5/18/2023 0 Comments Terms of enlistment bookThey were assigned to the 99th Pursuit Squadron in Illinois this was the first time the Army Air Corps opened its enlistment to African Americans.ĭespite African American soldiers' eagerness to fight in World War II, the same Jim Crow discrimination in society was practiced in every branch of the armed forces. WATCH: ' The Story of Us: World War II' on HISTORY Vault Discrimination in the MilitaryĪ group of Black men enlisting in the United States Army Air Corps in March 1941. The compromise represented the paradoxical experience that befell the 1.2 million African American men who served in World War II: They fought for democracy overseas while being treated like second-class citizens by their own country. Armed Forces as war intensified in Europe, FDR decided that Black men could register for the draft, but they would remain segregated and the military would determine the proportion of Blacks inducted into the service. Roosevelt to allow Black men the opportunity to register and serve in integrated regiments.Īlthough African Americans had participated in every conflict since the Revolutionary War, they had done so segregated, and FDR appointee Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, was not interested in changing the status quo. When the Selective Training and Service Act became the nation’s first peacetime draft law in September 1940, civil rights leaders pressured President Franklin D.
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