (Washington, D.C.), 105 Grimke, Archibald, 72 Gunnell, Gladys, 75 Hampton Roads, VA, 236n51 Hansberry, Carl, 57 Harlem Ashram (NY), 140, 257n65 Harlem MOWM branch (NY), 115 Harris, Abram, 61 Harris, Reginald, 42 Harris, William, 179 Harrison, Florence, 257n48 Hastie, William, 172 hate crimes and threats, 30, 68, 87–88, 92– 93, 123, 185, 260n112 Hawley, Monty, 50 Haylock, Thelma, 224n7 Haywood, Ethel, 257n48 Hedgeman, Anna Arnold: on African American war effort, 5; on BSCP leadership, 85; in civil rights struggle, 176; on EO 8802 as New Deal program, 18; Monster Mass Meeting, 48–49, 49; on MOWM, 2, 182; and MOWM work, 63, 66, 69; and the NAACP, 10; National Council for a Permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission, 168–69; and NY women’s network,

70; post-MOWM accomplishments, 187; and Randolph, 231–32n126 Heithaus, Claude, 161–62, 263n70 Herskovits, Melville, 57 Higginbotham, Evelyn, 133–34 Hill, Herbert, 170 Hill, Lance, 181, 229n79 Hill, Robert A., 25 Hillman, Sidney, 33, 35 Hine, Darlene Clark, 17 Hoffa, Jimmy, 123 Hoffman, Clare, 153 Hollohan, Patrick, 161 Holmes, John Haynes, 229n74 homicide rates, Alabama and Georgia, 185 Hope, Williams, 46 House Bill 47 (MO, 1943), 137–38 Householder, Eugene R., 171 Houser, George, 59 Houston, Charles Hamilton, 44, 71, 88, 164 Hueston, Edward, 224n7 Huggins, Nathan, 6 Hughes, Langston, 44, 191 Ickes, Harold, 39 Illidge, Core, 224n7 Industrial Club of the YWCA, 107 Ingram, Rex, 50 Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance of St. Louis, 107, 112 International Shoe Company, 156 Ives-Quinn Bill (NY), 153, 167 Ivory, Juanita, 257n48 Janken, Kenneth, 18 Jefferson Barracks (Fort Leonard Wood), 78–79, 79, 107 Jim Crow: compared to Nazism, 27–28, 130, 141; in the military, 78–79, 79, 175; postwar reinforcement of, 184–85 John, Eardlie, 31, 52 Johnson, Rosie, 141 Johnson, Walter, 56 Jones, E. Stanley, 59, 229–30n85 Jones, Jean, 224n7 Journey of Reconciliation, 184 Kaiser Shipyard, 156 Kansas City, MO, 75 Katz Drug Store, 259n103

314  •  Index Kauffman, Aloys P., 146–47, 149 Kennedy, Charles, 183 Kenswil, Edwin F., 137–38, 257n52 Kenswil, Liza, 137 Kersten, Andrew, 18 Kiel Auditorium rallies (St. Louis), 101–8, 104, 121–22, 122 King, Martin Luther Jr., 168, 189 Knox, Frank, 29, 35 Knudson, William, 35 Kryder, Daniel, 5 labor movement, 34, 77 Laclede Gas and Light Company, 136 La Guardia, Fiorello, 35, 70 Lampkin, Daisy, 56, 176 Lane, Layle, 34, 34, 70; and EO 8802, 35; on fighting for freedom abroad and racial equality at home, 65; as MOWM leader, 2, 15, 24, 52; opposition to communism, 43; post-MOWM accomplishments, 188; protest experience of, 3; and struggle for equal rights, 179; “We Are Americans, Too” conference, 57 Lang, Clarence, 14 law, rule of, 228n71 Lawson, Senora, 24, 25, 57 Lee, Canada, 49, 50, 188 Lee, Emma Jane, 91 Lee, Mrs. C. H., 75 Lewis, Earl, 115–16 Lewis, Ira, 38 Lewis, Roscoe E., 69 liberation theology, 180. See also religion Lincoln Memorial, 39, 70 Lincoln University (St. Louis), 160–61, 163–64 Lipsitz, George, 98, 182 Little, Malcolm, 31 local organizations. See grassroots organization and social movements Lochard, Metz, 46 Logan, Rayford, 30, 70, 170 Los Angeles, CA, 166, 265n97 Lovestone, Jay, 225n17 lynching, 185 Lynn, Winfred, 65, 172–73 Macdonald, Dwight, 172, 173 Maddox, Pearl, 85, 92, 137, 138, 141–42, 178, 257n48

Mademoiselle (magazine), 188 Marcantonio, Vito, 167 March on Carter (St. Louis), 108–11, 110–11, 165, 247n53, 250n113 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963), 180, 187 March on Washington Movement (MOWM): allure of, 204n3; blacks only membership policy, 44–45, 61–62, 72, 233n161; and the BSCP, 9, 81–82; call for 100,000 marchers, 29–30, 36, 204n1; cancellation of March, 39–43, 46; compared to Zionism, 45; dissolution of, 181, 183; “8-Point Program,” 176, 197–200; FBI and, 6, 43, 77, 101, 107; finances, 61–62, 66–67, 140, 168–69, 182, 231n115; as grassroots social movement, 5–7, 48; local branches, 20, 64–65, 99–100, 178, 182; membership figures, 181–82, 269n61; as model for protests, 1–4, 176, 179–80, 191–92; and the NAACP, 9–11, 45, 53–54, 72, 84, 180; National Policy Conference, 51, 51–54, 226n26; National Program of Action, 200–201; nonviolent civil disobedience, use of, 25, 30–31, 52, 57–60, 229n79; organizational difficulties, 63, 72; phases of, 12, 23; philosophy of, 25, 47, 62; stamps or stickers, 132, 255n21, 255n23; and the Urban League, 53–54, 81; “We Are Americans, Too” conference, 54–62, 227n54; white supporters, 61, 131; women’s work for, 2, 15, 62–70, 168; youth division, 223n199. See also advertising; Executive Order 8802; FEPC (Fair Employment Practices Commission, U.S.); patriotism; religion; St. Louis MOWM unit; individual branches; individual people Marshall, Thurgood, 88, 91, 185 Martin, Essie, 257n48 Maschoff, Otto, 125 Massey, Edith, 163 Matthews, Elvin, 117 Matthews, Ralph, 71 Mayfield, Anabel, 257n48 Mayor’s Race Relations Committee (St. Louis), 146–48 McCarthy, Joseph, 186 McCluskey, Florence, 257n48 McCrorey, Novella, 224n7 McLaurin, Benjamin: fund-raising, 66; on grassroots organizing and rallies,

Index  • 315 50; and Monster Mass Meeting, 224n7; as MOWM leader, 9, 23, 255n23; and MOWM National Policy Conference, 52; and MOWM’s financial crises, 67; on Randolph, 7 McLaurin, Margaret, 25 McLemore, Joseph, 52, 93, 98 McMillan, Bernice, 224n7 McMillan, Jessie, 144, 257n48 McNeal, Philip Webster, 189 McNeal, T. D.: access to employment as civil rights struggle, 83; and African American troops in St. Louis, 78; and the BSCP, 81, 180–81, 189; on desegregation of higher education, 164; donations to MOWM, 97; on dual goals of World War II, 82, 113; and FEPC, 154; on grassroots organizations, 100, 177; and Kiel Auditorium rally, 102, 104–5, 107; and March on Carter, 108–10, 247n53; and March on Southwestern Bell Telephone, 131–33; and March on U.S. Cartridge, 119–22; marksmanship, 88; and Mayor’s Race Relations Committee, 147–48; military deferment, 87; as MOWM leader, 9, 15–16, 23, 48; and MOWM National Policy Conference, 52; and the NAACP, 10, 180; photos, 11, 76, 104, 110; post-MOWM accomplishments, 189–91; and Prayer Demonstration, 111–15; protest experience of, 3; and public utilities, 136; and sit-ins, 141, 145; as state senator, 190; St. Louis MOWM unit, 73, 75, 85–88, 98; and U.S. Cartridge strikes, 125; and “We Are Americans, Too” conference, 57 McNeal, Thelma, 85, 94–95, 141–42, 147, 164 McNutt, Paul, 179 McQuay-Norris, 154 Meier, August, 19, 131 Meissner, Edwin, 148, 158 Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, 130 Milgram, Morris, 227–28n63 Miller, Carl, 75 Miller, Dorrie, 127 Miller, Kelly, 28 Miller, Ollie, 104, 105 Milwaukee, WI, 166 Missouri State Association of Negro Teachers, 99 Mitchell, J. E., 77

Mobile County, Al, 236n51 Monsanto Chemical Company, 252–53n143 Monster Mass Meeting (New York), 48–49, 224n7 Montgomery bus boycott, 184, 189 Monti, Daniel, 77–78 Moore, Henry T., 188, 207n46 Moore, Herman, 7 Morgan, Christine Berry, 156 Morris, Aldon, 15 Morris, Henry, 89 Moseley, Frances, 105 Moss, Phillips W., 138 MOWM. See March on Washington Movement Murray, Pauli: anticommunism of, 186, 225n17; in civil rights struggle, 27, 175–76; cross-membership in other African American organizations, 99; and desegregation of military, 173; and food-counter sit-ins, 130; as MOWM leader, 15; and MOWM National Policy Conference, 52–53; MOWM’s Silent Parade, 68–70; and nonviolent civil disobedience, 59, 180; photo, 187; post-MOWM accomplishments, 3, 188; on Randolph, 7 Musial, Stan, 165 music: at Kiel Auditorium rally, 106; at Monster Mass Meeting, 50, 56; and St. Louis MOWM meetings, 112 Muste, A. J., 58, 140, 171 Myers, E. Pauline: in civil rights struggle, 176; MOWM work, 2, 61, 63–67, 182; and nonviolent civil disobedience, 59–60, 139–40; Washington, D.C. branch, 71–72; and the YMCA, 232–33n146 Myrdal, Gunnar, 4, 131 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP): and the CCRC, 137, 140–49; cross-membership in other African American organizations, 99; fight against Jim Crow, 175–76; and former MOWM members, 189; and Kiel Auditorium rally, 107; Lincoln University, 163–64; and the MOWM, 9–11, 45, 53–54, 72, 84, 180; on racial injustice, 27; Silent Protest Parades, 69, 247n47 National Council for a Permanent FEPC, 152, 166–70

316  •  Index National Council of Negro Women, 188 National Lead Company, 158 National Negro Congress (NNC), 42, 44, 71 National Organization for Women, 188 National Workers League, 104 Nazism compared to Jim Crow, 27–28, 130, 141 Negro Central Democratic Organization, 94 Negro Digest (magazine), 60 Negro Labor News (newspaper), 188 Nelson, Bruce, 124 New Deal, 18, 39, 125, 130–31 newspapers, African American: circulation, 206–7n44; expansion of black press, 77; and racial justice, 26; on Randolph and the MOWM, 7–8; on sit-ins, 145. See also individual newspapers Newsweek (magazine), 173 New York (state), 153, 167–68, 177, 185 New York City: FEPC office, 155; grassroots organizing and rallies, 48–49, 224n7; MOWM branch, 73; MOWM Silent Parade, 67–70, 68; nonviolent civil disobedience, 139, 257n65; popularity of MOWM, 25; telephone company integration, 130 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 59 Nixon, E. D., 79, 180, 189, 213n16 nonviolent civil disobedience. See civil disobedience, nonviolent Norfolk, VA, 25 Norton, Mary, 152 Ohio Bell Telephone, 130 Ordinance NO 50553 (St. Louis, 1961), 184 Ortiz, Paul, 179–80 Ottley, Roi, 26 Pace, Marie Harding, 94 Pacific Movement of the Eastern World, 107 Packard Motor Company (Detroit), 123 Parham, Mrs. A., 75 Parham, Sallie, 15, 85, 105–6 Parker, Albert, 6, 32, 43, 216–17n85 Parks, Rosa, 184, 189, 210n95 parochial school desegregation in St. Louis, 160 Parrish, Richard, 23, 46 patriotism: and civil rights protests, 3, 247n47; Kiel Auditorium rally, 103–4,

106–7; March on Southwestern Bell, 133– 34; March on U.S. Cartridge, 118; patriotic Christianity, 106, 110, 111–15, 246n31; and sit-ins, 141; U.S. flag, 3, 109–10, 110, 118, 130, 133–34, 247n47 Patterson, Robert, 37 Patterson, Thomas T., 25 Patterson, William L., 43 Payne, Ethel, 52, 56–57 Pegler, Westbrook, 185, 271n93 Pelham, Henry, 43 People’s Finance Building (St. Louis), 98 People’s Voice (newspaper), 44 Petry, Ann, 70 Philadelphia, PA, 123, 150, 183 Philadelphia Transit Company strike, 40, 123 Phillips, Kimberley, 99 picketing. See protests, forms of; individual campaigns Pinckney, F. A., 224n7 Pitts, Charles Ross, 76 Pitts, Fannie, 105 Pittsburgh Courier (newspaper): circulation, 7; on “Double V,” 26; on FBI at Kiel Auditorium rally, 107; on FEPC, 167; opposition to MOWM, 46; on St. Louis Prayer Demonstration, 113 Plessy v. Ferguson, 161, 163–64 poll tax, 3, 54, 68, 113–14 Powell, Adam Clayton, 6, 34, 44, 49–50, 181 Prattis, Percival, 26 Prayer Demonstration (St. Louis), 111–15 President’s Committee on Civil Rights, 170–71 protests, forms of: penny-paying, 134– 35; picketing, 132–34; sit-ins, 136–37, 140–49, 257n48, 259n103. See also various marches Pruitt, Wendell, 149 Public Service Company (St. Louis), 136, 150 public transit, 40, 123, 150–53, 261n7 public utilities, 128, 130 Pullman Company, 41 Raab, Betty, 125 “race man,” defined, 240n130 racial violence, 30, 68, 260n112. See also hate crimes and threats Randolph, A. Philip: “Are Communists a Threat to Democratic Organizations?,” 42;

Index  • 317 and the BSCP, 41; call for 100,000 marchers, 1–2, 29–30, 36, 204n1; cancellation of March, 39–43; commitment to civil rights, 19, 175; and desegregation of military, 38, 170–73; and EO 8802, 35–38; equal employment of African Americans as goal, 8, 11; and FEPC post-war extension, 152, 166–70; fundraising, 140; gender relations, 63, 227–28n63; and Hedgeman, 231–32n126; importance of grassroots campaigns, 3, 100; and Kiel Auditorium rallies, 103, 105, 107, 121–22; managerial weaknesses, 7, 46, 63, 67; on March on U.S. Cartridge, 118; on March preparations, 1–2; and Monster Mass Meeting, 49–50; and MOWM’s Silent Parade, 69; and MOWM Victory Rally, 70; and MOWM youth division, 223n199; and the NAACP, 9–11; and the NNC, 42, 44, 71; opposition to communism, 42–44, 221–22n165; origins of MOWM, 23; and patriotic Christianity, 112, 114–15; perceptions of, 169; photos, 4, 53, 104, 190; post-MOWM accomplishments, 187; on post-war employment of African Americans, 151; protest tactics, 25, 59, 179–80; and Roosevelt, 29, 33–36; and Rustin, 189; and St. Louis MOWM unit, 75; on white support, 131 Rankin, John E., 104, 186 Ransby, Barbara, 177 Rauh, Joseph, 33, 36 Red Cross, 29 Redmond, Sidney, 14, 75, 79, 98, 138, 184, 264n80 Reed, Toure, 166 religion: Association of Reform Rabbis, 152; Black Churches, 71; and civil rights protests, 110–15, 180, 246n31; and desegregation of schools, 161–62; and nonviolent civil disobedience, 180; sit-ins, 143–44; and St. Louis MOWM meetings, 112 Republican Party, 93–94 Rhoden, John, 75 Richmond, VA, 139 Rickard, R. V., 120 Ridgel, Gus T., 163 Rising Wind, A (White, W.), 27 Roberts, Evelyn, 137, 257n48

Robinson, Jackie, 184 Rogers, J. A., 42 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 5, 30–31, 39–40, 189, 219n119, 220–21n146 Roosevelt, Franklin D.: and desegregation of military, 38, 172; and EO 8802, 6, 37; and FEPC, 4; leadership style, 32–33; opposition to MOWM, 32–36; Philadelphia Transit Company strike, 40; and Randolph, 29, 33–36 Rosenberg, Anna, 35 Ross, Harold, 52, 75, 76, 101–2 Ross, Malcolm, 157 Ross, Mrs. Harold, 75 Ruchames, Louis, 40 Rudwick, Elliot, 19, 131 Ruffin, Guy, 75 Russell, Richard, 37 Russell Amendment, 167 Rustin, Bayard: and desegregation of military, 171, 173; on the MOWM, 44, 48, 181; and nonviolent civil disobedience, 59, 180; post-MOWM accomplishments, 3, 187– 89; and Randolph, 189; and St. Louis Race Relations Institute program, 140 Ryan, Neva, 48, 52, 57 San Francisco, CA, 75 Sawyer, Lillian, 137, 257n48 Schultz, Kevin, 167 Schuyler, George, 7, 85, 207n47 Scruggs Vandervoort department store, 142, 144, 145, 148 segregation, 136, 148–49, 161, 163–64, 170. See also desegregation; Jim Crow Sentner, William, 82, 117, 125, 127, 162 Settles, Eugenie, 63, 115 Shepard, James E., 28–29 Shridharani, Krishnalal, 58, 140 Silent Protest Parades: MOWM, 67–70, 68; NAACP, 69, 247n47 Singer, Caroline, 27 sit-ins: decorum, 259n103; local/grassroots social movements, 129–30; slogans, 259n96; St. Louis lunch counters, 136–37, 140–49, 184, 257n48, 259n103 Sitkoff, Harvard, 179 slogans, 130, 144, 250n113, 256n26, 259n96 small businesses, 153

318  •  Index Smiley, Glenn, 59 Smith, Bennie, 24, 52 Smith, Frank, 184 Smith, Gerald, 15 Smith, Rogers, 257n48 Smith, Ross, 257n48 Smith, Shermine, 141–43, 257n48, 259n103 Smith, William, Jr., 106 Smith v. Allwright, 184 Socialist Workers Party, 32 Southwestern Bell Telephone, 130–36, 133, 256n26 Speight, Lillian, 71 Spencer, Kenneth, 104 Sportsman’s Park (St. Louis), 160, 165 Springer, Maida, 34, 70, 173, 188 Steale, Blyden, 117 Stimson, Henry, 35, 75 Stix, Baer and Fuller department store, 142, 144, 145, 148 St. Louis: African American population, 80, 83–84, 86, 96, 235n45, 236nn50–51, 242n165; blackouts, 102; boycotts, 142; as crossroads city, 77–78, 82; defense work in, 12; desegregation legislation, 104, 138, 160–64, 259n89; employment of African Americans, 76–80, 82–84, 95–96; EO 8802, impact of, 74–75, 84, 95–96 (See also individual companies); job discrimination and unemployment, 183; labor unrest, 154–60; Mayor’s Race Relations Committee, 146–48; post-war employment of African Americans, 177; Public Accommodations Bill, 184; public opinion poll, 140; Public Service Company, 150; race relations, 12–14, 87, 239n110; residential segregation, 13; responses to MOWM protests, 178; school desegregation, 160–64; sit-ins at lunch counters, 136–37, 140–49, 184; and Southern immigration, 82. See also St. Louis MOWM unit St. Louis Air Craft, 84 St. Louis American (newspaper): on the Kiel Auditorium rallies, 102, 107, 121–22; on Lincoln University, 163; on March on U.S. Cartridge, 119; on the MOWM, 120, 155, 255n21, 255n23; on sit-ins, 143–45; on Southwestern Bell, 131–32; on Southwestern Bell March, 134; on St. Louis University,

162; support for racial equality, 77; on Unit 202, 127; on U.S. Cartridge strikes, 125–26 St. Louis Argus (newspaper): circulation, 206– 7n44; on desegregation legislation, 138; on economic equality and social welfare, 91; on FEPC, 166–67; on Kiel Auditorium rally, 105, 107; on the MOWM, 156, 175; on racial discrimination in employment, 83, 95; on sit-ins, 144; on Southwestern Bell March, 134; support for racial equality, 77; on U.S. Cartridge strikes, 126 St. Louis Browns, 165 St. Louis Car Company, 148, 158 St. Louis Cardinals, 165 St. Louis MOWM, 14–16, 20–21, 75–100; accomplishments of, 8–9; cross-membership in other African American organizations, 99, 102, 107; FEPC post-war extension, 152; FEPC public hearings, 154–57; founding of, 95–100; and Kiel Auditorium rallies, 101–8, 104; and Lincoln University, 160–61, 163–64; and March on Carter, 108–11, 110–11; and the NAACP, 180; office opening, 256n38; and patriotic Christianity, 106, 110; Prayer Demonstration, 111–15; sit-ins, 136–37, 140–49, 184; Southwestern Bell Telephone strike, 256n26; and U.S. Cartridge, 115–28; white supporters, 131, 140, 143–44 “St. Louis Plan” (St. Louis, U.S. Cartridge), 126–27 St. Louis Post-Dispatch (newspaper), 78, 109, 119, 134, 145 St. Louis Race Relations Institute, 139–40 St. Louis Star (newspaper), 134 St. Louis University, desegregation of, 160–62 Stone, Gertrude, 45, 72 Stone, Rita, 182 strikes: hate, 123–24, 158; Monsanto Chemical Company, 252–53n143; Philadelphia Transit Company, 40; U.S. Cartridge, 123–24 Sugrue, Thomas, 136 Sun Shipyard (Philadelphia), 126 Sweets, Nathaniel A., 75, 77, 98 Talmadge, Gene, 104, 185 Tarry, Ellen, 49

Index  • 319 Taylor, Cynthia, 56 Taylor, Jesse, 66 Taylor, William E., 164 telephone protests, 132 Terrell, Mary Church, 30, 70 Thomas, Everett, 46 Thomas, Hattie, 144 Thomas, Norman, 57 Thompson, James, 26 Thompson, Milton and Mrs., 257n48 Thompson, Vora, 141–42, 257n48 Thornton, John M., 1, 19 Thornton, Modestine Crute, 143, 257n48 Tobias, Channing, 38, 57 Toll the Liberty Bell (Campbell), 188 Tolson, Melvin, 129–30, 178 Torian, Fannie, 105 To Secure These Rights (President’s Committee on Civil Rights), 170–71 Truman, Harry, 167, 171, 173 Tucker, Lorenzo, 49, 50, 224–25n13 Tucker, Rosina, 30, 62, 70 Turner, Aldrich, 67 Turner, Paul, 67 “Types of Segregation and Jim-Crowism Which are Most Irritating to the Negro Minority,” 136 UAW-CIO, 158 UE Local 825 (St. Louis), 124–26 Union Electric Company, 136 Unit 202 (of U.S. Cartridge), 124, 126–27 United States Housing Authority (USHA), 74 University of Missouri, 162–63 Urban League, 53, 81, 116–17, 127, 169 U.S. Cartridge, 13, 83–84, 115–28, 154, 157 USHA (United States Housing Authority), 74 U.S. military: African American soldiers, 78–79, 79, 107; desegregation of, 38, 170– 73; EO 9981, 173; Jim Crow in, 78–79, 79, 175; Kiel Auditorium rally, 101–8, 104; opposition to EO 8802, 36, 38; veterans, African American, 152, 176; Winifred Lynn, 65, 172–73 U.S. Rubber (Detroit), 123 U.S. Senate, 33 Vashon, George, 93 Vaughn, A. N., 76

Vaughn, George, 75, 98 vehicle parade (Chicago MOWM), 244n13 veterans, African American, 152, 176 Vigilantes, Inc., 87, 239n110–11 voting rights, 80, 113–14 wage differentials, 63, 177 Walker, Myrtle, 257n48 Waller, Odell, 67 War Manpower Commission, 135 War’s Greatest Scandal, The (Macdonald), 172, 173 War without Violence (Shridharani), 58 Washington, D.C., 20, 30–32, 70–73, 130 Washington Post (newspaper), 154 Washington University (St. Louis), 189 Watchword Is Forward, The (Campbell), 49–50, 106 WDL (Worker’s Defense League), 68 “We Are Americans, Too” conference (Chicago, IL), 54–62, 227n54 Weaver, Robert C., 18, 28 Webster, Milton: on Eleanor Roosevelt, 39; Kiel Auditorium rally, 103; and MOWM funding, 168; MOWM National Policy Conference, 52; photos, 53, 104; on racial discrimination, 191; St. Louis MOWM unit, 75; “We Are Americans, Too” conference, 56, 57 Weed, H. H., 108–9 We Group, 107, 246n40 Welch, Jeanetta, 30, 70, 71 Western Electric (Baltimore), 123 Weston, Leyton, 24, 75, 76, 81, 85, 97–98, 142, 241n144 What the Negro Wants (Logan), 170 Wheeler, Henry Winfield: and desegregation legislation, 138; on EO 8802 as New Deal program, 18; on Heithaus, 162; on Moore, 207n46; and the NAACP, 180; on patriotism of MOWM, 3; and St. Louis MOWM unit, 85; and the struggle for equal rights, 178; support for MOWM, 77, 145 Wheeler, Ruth Mattie, 85, 137, 141–43, 146, 189, 257n48 White, Maggie, 257n48 White, Walter: and desegregation of military, 38; and EO 8802, 35–38; on FBI investigation of Randolph and the MOWM, 43;

320  •  Index White, Walter (continued): on fighting for democracy abroad and at home, 27; and Kiel Auditorium rally, 103–4; A Man Called White, 36; meeting with Roosevelt, 29, 33– 36; on the MOWM and Randolph, 9–10; on MOWM’s National Policy Conference, 54; and MOWM Victory Rally, 70; oratorical style, 245n23; photos, 53, 104; on racial discrimination, 8, 191; A Rising Wind, 27; support for MOWM, 32 Wilkerson, Sidney, 168 Wilkins, Roy, 8, 10, 54, 57 Williams, Aubrey, 33, 35 Williams, Erik, 57 Wilson, Boyd, 52 Wilson, C. Hayden, 104 Wilson, J. Finley, 38, 67, 232n129 Wolfinger, James, 18 women: activism of, 21, 176; defense work by, 115–16, 120, 155; employment of African American, 129–49, 158–59; FEPC complaints, 157–58; Kiel Auditorium rally, 105–6; as MOWM leaders or workers, 2, 15, 62–70, 168; National Council of Negro Women, 188; networks of women’s organizations, 69–70; post-war employment, 151; relationships with Randolph,

227–28n63; social movement participation, 94, 241n152; strikes by white women workers, 123–24, 158; wage differential at MOWM, 63; World War II, opportunities created during, 233n147. See also sit-ins; individual women Woodard, Isaac, 185 Worker’s Defense League (WDL), 68 World War I, 28, 65, 105 World War II: as completion of Civil War, 28; desegregation of military, 38, 171–72; “Double V,” 15–16, 26, 55, 118, 172, 173; dual goal of freedom abroad and racial equality at home, 55–56, 65, 82, 104, 113, 172, 173; opportunities for African Americans, 4–5, 166; opportunities for women, 233n147; population shifts, 13, 80, 95, 236n51. See also defense work by African Americans; Great Migration Wright, Cleo, 88 Wyatt, Bige, 97 YMCA, 107, 232–33n146 YWCA, 69 Zionism, 45

David Lucander is a professor of history at SUNY Rockland Community

College.

The University of Illinois Press is a founding member of the Association of American University Presses.

Composed in 10.5/13 Marat Pro by Lisa Connery at the University of Illinois Press Manufactured by Sheridan Books, Inc. University of Illinois Press 1325 South Oak Street Champaign, IL 61820-6903 www.press.uillinois.edu