Civil Rights Movements During The World War II

World War II brought several changes to the world and specifically America. It not only changed the world map but also set impact on the behaviours. WWII played a major role in building turning points during different periods. Before WWII, African Americans were not offered equal rights in the community. It was considered an impossible thing that African could ever do a white collar or even a blue collar job. However, soon after the WWII, there came a turning point in the lives of African American with the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Prior to World War II, many women were unemployed, due to the Great Depression which had started a decade before. With men always getting preference for jobs, there were very few jobs left for women. Consequently, not only were many occupations were reserved for men, but men were also paid wages up to five times higher for the same task as women. Some states also barred married women from holding jobs. However during World War II, America produced at an efficiency which was higher than ever. This meant that the women had an increasing number of jobs. Jobs in the public sector opened up. Since 1939, women progressively changed the idea of patriarchy and the cliché thinking of an average woman in the United States to be a wife and mother.

The Civil Rights Movement is oftentimes regarded as the largest social movement of the 20th century. This mass popular movement, which peaked in the 1950’s and 1960’s, helped African Americans gain access to more basic privileges,

According to president Franklin D. Roosevelt the future world shout be a world that people have essential human freedoms also known as the four freedoms; freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. The reason of the United States took part in the World War II was to fight for human’s freedoms to liberate humanity in Europe and Asia, and to spread the American democracy to the entire world. “A revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions without the concentration camp or the quick –lime in the ditch” (Franklin D. Roosevelt 1941). However the war enhanced the commitment of many white Americans to maintain the existing racial order in the United States. The war also gave birth to the civil right movement. While we were fighting for the freedom of other nations there were still inequality exist in the United States. The World War II didn’t directly push forward the democracy in the United States; on the contrary it created many inequalities on non-white races during the World War II and post war that directly lead to the civil right movement. The civil right movement is a “war” that African-Americans against inequality in education, social rights, and human rights it given people the idea that the existing racial order in the united states was wrong, so the civil rights movement directly push forward the American democracy to a step forward.

Many may thank that there is not a lot in common between the Nazi movements during World War II and the Civil Rights movement for many reasons. One of the biggest differences is that in Germany, it was a closed society, where citizens were not allowed to speak out against their government and how they were treating people. As for the Civil Rights movement, people were able to speak out about their government and all the things they believe that the government should be doing to protect them. This was because America is an open society. There may be differences, but people like Martian Luther King Jr. and organizations like the White Rose did truly have some similarities. Their messages about how there was something wrong in their society that

During World War II, America as a nation faced many challenges both at home and abroad. Some of these challenges at home included Strikes and protests in war production factories, which was due to increasing differences between the government and employers, with the workers/labor unions. Another was the Civil rights movement for African-Americans, which advocated for equal rights for all Americans, when African Americans joined the war efforts by both joining the military and working in the war factories. Eventually the government had to deal with these challenges by passing legislations and finding a way to unite the population during the war.

World War II Era was a watershed for the Civil Rights Movement primarily because of the similar fact that racial segregation was easily seen in both societies. To understand the basics, racial segregation is the division of people into racial or other ethnic groups and applies to every activity such as using a public toilet, attending school, or riding on a bus, so it affects daily life. During World War II racial segregation was seen

During WWII, the two-breadwinner vision of the family suffered further setbacks. As May puts it, women entered war production, but they did not give up on reproduction..Economic hardship was no longer a barrier to marriage, as it had been in the 1930s, and dependents' allowances eased the burdens of families if the breadwinners were drafted. But perhaps most important was the desire to solidify relationships and establish connections to the future when war made life so uncertain. (May p.59-60) While the culture venerated female workers, it also promoted a return to domesticity after the war, a return encouraged by the gender bias of the GI Bill. Meanwhile, men were encouraged through pin-ups and propaganda to believe they were fighting for their own slice of the domestic, consumerist good life.

Women, particularly married women joined the workforce in numbers never before seen “Between 1940 and 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home” (Staff). These people who stayed at home and helped the war production most certainly did their best. By the end of the war they had more than doubled the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which is a modern measurement of the health of an economy ("U.S. GDP by Year"). Their hard work had truly made us “the arsenal of democracy” ("Franklin D. Roosevelt: Fireside Chat.").

World War II was the catalyst that changed the opportunities available to women and eventually the way they were regarded as a viable workforce. Suddenly women throughout the United States were pushing themselves to their limits to support the war effort. Women were fulfilling jobs and responsibilities that many previously believed to be impossible for their gender. Opportunities were opened in steel plants, ammunition factories, and even the United States military. As the war progressed the number of male workers declined dramatically. Society had no choice but to turn to the mothers, sisters, and daughters of our nation for help. The results for each woman varied

During WW2 the presence of men at home was to a bare minimum. The impact this had on women was felt throughout the nation. How women would be looked at would be changed forever. They had to uphold various positions that were usually held by men and reevaluate their roles as homemakers. Their lives at home had changed; they were no longer the primary care giver. They also joined different parts of the military. Due to men being away at war during WW2 women were forced to participate in the workforce, which would change their view of their position in society.

As more men entered the armed forces, women needed to replace them. By the war's end, hundreds of thousands of women had entered the workforce, many of them in traditionally masculine occupations such as engineering, munitions, transport, business, and eventually even the military. The war produced a leap in women's employment from twenty-six percent in the workforce in 1914 to thirty-six percent by 1918. One million women worked in munition industries, forty-thousand served as nurses, and twenty-thousand joined the Women's Land Army as agricultural workers (Marwick, 1977). For the young and the middle-class, work outside their homes was indeed a new experience. On the other hand, working-class women were used to paid work, but the type of work was new. Many left low-skill, low-wage jobs, especially in domestic service, for better paying skilled labor in factories and workshops (Kent, 1993).

The Civil Rights Movement, popular in the 1950s and 1960s, was a large group of people who fought for the equal rights of the African Americans. The people of the movement constantly protested the lack of equality in hopes to change the ideals of the white leaders. In efforts to suppress the protesting, whites passed several laws attempting to give blacks their full rights. Even then, white employers were reluctant to hire any man of color, which caused unemployment rates to skyrocket. Because of the high unemployment rates, the whites continued to view themselves as superior over every other race. After the blacks were legally “free,” they still faced a plethora of violent acts and segregation. This caused the Civil Rights Movement to

During World War II women were known to leave the perfect housewife lifestyle and start joining the workforce. The cause of women going into the workforce was to keep supporting their families while their husbands were fighting for the

The period of World War I and II, which was between 1917 and 1960 marked subsequent economic boom, this brought women into workplaces. However, the main aim was for the women to supplement labor force which was inadequate during the war (Robinson, 2001). Subsequently, women could help in maintaining higher standards enjoyed by the middle class families. As a result, women formed groups becoming increasingly aware of their unequal economic, as well as, social status.