Post World War II (1940-1960)

"Are we to say to the world and, much more importantly, to each other that this is a land of the free except for the Negroes; that we have no class or caste system, no ghettos, no master race except with respect to Negroes?"
- President John F. Kennedy, Television Address to the American People, June 1962

Even after fighting a war overseas for their country, African-American veterans were shocked to find that they had not won the battle for their rights on their own soil. This injustice angered black veterans and ignited the Civil Rights movement. With the advent of the Cold War, America's democratic principles were considered hypocritical due to the discrimination in the South.

Veterans Return Home

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"Nobody Round Here Calls Me Citizen."
Source: Robert Gwathmey, 1943
"When blacks came home after the war, whites were prepared to "put them back in their place....But the war had changed their attitudes about Jim Crow...Many of the leaders of black voter registration drives in 1946 were black veterans" 
- PBS, The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

"During World War II African Americans increased their call for political and social equality...they argued that they had served their country in military and therefore deserved the full rights of citizenship."
 - "Life Upon these Shores", Henry Gates, director of Afro-American Research at Harvard University



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Source: Chicago Defender, July 31, 1948

The World Listening 

Questioning America's Democratic Principles

"The existence of discrimination against minority groups in this country has an adverse effect on our relations with other countries. We are reminded over and over by some foreign newspapers and spokesmen,that our treatment of various minorities leaves much to be desired....Frequently we find it next to impossible to formulate a satisfactory answer to our critics in other countries." 
- Malcolm Ross Chairman of the Fair Employment Practices Committee, April 1946
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"Careful the Walls Have Ears"
September 11, 1965
Blacks Ask the World to Help 
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W.E.B. Du Bois, co-founder NAACP
Source: Winold Reiss, 1920

"Therefore, Peoples of the World, we American Negroes appeal to you; our treatment in America is not merely an internal question of the United States.  It is a basic problem of humanity; of democracy; of discrimination because of race and color; and as such it demands your attention and action.  No nation is so great that the world can afford to let it continue to be deliberately unjust, cruel and unfair toward its own citizens. " 
- W.E.B. Du Bois,co-founder NAACP, Speech to the United Nations 1947, "An Appeal to the World" 

Kennedy's Efforts and Assassination 

Source: President Kennedy's Civil Rights Speech 1963, Miller Center

"I think Johnson who succeeded Kennedy as President kind of harvested the sympathy [from President Kennedy's assassination]...it was the murder that galvanized the public opinion...for Johnson to pass the Civil Rights [legislation]"
- Phone interview, Robert Moses, Civil Rights activist, March 14, 2013