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Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Greatest Generation :: What nostalgia excludes :: Kevin Baker points out that many unpleasantries are ignored in our nostalgic view of the greatest generation: The triumph of the greatest generation ". . . did not come out of a Norman Rockwell painting. The America of the Second World War was a turbulent and often frightening place, characterized by immense social upheaval and dislocation. It might well have been true that the stranger sitting next to you in a restaurant felt the same way about things—unless, that is, he or she happened to be of a different race. Inasmuch as color was the deepest fissure in American society, it is not surprising that during the war we fractured most often along this line. "The most infamous case, of course, was the forced detention of some 110,000 Japanese-Americans in barren desert camps while their property was sold off for a pittance—and their sons formed some of the most decorated fighting units of the war. But racial hysteria was hardly restricted to Asian-Americans. In 1943 alone there were 242 race riots in 47 cities as the war sparked an epic migration of both poor Southern blacks and whites into urban ports and industrial centers. The worst was in Detroit, in 1943, where white mobs ended up roaming through the city’s downtown, shouting, “Here’s some fresh meat!” while they beat and shot any African-Americans they found—often with the help of the local police. Before it was all over, 34 people died, and pictures of the riot were gleefully plastered across the pages of Signal, Germany’s leading picture magazine, as proof that a “mongrel” country could not win the war. "Discrimination remained routine in all industries, with blacks making less money than whites for the same jobs, and with whites frequently refusing to work with them anyway. The great black labor leader A. Philip Randolph had to threaten to lead a massive protest march in Washington, D.C., before the Roosevelt administration would commit to equal pay for equal work on war projects. "Elsewhere, protests were not so availing. Mob assaults on black civilians and even soldiers continued throughout the Deep South, and the sad fact remains that the greatest generation was also the last lynching generation. --Kevin Baker, in American Heritage
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