ILLINOIS
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
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2012S GGvtPSVEN’ PRINTING OFFICE. 1S42
Oficial publication of the Office of War Information
This book has been prepared to celebrate the achievements of Negro Americans in many fields and to recognize their important contributions, in all fields, to the fighting of the war.
By word and picture it tells:
What Negroes are doing, in agriculture, industry, and the armed services.
What Negroes have to lose if the Axis wins.
What Negroes have to gain by an American victory.
HAND THIS BOOKLET TO SOMEONE ELSE WHEN YOU HAVE FINISHEDChandler Owen, well-known Negro publicist, is a resident oj Chicago. Born in North Carolina, he was graduated from Virginia Union University and did his post-graduate work on fellowships both at Columbia University and the New York ■School of Social Work, majoring in political and social sciences. He has a wide acquaintanceship among Negro leaders all over the country and has contributed for many years to newspapers and national magazines. He is widely recognized for his trenchant style, his inquiring and objective thinking, his solid and scholarly research, and his cultural understanding.
NEGROES and the WAR by Chandler Owen
Some Negro Americans say that it makes no difference who wins this war. They say that things could not be any worse under Hitler. These are the people who emphasize liabilities; they never appraise their assets. They magnify the bad. They minimize the good.
Without underestimating the Negro’s liabilities, without denying the fact of handicaps and inequalities, I want to set down just what stake the Negro has in America—just what he has to lose under Hitler.
That he would lose it goes without saying. Race prejudice, from the first, has been Hitler’s stock in trade. In his book, Mein Kampf, he brutally calls Negroes “half-apes.” At the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin he greeted Aryan winners at his private apartment so that he would
not have to shake the hands of Jesse Owens, Cornelius Johnson, John Woodruff, and the other great Negro athletes who played so large a part in bringing victory to the United States. Hitler’s newspapers called these fine university-trained boys “the Black Auxiliaries.”
Hitler and his false prophets have told the people of Germany that a Negro has neither a soul nor an intellect, that he is incapable of being civilized. The man in the street in Germany, deluded by the very magnitude of the Hitler lie, would not believe you if you told him that our Army is proud to have in its ranks many regiments of Negro soldiers, that there are now two lull divisions of Negro soldiers, that Negroes serve in all branches. He would not believe you if you told him that there are Negro officers in our Army,Negro judges on the bench, Negroes in State legislatures and in the American Congress.
Germany backed up Mussolini in the rape of Ethiopia. In truth, Italy would not have defied the sanctions of the League of Nations without the support and encouragement of Hitler, and up
until the end of the last World War Germany
*
herself had extensive Negro colonies in Africa. In his book, Germans in the Cameroons, Harry R. Rudin, Assistant Professor of History at Yale, says this of German colonial administration: “Whipping was the typical form of punishment
inflicted on natives in the colony. ... In the
*
Reichstag stories were told of whips made of hippopotamus hide cut so as to have sharp edges, of ropes soaked in water and then dried or dipped in tar and then rolled in sand.”
Our stake in America
Just what stake does the Negro have in America? What has he got to lose? We have come a long way in the last fifty years, if slowly. There is still a long way to go before equality is attained, but the pace is faster, and never faster than now.
In 1890 there were 12,159 Negro clergymen in the United States; in 1930 there were 25,034. In 1890 there were 15,008 Negro teachers; in 1930 there were 54,439. In 1890 there were 208 Negro physicians and surgeons; in 1930 there were 3,805. In 1890 there were 120 Negro dentists; in 1930 there were 1,773. In 1890 there were 431 Negro lawyers, justices, and judges; in 1930 there were 1,247.
Progress? Yes. Too slow? Yes; but progress. Not all of us can be professional men. As a matter of fact, few of us are. The great majority of Negroes are working people—skilled, unskilled; organized, unorganized. But during the last decade a good many doors have been opened to us, and other doors are ajar. There has been enlightened appreciation of the Negro’s problem
by the Government. There has been increase
in Negro labor organization; many so-called “white” unions have abandoned color-line policies.
What would happen to labor under Hitler? I can tell you what happened to the Czechs, to the French, what happened to the Germans themselves. Their labor unions were suppressed. Strikes were prohibited. Union treasuries were seized.
This, applied to America, means that the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the tens of thousands of Negroes in the United Mine Workers of America, the Negroes in the automobile, steel, rubber, packing, shipping, needle trades, and transportation unions, all would be reduced to economic impotence—turned into slaves or turned into the street.
The Negro businessman would fare no better than the Negro worker. The first thing Hitler does when he occupies a country is to seize control of the banks. Then he proceeds with a systematic confiscation of factories, stores, all industry. The National Negro Business League would be abolished. Negro banks, stores, loan associations, restaurants, real-estate firms, insurance companies would be suppressed at once.
There are 680,000 Negro farm operators in the United States, with 95 percent of them living in the Southern States. During recent years, and particularly during the last 5 years, the Federal Government has waged a vigorous program to aid and relieve the farmer—a campaign in which the Negro farmer has shared. The Farm Security Administration has made 60,440 loans to Negro farmers. These loans, both short-term rehabilitation and long-term purchase loans, total some $50,000,000. Negro farm operators represent 21 percent of the farm operators in the 17 Southern States (including Maryland and Missouri) and they have received 20.9 percent of the Farm Security loans in that area.
What stake has the Negro farmer to lose under Hitler? He has his land, his buildings, his machinery, his livelihood to lose. In Czechoslo-vakia, in Poland, in Yugoslavia, in Greece, and Norway millions of acres of land were seized. Farmers were removed from their acres, and Germans installed. It is needless to add that the Farm Security program would be supplanted by plantation slavery.
Since the advent of the New Deal, the phrase “social security’’ has rung like a pleasant bell in the ears of American Negroes. They are enthu-
.	i
siastic about old-age pensions, health and unemployment insurance, and pensions for the blind. During the economic depression, Federal and State relief payments kept many families together. Negro youth found work and training in the CCC arid the NYA. What kind of social security could they expect under Nazi rule?
In the New Republic for May 5, 1941, Michael Straight wrote this about Germany:
“The facts are these: In September, October, and November of 1940, 85,000 blind, incurably ill or aged Germans were put to death by the Gestapo. They were put to death as casually as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals chloroforms old and helpless dogs. They were not killed for mercv. They were killed
¥	w
because they could no longer manufacture guns in return for the food which they consumed; because the German hospitals were needed for wounded soldiers.’’
These were not Negroes or persecuted Jews; they were Germans, members of what Nazis call the Herrenvolk, the master race. Eighty-five thousand Germans, old, helpless, harmless, put to death!
There, men and women of color, is your social security under Flitler.
In 1937 the United States Government started a slum clearance program. The object of this program was to provide decent homes for poor people. Of the 121,500 homes now contracted for in urban districts, approximately 40,600 are or will be occupied by Negro tenants. Thus,
although Negroes are approximately one-tenth
of the population, the Government is assigning
to them about one-third of the new homes—be-
0
cause Negroes have the greater need for improved housing. What would Hitler have done?
The doom of the churches
A high quality of religious leadership has been one of the glories of Negro culture in the United States. The names of such sainted men as Richard Allen, Lemuel Haynes, Peter Williams, and Josiah Bishop are written in permanence on the pages of American history. Alike in humble wooden churches and in the magnificent brick and stone churches of our metropolitan cities, Negro clergymen steadfastly have kept alight the lanterns of the spirit.
Today Negroes own church property valued at nearly 200 million dollars. Baptist, Methodist, Episcopalian—all other denominations—enjoy complete religious freedom. It is easy to foresee what would happen to these churches under Hitler. He has persecuted the churches in his own Germany and in occupied countries. He has murdered or jailed clergymen brave enough to defy him. In the Nazi code there is not room for both Hitler and God.
A man who denies the Negro a soul will deny him a church. And in America Hitler would have reason. The Negro churches, before Emancipation, were hotbeds of revolt, meeting places
of crusaders for abolition. Today the churches
■0
are the strongest organizations of Negroes in the world, and churchmen are leaders in the fight for equality. To Hitler, then, they would be dangerous—and, because dangerous, doomed.
There are more than 60 secret and fraternal organizations of national membership among Negroes in this country. These secret societies are divided into two classes: The old-line societies such as the Masons, Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, the Elks, and the benevolent secret societies such as the True Reformers, the GrandUnited Order of Galilean Fishermen, and the National Order of Mosaic Templars. Under Hitler these fraternal organizations would be abolished as the Masonic orders were abolished in Germany—because the Negro fraternal organizations have a tradition and a history of fighting for the rights of Negro manhood.
Educational opportunity has always been precious to the American Negro because it is the keystone of race progress. Today there are approximately 100 universities and colleges devoted exclusively to Negro education in this country. Our boys and girls in the North attend State universities and such institutions as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Cornell. In 1916 there were 1,643 students in Negro colleges. By 1941 the number had grown to 40,000. During a 25-year period, the number of students in Negro colleges increased some 2,400 percent.
What Hitler says about us
Hitler has made himself very clear on what he thinks about education for the Negro. In his book Mein Kampj, he says this:
“From time to time it is demonstrated to the German petty bourgeois in illustrated periodicals that for the first time here or there a Negro has become a lawyer, teacher, even clergyman, or even a leading opera tenor or something of that kind ... It does not dawn upon this depraved bourgeois world that here one has actually to do with a sin against all reason; that it is a criminal absurdity to train a born half-ape until one believes a lawyer has been made of him, while millions of members of the highest culture race have to remain in entirely unworthy positions; that it is a sin against the will of the Eternal Creator to let hundreds of thousands of His most talented beings degenerate in the proletarian swamp of today, while Hottentots and Zulu Kafirs are trained for intellectual vocations.
“For it is training exactly as that of a poodle, and not a scientific ‘education.’ The same trouble and care, applied to intelligent races, would fit each individual a thousand times better for the same achievements.”
That’s what Hitler thinks.
A ruler who regards Negro lawyers as born half-apes, trained like poodles, would drive from the bench such Negro judges as Charles E. Toney •and James S. Watson of the New York Municipal Court, Herman E. Moore of the United States District Court in the Virgin Islands, Justice Myles Paige of the Court of Special Sessions in Brooklyn, Justice Jane Bolin, America’s only colored woman judge, who presides over the Domestic Relations Court in New York. He would drive from the bench Judge Edward Henry of the Philadelphia Municipal Court and Judge Armand Scott of the District of Columbia Municipal Court. He would suppress the Law School at Howard University over which Dean WiLiam H. Hastie, now Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War, has presided so ably.
In the field of music and art the Negro would fare no better. In Norway the Nazi oppressors have made it a crime to listen to the phonograph records of Paul Robeson and Marian Anderson, these great artists of international fame. In 1933 when Hitler came to power there were Negro orchestras in some of the smart Berlin cafes; they were banned at once. Hitler hates all music that mirrors the aspirations of free people. In Poland the playing of Polish music is forbidden, and in America Negro musicians and Negro music would be silenced. The universally beloved old spirituals, the compositions of Still, Burleigh, Dett, Handy, and Boatner, the voices of Roland Hayes and Dorothy Maynor, the gay rhythms of Ellington, Calloway, Waller, Count Basie, the clatter of Bill Robinson’s dancing feet would be heard no more.
The drawings and paintings of E. Simms Campbell, Aaron Douglas, Sam Brown, JacobLawrence, Hale Woodruff; the sculpture of Richmond Barthe and Sargent Johnson would be forbidden; the books of all Negro writers from Phyllis Wheatley to Richard Wright would be forbidden and burned.
Unity against America’s foreign foes does not mean that Negroes must forego legitimate protest against discrimination in industry or the long struggle for political equality. This is known as the right of peaceful petition. Many people take for granted the right of peaceful petition. Hitler wouldn’t take it for granted. President Roosevelt invited A. Philip Randolph and Walter White to the White House to discuss with him in person injustices to Negroes in war industry and Government employment. Can you imagine Hitler doing that? President Roosevelt created the Committee on Fair Employment Practice to enforce his order that no worker be barred from war industry because of race, creed, color, or national origin. Can you imagine Hitler doing that?
The end of our newspapers
Under Hitler the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People would be outlawed. The Urban League would become a criminal organization. And the Negro press would vanish. The doors of 300 newspapers and periodicals would be locked the day the Nazis took over. Hitler says half-apes need no newspapers.
Hitler’s record on the free press is consistent. In Belgium, Holland, Poland, Norway, Czechoslovakia the free press was abolished. Hundreds of journalists in occupied countries were imprisoned by the Gestapo, the German secret police.
So it does not take a fortuneteller to call the roll of the Negro journalists who would feel Hitler’s lash. The Murphy brothers of the Baltimore Afro-American, P. B. Young of the Norfolk Journal and Guide, Ira Lewis, Mrs. Robert L. Vann, P. L. Prattis, George S. Schuyler and J. A. Rogers of the Pittsburgh. Courier; Mrs. R. S.
Abbott, John Sengstacke, and Lucius Harper of the Chicago Defender; Chester Franklin of the Kansas City Call; Mrs. Charlotta A. Bass of the California Eagle; E. Washington Rhodes of the Philadelphia Tribune; P. M. H. Savory and C. B. Powell of the New York Amsterdam Star-News; the Rev. A. Clayton Powell, editor of the People's Voice; Roy Wilkins of the Crisis—all these would be immediate candidates for the solitary cell or the concentration camp.
Germany in this war has drawn the color line
✓
even in the prison camps. Hans Habe, a refugee Hungarian who fought for France and was captured by the Germans, told the story of his experiences in an American magazine after escaping from his jailers. He was quartered at Dieuze along with a large detachment of captured French Negro troops.
“We arrived at the camp in Dieuze,” Habe wrote in The Nation. “Here, as in all German prison camps, the Negroes were immediately isolated. Barbed wire was strung around their barracks. No white man was allowed to converse with a black. Our own shelters were miserable enough; those of the Negroes, crowded into a narrow space, were much worse. Our food, though insufficient, was princely in comparison with that given to the Negroes, who practically starved. Hundreds of them fell sick, but were not cared for.”
Under Nazi rule there have been thousands of executions and imprisonments in unspeakable jails and concentration camps. More than 1,700,000 Poles have been transported to Germany to work at forced labor. At least 1,260,000 French war prisoners have been made actual slaves in Germany, while the able-bodied people of France have been compelled to labor long hours in mines and munitions plants to feed the German war machine.
Julius Streicher, editor of Der Sturmer, Hitler’s anti-Semitic and anti-Negro newspaper, says:“The emancipation of the Jews and the liberation of the black slaves are the two crimes of civilization committed by the plutocrats in the last few centuries.” But white or black, conquered people become slaves under Hitler.
We can be a mighty force
Some Americans say that it makes no difference who wins the war. Dorie Miller doesn’t say that. Joe Louis doesn’t say that. Most of the 13,000,000 loyal Negro citizens know that America is fighting not only to live, but to live more fully. Because we have known the weight of chains, because we have known the helpless-’ ness of bondage, we can be a mighty force in this nation’s fight for freedom.
This war, said Vice President Wallace in his great speech of May 8, 1942, is not a war for the preservation of outmoded ways of living but a crusade for the common man.
“Through the leaders of the Nazi revolution,” said the Vice President, “Satan now is trying to lead the common man of the whole world back into slavery and darkness. For the stark truth is that the violence preached by the Nazis is the devil’s own religion of darkness. So also is the doctrine that one race or one class is by heredity superior and that all other races or classes are supposed to be slaves.”
But darkness shall not prevail.
“The people,” said Mr. Wallace, “are on the march toward even fuller freedom than the most fortunate peoples of the earth have hitherto enjoyed. ... I say that the century on which
we are entering—the century which will come out of this war—can be and must be the century of the common man. . . . The people’s revolution is on the march, and the devil and all his angels cannot prevail against it.”
Recently the Christian Review, the religious journal edited by the Rev. L. M. Smith in Philadelphia, recalled the triumphs of America’s Negro athletes at the Olympic Games and the insults that were heaped upon them by the German propaganda machine.
“Hitler,” the editorial said prophetically, “will see some new ‘Black Auxiliaries.’ Negroes have been trained in the rudiments and sciences of war and it is likely that some Negroes will see action in Berlin. . . . These Negroes will be wearing the insignia of the United States and will conduct themselves as champions. The Negro of America stands ready to bring new victories to his native land. And he will do it despite all the propaganda of the German and Japanese machines.”
We already know something about champions. One cool summer night in 1938, under the arc lights at Yankee Stadium, our champion knocked out the German champion in one round. Sergeant Joe Louis is now a champion in an army of champions.
Joe Louis doesn’t talk much, but he talks truly. He talks for 13,000,(XX) Negro American citizens, for all American citizens, when he says:
“We’re going to do our part, and we’ll win ’cause we’re on God’s side.”Negro Americans TodayWe’ve come a long way


11
TWO AGES: Slaves dragging their chains through the streets of Washington just before the Civil War (from a contemporary engraving), and Negro boys of today studying the graven counte-
nance of the Liberator at the Lincoln Memorial. The Emancipation Proclamation, signed 80 years ago during the stress of another great war, made them free Americans.For many years we have picked the cotton, done the housework, carried on strong shoulders the work-day burden. Beyond these limited opportunities there are now new horizons.LAWYER
POSTMAN
We are not ashamed of working with our hands, progressing world now offers many of us a chance of an honest day’s work, honestly done. But a to prove ourselves in varied jobs and occupations.
NURSESURGEON
SHIPYARD WORKER
FIREMAN
POLICE LIEUTENANT
EMPLOYER AND STENOGRAPHER
DRESSMAKERFACTORY INSPECTOR
These are the things we do, these and many more. We are doctors and lawyers; we are the skilled and unskilled who man the war industries; we are the clerical help and the white-coated porters; we are—Americans. These opportunities and the promise of still greater opportunities in the future are our stake in America.
AIRCRAFT WORKER
PULLMAN PORTER
ENGRAVER
GOVERNMENT WORKERfl
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dO1---

WONT
HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF NEGROES are now employed in the factories and plants which are busily producing war materials. This girl at her sewing machine is helping to give America’s
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.
answer to the Axis. She is making parachutes to save the lives of our intrepid combat fliers. The factory is owned by Eddie Anderson, Negro radio star better known as “Rochester.”¡1
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WE HAVE MADE GREAT STRIDES in
higher education. These are home economics students at Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical Institute.
♦
THESE STUDENTS at Tuskegee Institute are doing plant research. Dr. George Washington Carver, eminent scientist, teaches at Tuskegee.THERE WERE 1,643 STUDENTS in Negro colleges	in	years.	This young man is a law student	pre-
1916. By 1941 the number had grown	to	paring	for his classroom work at Howard	Uni-
40,000—thus increasing 24 times over in	25	versity	in Washington, D. C.CHEMISTRY STUDENT AT ATLANTA UNIVERSITY. There are now approximately 100 universities and colleges devoted exclusively to Negro education
in this country. Ever since Emancipation, as we all realize, education has been the keystone of race progress.THE RESERVE OFFICERS’ TRAINING CORPS AT TUSKEGEE	pioneer educator. Many of these cadets will
INSTITUTE. In the background is a statue of	see active war service as officers in the United
Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee and States Army.DR. G. W. CARVER, GRAND OLD MAN OF PLANT SCIENCES
E. FRANKLIN FRAZIER, FAMOUS SCHOLAR AND HOWARD PROFESSOR
WALTER WHITE, VETERAN LEADER AND'N.A.A.C.P. HEAD
President Roosevelt says:
“The steady progress of our Negro citizens during the three-quarters of a century that have elapsed since their emancipation emphasizes what can be accomplished by free men in a free country. Moreover, their achievement in art, letters, sciences, and public service during a brief 75 years of freedom should give all Americans renewed determination to marshal all our strength to maintain and perpetuate our priceless heritage of free institutions . . . MAY I EXPRESS CONFIDENT HOPE THAT A RACE WHICH HAS ACHIEVED SO MUCH IN SO FEW YEARS MAY GO FORWARD TO EVEN NOBLER THINGS IN THE GENERATIONS AHEAD."PAUL ROBESON’S SONG CARRIES OUR MUSIC ACROSS THE WORLD
JUSTICE JANE BOLIN, ONLY NEGRO WOMAN ON COURT BENCH
CHARLES S. JOHNSON,
SOCIOLOGIST
FROM FISK UNIVERSITY
Hitler says:
“From time to time it is demonstrated . . . that
for the first time here or there a Negro has become a lawyer, teacher, even clergyman, or even a leading opera tenor or something of that kind ... It does not dawn upon this depraved bourgeois world that here one has actually to do with a sin against all reason; that it is A CRIMINAL ABSURDITY TO TRAIN A BORN HALF-APE UNTIL ONE BELIEVES A LAWYER HAS BEEN MADE OF HIM . . . FOR IT IS TRAINING EXACTLY AS THAT OF A POODLE, and not a scientific ‘education.’ The same trouble and care, applied to intelligent races, would fit each individual a thousand times better for the same achievements.”WE HAVE OUR OWN PRESS. There are more than 200 Negro newspapers in this country. Editors and publishers pictured on this page (right to left) represent the New York Amsterdam Star-News, Baltimore Afro-American, Philadelphia Tribune, Chicago Defender, Kansas City Call, and Pittsburgh Courier.
P. M. H. SAVORY
CARL MURPHY
LUCIUS HARPER
P. L. PRATTIS
E. WASHINGTON RHODES
CHESTER FRANKLINOur newspapers are free—like the rest of the what they believe. They represent an invest-American press—to say what they think, print ment of $4,000,000 in buildings and equipment.
CARTOONIST AT WORK	THIS IS A SPORTS EDITORFrom the humblest beginnings
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... out of our deepest need we have built the Negro Church-
STORE FRONT CHURCH IN WASHINGTON, D. C.
YOUTHFUL WORSHIPERS IN A CATHOLIC CHURCHAN EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH IN CHICAGO
OUR NATION IS AT WAR. This war will decide whether the Christian Church as an institution will survive. This war will decide whether Negro Americans will have the right to continue their march to freedom or will sink into slavery.
There can be no question as to where anyone of us stands in this grave world crisis. The democracy which the United Nations fight to preserve has its deep fountain in the principles of Jesus Christ. Our Nation is builded on Christian principles. WE STAND BEHIND OUR NATION AND OUR PEOPLE FOR VICTORY OVER HITLER AND SLAVERY.
Because we know the great stake involved in this war, we have lost no time in throwing the full weight of the Negro church behind the task of mobilizing the Negro people for victory. That is why we declared to the President of the United States on February 17, 1942:
"WE PLEDGE EVERY SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL RESOURCE AT OUR COMMAND IN SUPPORT OF OUR COUNTRY IN THE IDEALS OF FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY . . . ”*
*From an address by the Rev. IF. H. Jernagin, president of the Fraternal Council of Negro Churches of AmericaOn the landThe Negro farmer’s life improves steadily with Government help
THE NEGRO FARMER IN THE SOUTH, like the poor white farmer, has been the victim of the single crop. Cotton is a cash crop but cotton planted straight to the shanty door not only bleeds the soil but makes the farmer buy much of the food he might grow on his own acres. The Federal Government has made progress in creating a
healthy small farming population out of exhausted land and exhausted people. This is done by loans, by adjustment of farm debt, by teaching modern farming methods. Where the furrows once ran up to the dooryard, you now see vegetable gardens to feed the farm family, hay and corn crops, chickens, pigs, and cows.SEVEN YEARS OF THE FARM SECURITY ADMINISTRATION’S PROGRAM have prepared the small farming population for the vital job of increasing food production for the war. A survey at the end of 1941 showed that those who had been on the
FSA program for more than a year have doubled their food production. For 1942 FSA farmers pledged an increase of 1,150,000,000 pounds of milk over 1941, 235,000,000 pounds of pork, 34,000,000 pounds of beef, 77,000,000 dozen eggs, and a similar increase in vegetables. There are 683,327 Negro farm operators in. the United States. Some 95 percent live in the Southern States. They have shared generously in the Federal Government’s program to aid the farmer. The Farm Security Administration has made 60,440 loans to Negro farmers. These loans total about $50,000,000. Negroes represent 21 percent of the farm operators in the Southern States; they have received 20.9 percent of loans in that area. While the farmer learns how to get the most out of his land, his wife learns how to preserve food by pressure cooking and canning and the family lays aside the surplus from its vegetable garden for the winter. Left: farmer paying back a part of his loan. Below: the old shanty and the new home built with a Government loan.CUTTING A SLICE OF HIS OWN HOME-CURED HAM IN THE SMOKEHOUSE
PLENTY: HOME-RAISED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES READY FOR THE WINTERTHE YOUNG GENERATION ON THE LAND: In the 17
Southern States during the year 1915 only 58 percent of the Negro children between 6 and 14 were enrolled in school. By the school year 1939-40, some 85.9 percent of the children
between 5 and 17—a much wider age range—were regularly in attendance. There were 2,174,260 in elementary school and 254,580 in high school. The number of youngsters in high school has more than doubled in 10 years.
There is increasing care for the very young, which brings down disease and mortality rates. These nursery school children are getting their spoonful of cod-liver oil.
We stay longer in school. Ten years ago only 26.6 percent of the children went beyond the fourth grade. Now that figure has been raised to 37.5 percent.
And we increase our knowledge of the world by going to school more days a year. Ten years ago we attended an average of 97 days; now we attend 126 days.In the cityT
ONCE WE WERE A FARM PEOPLE, prisoners of the soil but friends of the soil, wakened in the morning by a country dawn, sweated at noon by a country sun. Now 6,450,000 of us live in citiesr
470.000	in New York alone, 280,000 in Chicago,
250.000	in Philadelphia, 190,000 in Washington,
165.000	in Baltimore. The city pavements are our children’s playground, the crowded areas our home. Jobs brought us to the city. There we built our churches, learned new ways, struggled for recognition. The city meant opportunity—opportunity for better education, opportunity for economic advancement. But though
the city meant opportunity, a place to work and live and play, it also meant—for many of us— bewilderment, hardship, overcrowding. We of the city, even more than those still on the land, feel the cycles of employment and unemployment. Too often we have been the last to be hired on the job and, when the times were bad, the first to be let go. During the depression of the nineteen thirties, thousands of us were able to survive, even to make progress, because a friendly Government, through the Work Projects Administration and the National Youth Administration, took a hand.
\The city is the glitter of Lenox Avenue in Harlem and the neon lights of State Street in Chicago. It is Beale Street and Central Avenue. It is the Armstrong Technical High School with its 1,300 students and the Abyssinian Baptist Church with
its 13,000 members. It is the Regal Theatre and the Savoy Ballroom. But it is also the grim tenement with its crumbling wood and stone, the overpopulated lodging house and high rents, the back street and the long ride to and from work.city areas, approximately 40,600 are or will be occupied by Negro tenants. Although Negroes are about one-tenth of the population, the Government is assigning them about one-third of the new homes—because our need is greater.
This, too, is the city, the “kitchenette,” home in one room. In 1937 the United States Government started a slum-clearance program. The object was to provide decent homes for poor people. Of the 121,500 homes contracted for in
This is one of the great Government housing projects, the Ida B. Wells Homes in Chicago. It cost $9,638,000 and 1,662 families live there. Below is a picture taken inside one of their comfortable apartments. Other famous housing projects include the John Hope Homes in Atlanta,
Harlem River Houses and South Jamaica Homes in New York, Poindexter Village in Columbus, James Weldon Johnson Homes in Philadelphia, Terrace Village in Pittsburgh, LaFitte in New Orleans, Beecher Terrace in Louisville, College Hill in Chattanooga.BATHROOM IN THE FREDERICK DOUGLASS HOUSING PROJECT, WASHINGTON, D. C.There were about 30,000 Negro-owned stores in this country in 1939. The number has grown since. Sales for the same year totaled $71,000,000. There are eleven banks owned and operated by
Negroes. There are forty-one member companies of the powerful National Negro Insurance Association; they have 2,800,000 policies and $422,000,000 worth of insurance in force.C. C. SPAULDING
JUDGE HERMAN E. MOORE
CLAUDE BARNETT
DR. ABRAM L. HARRIS
DR. F. D. PATTERSON


PAUL R WILLIAMS
CARL HANSBERRY
JUDGE EDWARD HENRY
THESE LEADERS: C. C. Spaulding is president of the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company. Paul R. Williams is a noted architect. Carl Hansberry is the Chicago real-estate man who fought residential restrictive covenants to the Supreme Court. Edward Henry is on the bench of the Municipal Court in Philadelphia. Herman
E. Moore is judge of the United States District Court in the Virgin Islands. Claude Barnett is head of the Associated Negro Press and is now assistant to Secretary of Agriculture Wickard. Dr. Abram L. Harris is a professor at Howard University and a famous economist. Dr. F. D. Patterson is president of Tuskegee Institute.

Ì 3THE GREAT TRADITION: Out of New Orleans, out of Beale Street, out of tinny pianos and levee songs and the rhythm of dark feet dancing has come our music. It is a mouth organ on a street corner, it is a steamboat whistle, it is an all-night party in Harlem, it is laughter and an infectious
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drumbeat. It is Louis Armstrong (below) and his trumpet. It is W. C. Handy and the plain-tive blues. It is barrel house and boogie woogie and show business. It is a slave song in a cotton field and a sorrow song at a burying ground. It is American music—our music.



W. C. HANDY
DUKE ELLINGTON
KATHERINE DUNHAM
TODD DUNCAN
CAB CALLOWAY
COUNT BASIE
MAXINE SULLIVAN
BILL ROBINSONRICHARD WRIGHT
THE SERIOUS NEGRO ARTIST is now coming into his own. Such novelists as Richard Wright, Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, and such poets as the late James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen are already well known to American readers. On the concert stage Marian Anderson, Dorothy Maynor, Paul Robeson, Roland Hayes, and others have brought the finest expression of the human voice to audiences all over the world. Dean Dixon is a well known symphony orchestra conductor. There are many rising Negro artists including Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, and Charles Alston. Richmond Barthe and Augusta Savage are able sculptors, and E. Simms Campbell is an outstanding cartoonist. There are many other important personages among Negro artists, including the artists of the theatre and motion pictures. Recognition of their unique talents is steadily increasing.
RICHMOND BARTHE
HALE WOODRUFFSOME OF THE GREATEST American athletes have been and are Negroes. Our roll call of stars is long and dazzling. Who can forget such football All-Americans as Fritz Pollard of Brown, Duke Slater of Iowa, Paul Robeson of Rutgers, Brud Holland of Cornell, and Kenny Washington of U. C. L. A.? Or the Harlem Globe Trotters, world champion professional basketball team in 1940? Our track stars have been setting records ever since the days of John B. Taylor and Howard Drew, and our boxers have held championships in every division of pugilistic competition.
CORNELIUS JOHNSON OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, OLYMPIC JUMPER
THE PEERLESS JESSE OWENS RUNNING IN THE OLYMPIC GAMES AT BERLIN IN 1936

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CHAMPION JOE LOUIS IN ACTION
HENRY ARMSTRONG, ANOTHER CHAMPION
WILLIAM WATSON OF MICHIGAN
SATCHEL PAIGE, FIREBALL PITCHERTHIS IS THE MAN WHOSE HAND HITLER REFUSED TO SHAKE. Jesse Owens won three events at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, and was the outstanding individual star. Archie Williams, John Woodruff, Cornelius Johnson also won their events and swelled the points which brought victory to the United States in track and field events. Hitler
greeted “Aryan” winners in his private apartment in the Berlin stadium so he would not have to shake hands with our Negro victors. There was a different story in England when the Olympic team went there to compete in the London games. Here Jesse Owens is signing his autograph for British schoolboys.We go forward in health
THE DEATH RATE AMONG NEGROES HAS GONE DOWN REMARKABLY IN THIRTY YEARS’ TIME. In 1911
insurance statisticians placed the death rate at 18.5 per thousand people. In 1930 U. S. Census figures placed it at 16.5 and in 1940 at 13.9 per thousand. This represents not only advancements In medicine, but more hospital beds
(though not enough), better care, and an increase in government-financed clinics and health services. The rate of sickness and death among our children also has been greatly lowered. It is, however, still too high, and compares unfavorably with the rate among our white neighbors. But we march ahead.
OPERATING ROOM IN PROVIDENT HOSPITAL, CHICAGO
There are 110 Negro hospitals in the United States. Some 22 of these are fully approved and 5 provisionally approved by the American College of Surgeons. Such hospitals as 50-year-old Provident in Chicago, Harlem in New York, and Mercy and Frederick Douglass in Philadelphia are well known in the North. In the South there are 14 approved hospitals; all have Negro doctors and nurses on their staffs. These include such institutions as Flint-Goodridge in New Orleans, the 1,500-bed Veterans’ Hospital at Tuskegee, McRae Sanitorium in Arkansas, the excellent Freedmen’s Hospital in Washington, D. C. Despite our advances, the need for more hospitals is an imperative one that must be dealt with after the war. There is now one hospital bed for 1,000 Negroes as against one bed for every 110 whites.
ONE OF THE REASONS FOR BETTER CHILD HEALTH—A "WELL BABY" CLINIC
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There were 3,805 Negro doctors in the United and Howard at Washington. Below: doctor States in 1930. There are two Class A medical	and nurse taking this youngster’s first picture—
schools for Negro students, Meharry at Nashville his X-ray picture.The young generation in the city
THERE ARE MANY EXCELLENT HIGH SCHOOLS and
elementary schools in the cities. Booker T. Washington in Atlanta is the largest Negro high school. The building above is Armstrong Technical High School in Washington. Students in the city schools, like all young Americans, are now all doing their part to help win the war.WORK ON ENGINES IS PART OF VOCATIONAL TRAINING
THIS IS A CHEMISTRY CLASS IN A HIGH-SCHOOL LABORATORY
THREE BOYS AT SCHOOL LUNCH IN NEW YORKI
We are moving ahead
Members of the Committee on Fair Employment Practice conferring with the President. Dr. Malcolm S. McLean, President of Hampton Institute and chairman of the committee, is not present. Left to right: Mark Ethridge, Earl B. Dickerson, John Brophy, Milton P. Webster, David Sarnoif.In June of 1941 President Roosevelt issued his famous order directing that all defense contracts contain a provision obligating the contractor not to discriminate against any worker “ because of race, creed, color, or national origin.” Since that time thousands of Negroes have been hired in the aircraft industry; additional thousands are pushing war production in iron and steel, in ship construction on both coasts, in automobile plants, in meat packing and rubber, in many other industries. There is nothing new about
Negroes doing skilled work: Census figures twelve years ago listed 12,000 brickmasons, 32,000 carpenters, 2,000 electricians, 8,000 machinists, 27,(XX) mechanics, 18,000 painters, 4,000 chemical workers, 25,000 iron and steel workers, 63 architects, and 351 technical engineers. But the demands of war production and defense training classes are swelling vastly the number of workers in skilled jobs, and there is a determined and succeeding drive to upgrade qualified men and women already in the plants.LESTER B. GRANGER
WILLARD S. TOWNSEND
WALTER HARDIN

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH
CAPTAIN HUGH N. MULZAC	DR. CARTER G. WOODSON
THESE LEADERS: Lester B. Granger is secretary of the National Urban League. Willard S. Townsend is head of the Lnited Transport Service Employees and the only Negro on the executive board of the C. I. O. Walter Hardin is international representative for the United Automo-
bile Workers. A. Philip Randolph is president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Hugh N. Mulzac is captain of the new 10,000-ton Liberty vessel Booker T. Washington. Dr. Carter G. Woodson is director of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
WORKERS IN AIRPLANE PLANTCONGRESSMAN ARTHUR MITCHELL Of ILLINOIS
ROBERT C. WEAVER AND HIS SECRETARY
MRS. ROOSEVELT AND MRS. MARY Mc L. BETHUNE
There are many Negro officiais in State, city, and Federal governments. Mrs. Bethune, president of Bethune-Cookman College, is Director of Negro Affairs for the National Youth Administration. Dr. Weaver is assistant to the- Director of Operations in the War Manpower Commission. Justice Paige is a member of the Court of Special Sessions in New York. Dean Pickens is Administrative Aide at the U. S. Treasury.
WILLIAM H. HASTIE, CIVILIAN AIDE TO THE SECRETARY OF WAR, AND UNDER SECRETARY PATTERSONEXECUTIVE ORDER 8802
FAIR EMPLOYMENT PRACTICE IN DEFENSE INDUSTRIES
.....I do hereby reaffirm the policy of the United
States that there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or Government because of race, creed, color, or national origin, and I do hereby declare that it is the duty of employers and of labor organizations, in furtherance of said policy and of this order, to provide for the full and equitable participation of all workers in defense industries, without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin....*
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE WHITE HOUSE June 25, 1941
* Excerpt from Executive Order 8802
:*4 O.	JIn the Armed Forces
BRIGADIER GENERAL BENJAMIN O. DAVIS, HIGHEST RANKING NEGRO OFFICER
BECAUSE WE HAVE COME A LONG WAY, because we are proud of our achievements in a few short years, because our future like the future of all freedom lovers depends upon the triumph of democracy, we are now fighting shoulder to shoulder with our fellow Americans in the present world conflict. We already have our own roll-call of heroes and martyrs. A Negro, Robert H. Brooks of Sadieville, Kentucky, was the first war casualty of the United States Armored Forces. Private Brooks, son of a sharecropper family, was killed near Fort Stotsenburg in the Philippines on December 8, 1941. Since that time the parade ground at Fort Knox, Kentucky, has been named Brooks Field in his honor.NEGRO COLOR GUARD AT CAMP UPTON, NEW YORK
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Civilian into soldier: the sergeant teaches the	in camps from one end ot the country to the other
private to handle his gun. Thousands ol Negroes	are learning to use the tools ol modern war.
AMERICA FURNISHES ITS TROOPS WITH THE VERY LATEST IN EQUIPMENT. THIS IS A GAS-MASK DRILL

THE DRILLING IS TOUGH, BUT IT'S A TOUGH WAR. HERE TROOPS CHARGE ACROSS BROKEN COUNTRY IN OPEN FORMATION
THIS OUTFIT UNDER FULL PACK IS BOARDING A TRANSPORT
Our troops are now stationed all across the world, in the Orient, in England, in North Africa, in all the far places where men in the American uniform carry the battle to the enemy. They are in every branch of the Army: Air Corps, Infantry, Artillery, Armored Forces, Engineers, Cavalry, Quartermaster Corps. Selective Service calls us from civilian life in exact proportion to our percentage of the national population which is approximately one-tenth. There are now two Negro divisions. Man\- regiments are Negro-officered. There are Negro doctors, Negro nurses, Negro chaplains. There are hundreds of Negroes in the various officers training schools—serious, hard-working, well-educated candidates. Fliers are being made at the Basic and Advanced Flying School at Tuskegee, Alabama. Our troops are making a record for themselves which will not only equal but surpass the distinguished record made by Negro Americans in the first World War.





The Negro soldier has a proud tradition. There were Negro soldiers in the Revolutionary War, in the War of 1812, in the Mexican War, in the Civil War. During the Spanish-American War the celebrated Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and the Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry, carried much of the burden of the assault on El Caney and San Juan Hill. More than 400,000 Negro soldiers served in the World War. Among the regiments famous for gallantry in combat were the Eighth Illinois which became the 370th Infantry and fought as part of the French “Blue Devil” division, and the 15th New York which became the 369th Infantry and fought as part of the French “Red Hand” division. Four Negro regiments were awarded the Croix de Guerre. The record of the 369th itself is one to inspire all Americans: it was under fire 191 days in France, suffered casualties in killed and wounded of 1,500 men, never lost a prisoner, never lost a foot of ground in defensive operation and took every objective except one in offense operations. That time there was a lack of artillery support. Some record. Some regiment.
ENGINEERS CONSTRUCTING A TEMPORARY BRIDGE IN NEW GUINEA
GOLIATHS OF MODERN WARFARE: THESE MEN MAKE UP THE CREW OF ONE OF AMERICA'S MOST MODERN TANKSTHESE SOLDIERS ARE LEARNING TO SEND AND RECEIVE MESSAGES IN CODE AT THE TUSKEGEE FLYING SCHOOL
THESE OFFICER CANDIDATES STAND AT ATTENTION. THEY ARE MEMBERS OF THE 99TH PURSUIT SQUADRONTHE FLYING CADETS GET READY TO TAKE OFF
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WILLIAM BALDWIN, FIRST NEGRO TO BE INDUCTED IN THE NAVY UNDER.THE NEW ENLISTMENT PROGRAM
ADMIRAL C W NIMITZ DECORATING DORIE MILLER, HERO OF PEARL HARBOR, WITH THE NAVY CROSS
COAST GUARDSMAN FROM THE PEA ISLAND STATION NEAR NORFOLK WHICH IS MANNED ENTIRELY BY NEGROES
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For a number of years the United States Navy permitted the enlistment of Negroes only as mess attendants and in a few other capacities. This policy was changed on April 7, 1942, when Secretary of the Navy Knox announced that thereafter Negroes would be accepted as seamen in the Naval Reserve and given duty which included service on mine sweepers, tankers, and in shore establishments. Contingents of these seamen train at Camp Smalls, Great Lakes Naval Training Station, which is named for Captain Robert Smalls, Negro naval hero of the Civil War.
Sources of Photographs: Acme: A. P.; Black Hone; Harris if Etiing: International; N. Y. Public Library Picture Collection; P. M.: M. Smith: Time. Inc.; U. S. Army Air Corps; U. S. Army Signal Corps; U. S. Farm Security Administration: U. S. Office of ITar Information; U. S. Navy; Valente: Tandamm.JOE LOUIS SAYS: "WE’LL WIN 'CAUSE WE’RE ON GOD’S SIDE
Additional copies may be had upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of IVar Information, Washington, D. C.OF tüJNOis 4
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