Fighting Racism in World War II

This is a wonderful collection, an essential part of the history we need to know to understand American capitalism and racism, the fight for Black liberation and equal rights, and working class struggles as a whole. The protests and campaigns described here were an essential foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and should inspire us to continue the fight today. Here are some 150 articles, pamphlets and political resolutions, a week-by-week account of political developments and struggles during tumultuous years of the 1940s. They come from the socialist newsweekly, the Militant, and are written by working class leaders seeking to build on the labor battles of the 1930s and to deepen the fight against racist oppression. The articles document instances of police brutality and killings, lynch-mob murders of Blacks, and the pervasive racist discrimination in employment, housing and the military. But above all, they record, analyze and promote the fight against these conditions. The success in uniting Black and white workers to smash Henry Fords anti-union stronghold and bring the UAW to Ford Motor Co., the mass protests of the 1942 March on Washington Movement-- and the bitter opposition of the Roosevelt administration to this anti-racist movement; the 1943 Harlem rebellion against killer cops-- "A protest against intolerable conditions;" its all here to learn from and be inspired by. An extensive chronology and glossary will help today's reader understand this history all the better.

The US that waged World War II was a racist country, fighting to preserve its own ability to segregate and exploit African Americans, defending and trying to get a piece of Britain, Belgium, Holland, and France's Racist exploitation of hundreds of millions of colonial slaves, and to hold on to its oporession of Latin America and get as big a piece of China, Vietnam and other countries and Asia as they could. Could there be any wonder that at home, battles were fought by African Americans against racism, in housing, in jobs, in access to health care and education, just as they were fought before and after the war and continue to be fought. It is not wonder the SWP fighter and leader who is the principal author and editor of this book was chosen by Malcolm X 20 years later to be the person who edited and helped to publish his writings. These fighters were the Malcolm X's of their time....