A History of the Civil Rights Movement

THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT TAKES HOLD

23

INTEGRATING THE MILITARY Meanwhile, the struggle for civil rights was being waged in other arenas as well. In 1941, A. Philip Randolph, leader of a black labor union called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, planned a 100,000-person march on Washington, D.C. Its purpose was to protest racial segregation in the American armed forces and discriminatory hiring practices in the defense industry. To avert the huge demonstration, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802. Issued on June 25, 1941, it prohibited employment discrimination in the defense industry. Roosevelt’s executive order didn’t address the other issue in question—segregation in the armed forces. Still, Randolph believed that progress had been made. He called off the protest march. The armed forces remained segregated. During World War II—which the United States entered in December 1941 and which lasted until August 1945—African Americans served in segregated units. In many other ways, they were treated poorly. In 1947, Randolph and fellow activist Grant Reynolds decided to change the situa tion. They founded an organization dedicated to ending segregation in the U.S. military. In June 1948, after the group was renamed the League for

A machine gun crew made up of black and white sol diers with the 2nd Infantry Division watches North Korean troops, November 1950. Two years earlier, President Truman had issued an order desegre gating the U.S. military.