me of patriotism, was a threat to those
whites who believed that Negroes should be kept in their place.
Afro-Americans were prepared not to be disillusioned in that way again.
For them, the war would still be a double struggle-fighting racism at
home as well as abroad.

The Second World War began to affect Americans long before the country
was actually drawn into the fighting. Although the American nation stood
on the sidelines for the first two years, America became a major source
of money, supplies, and encouragement for Britain and France. Providing
materiel for the Allies gave new life to the sagging American economy.
There were still some five million unemployed in the nation, and
something more seemed to be needed. Unfortunately for the Afro-American,
most of the new jobs were not open to them. Aside from the fact that he
was the first to be fired and the last to be hired, many of the new
defense industries made it clear that they would hire no Negroes at all
or, at most, would restrict their employment to janitorial positions
regardless of the training or education of the applicant.

Hostility was expressed quite openly by some leaders in the West Coast
aircraft industry. As better jobs became available, they were quickly
filled by white workers eager to improve their economic status. This left
some of the more undesirable jobs to go begging, and, as the result, the
war boom benefits began to trickle down to the Afro-American community.
Afro-Americans, however, were not content with the crumbs from the
industrial table. Complaints began to flood into Washington. Several
government officials made pronouncements condemning discrimination in
defense industries, but they were not heard. It became clear that
nothing would change without strong government action, and it was also
evident that this would not occur unless the entire Afro-American
community could exert united, political pressure.

Early in 1941, A. Philip Randolph put forth the idea of a gigantic March
on Washington, and he expressed the belief that a hundred thousand
Afro-Americans could be organized to participate in such an undertaking.
The immediate response from most of the leaders of both black and white
America was one of skepticism. Most of them felt that there was too much
apathy in the Afro-American community for such a grandiose scheme to be
taken seriously. Nevertheless, interest on the grass-roots level
gradually grew and Randolph's idea