Eric Foner: Double V

Created
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:00
Updated
Fri, 17/02/2023 - 00:00
While Blacks were fighting for the Double V – victory over fascism abroad and Jim Crow at home – the federal government’s recruitment posters promoted the idea that military success would restore the prewar world, grounded in traditions of work, family and, implicitly, segregation. (Senator James Eastland of Mississippi was quite candid about this: on the Senate floor he declared that white soldiers were ‘fighting to maintain white supremacy’.)