Introduction
In America, the battlefield played a very important role in Black leaders’ anticipation of the outcome of the war. Five years before the first Memorial Day, they expected that African Americans stood the best chance in proving that they deserved freedom as well as citizenship, once they demonstrated their commitment and heroism in the battlefield, as 5,000 Black men were fighting for the patriot cause in the American Revolution. 1 People like Frederick Douglass expected that since Blacks were allowed to fight for the country, they had the right to be given citizenship in the United States. However, this expectation was frustrated as by the time the country was attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, memories and the legacy of all Black men who fought in all American wars were long forgotten.
Persistence of Racial Segregation
There were several achievements that the country had attained following the three Reconstruction amendments to the constitution as well as the abolition of slavery. However, the segregation that was initiated by Jim Crow undermined all such efforts since it affected all aspects of the American society from as early as 1890s. This aspect of segregation was experienced even within the military. Black men who volunteered or got drafted to work in the army in response to the Japanese sneak attack, faced segregation. They were sent to segregated divisions and assigned only combat support roles such as grave-digging, cooking, and quartermaster among others. This was a very big disappointment for African Americans as they witnessed hypocrisy when they considered their conditions both at home and in the war, against the noble aims of the war as coined by President Franklin Roosevelt in his speech on Jan 6, 1941, famously referred to as the “Four Freedoms” speech. The poor race relations that existed in America openly indicated an existing gap between the American freedom promise and performance. 2
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A Dilemma for Black Newspapers
Many black men felt secluded from the war efforts. In the armed forces, segregation continued to persist despite many efforts to stop it. In 1941, A. Philip Randolph threatened to initiate a massive March in Washington to end the discrimination meted on Blacks in the defense industry and the FDR banned the discrimination. Yet it did nothing to stop the practice in the armed forces. Black newspapers faced a dilemma in their attempt to report on this conflict. They either had to preach the government propaganda to the effect that there was racial harmony at home to guard the war efforts as well as national unity or speak the truth and risk being dubbed as co-conspirators with the enemy 3 . The newspapers exercised caution in their reports about disappointment and betrayal on Blacks such as the experiences of Frederick Douglass during the post-Reconstruction period.
Solution to the Dilemma
On Feb 7, 1942, just about two months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Pittsburg Courier, the most widely read Black newspaper in America at the time, found the solution for this dilemma. It stroked a balance between patriotism and justice. The newspaper started a campaign for national unity by urging Black people to commit themselves to the war efforts while simultaneously calling upon the government to make true its rhetoric on the declaration of independence as well as equal rights amendments to the constitution for all citizens regardless of racial backgrounds. This activism resulted into the “Double V Campaign” to honor the battle against the internal as well as the external enemy 4 .
The Campaign
When the war started, many Black soldiers served in segregated units. Civil rights leaders such as Walter White, A., and Philip Randolph among others, were not happy with the way things were being run in the defense industry. They thus organized a March on Washington in protest of the prevailing discrimination in the industry. Way before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the defense industry used to get profitable contracts from Uncle Sam. These were contracts for building the American as well as Britain’s defenses. The then-first lady; Eleanor Roosevelt asked Randolph and White to stop the March but they refused. FDR also tried to talk them out of the March but they declined and stated that they could only stop it if he would sign the executive order that would ban discrimination in the defense industry. This resulted in a public relations disaster for the FDR who later decided to issue the Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. The order created the Fair Employment Practices Committee which was aimed at enforcing a new rule. The new rule spelled that regardless of one’s race, color, creed or national origin, within the government or the defense industries, there shall be no discrimination in employment of workers. 5
Consequently, the March was called off but it did not end there, as it formed the basis for MLK’S March on Washington in 1963. It also motivated the Black community to be vigilant on race relations in the country even during the war against fascism abroad. As all this was happening, one man who felt deeply concerned about the segregation issue wrote a letter to the Pittsburg Courier which was published on Jan 31, 1942. The letter by James G. Thompson of Wichita, Kan outlined concerns of a Black American on the issues of segregation. He asked whether it was worth sacrificing his life to be half American, and wondered if things would ever change for the better for the next generation after the war. He asked whether getting full citizenship was not his right after sacrificing his life. He wondered whether the current America was worth the sacrifice of his life and whether America would become a pure democracy after the war. 6
As part of the solution, he proposed for “the double V V, for a double victory. He explained that the letter V is prominently displayed in the so-called democratic countries which are fighting for various causes such as tyranny, aggression, and slavery. To such countries, the letter symbolizes victory over such issues. He then proposed that African Americans should adopt the double V V sign to symbolize double victory. The first victory being one against the enemy without and the second V for victory against the enemy within since those people who propagate racial discrimination also threaten the country’s democracy just the same way the Axis forces did. For millions of Black Americans, there was no difference between the fight against the racist German and Japan and the ongoing struggle for civil rights. 7
Being the most widely read Black newspaper at the time of war, Pittsburg Courier had more than 200,000 daily circulations. It had demonstrated disdain for different kinds of segregation including stories on how the Navy used Black sailors exclusively as “messmen”. When the American Red Cross declined to receive blood from Black men in donor drives, the newspaper protested through headlines such as “The Red Blood Myth”. However, the public response to these was nothing as compared to Thompson’s letter. It paved way for the fight for civil right which culminated into a national movement by the end of 1950s 8 . The timing of the campaign was right and the significant support it received even worried the government that the Negroes might refuse to support the war efforts at the time when they were needed the most. 9 .On 7 February 1942 being exactly 2 months after Pearl Harbor, the Courier published on its front page “Democracy At Home Abroad.”
A week later, it explained that it used such an insignia to establish how popular the slogan would be with their readers, and effectively commended that the response was overwhelming and that the slogan stands for the true battle cry for African Americans. The slogan demonstrated that the African Americans were Americans too, and they had thus adopted a double attack against their enslavers at home as well as those abroad who would also enslave them. To this effect, the Double V V Campaign ran weekly until 1943. The paper also included an American flag in every subscription in its quest to uphold patriotism. It also encouraged people to buy war bonds. The country saw the emergent of Double V V clubs all around. 10 The paper had various campaign features such as the “Double V Girl”, celebrity as well as political endorsements.
The Double V V sensation was featured everywhere through such things as the Double V hairstyle, Double V gardens, Double V baseball games among others, which became popular among the African Americans. Seeing such intensity, other newspapers followed suit and soon joined the campaign. The paper was so serious with the campaign and went further to determine its impact on the public. One of the survey questions asked whether people felt that the Negro should slow down his quest for complete freedom and citizenship and focus on the development of the educational process. 88.7 percent answered ‘NO’ while only 9.2 percent answered ‘YES’. It was obvious that some people were not pleased with the campaign. The newspaper was aware of this and thus tried to avoid being seen as disloyal or assisting and backing the enemy, through the inclusion of a caveat to its poll results 11 .
Significance of the Campaign.
By 1945 in September, the Double V V insignia was no longer featured in the paper. In 1946, there was a Single V, signifying that there was more work to be done in combating racism against Blacks at home. Through this campaign, the paper spoke for Americans who desired to combat racial discrimination and participate in the war efforts. It ensured that during the war, the African Americans demands for equal rights at home were put at the front and center. The campaign also had an important role in fighting against segregation in professional sports. To this effect, in 1947, Jackie Robinson got signed in by the Brooklyn, N, Y., Dodgers as a result of stiff campaigns by the paper’s columns by its sportswriter, Wendell Smith, which popularly featured in the film 42. It also played a part in the establishment of the 1948 Executive Order 9981 by President Harry Truman. This order ended the segregation of the U.S. armed forces. The campaign laid the groundwork for the modern civil rights movement which began just after the end of the war.
Conclusion
This campaign did not accomplish its goals during the war as segregation continued to be the order of the day in the armed forces. It remained the official policy throughout until 1948 when President Truman changed it. However, it cemented Black people as well as liberal Whites around a specific mission towards liberty. The significance of the “Double V Campaign” paved the way for contemporary social media campaigns such as “it gets better”, “Yes, we can”, and “Think Different”. In the first year of the war, it played the important role of spreading the word of justice. It united the Black men around a cause to push for their freedom. More than 25 million of them registered for the draft on the onset of the World War II. Out of these, 1 million men served in the army. They still experienced segregation while in combat but the campaign had brought them some relief as the Courier provided a platform through which their voices could be heard. 12 It told their stories, helped them in fighting racial discrimination within the army, as well as pushing for the agenda on the importance of civil rights at home just as it was important to fight against fascism abroad.
Bibliography
Ayers, Edward L. American passages: a history of the United States . Boston, MA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2009.
Brown, Nikki & Barry, Stentiford. The Jim Crow encyclopedia . Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2008.
Copeland, David. The media's role in defining the nation: the active voice . New York: Peter Lang, 2010.
Samito, Christian. Becoming American under fire: Irish Americans, African Americans, and the politics of citizenship during the Civil War era . 2009.
Simmons, Charles. The African American press: a history of news coverage during national crises, with special reference to four black newspapers, 1827-1965 . McFarland, 2006.
