by Imani Perry
The March on Washington Movement was the brainchild of A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and Bayard Rustin, a pacifist organizer who worked with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, an international network of nonviolent social justice organizers. They planned a massive black-led “March on Washington” to protest segregation in the armed forces and wartime industries. The group had begun organizing in 1941. Their march was initially scheduled for July 1 of that year. However, a week before the planned date, President Roosevelt issued executive order 8802 establishing the Federal Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), and the organizers, out of respect for the president’s integrationist effort, canceled the march.
Roosevelt’s FEPC directed federal agents to accept black people in job training programs in defense plants and forbade discrimination by defense contractors. Although the March on Washington Movement’s national protest was canceled, similar protests were nevertheless held by local organizations in various cities. For example, in March 1941 somewhere between 3,500 and 5,000 people attended a mass protest in Kansas City, Kansas, against racial discrimination in the defense industry. After that event, both houses of the Kansas legislature passed a resolution banning discrimination in labor unions.8 Black political influence was growing and being exercised through the efforts of active members of black associations.
In 1943, the MOWM was still pushing the federal government to adopt racial equality. The movement’s conference in Chicago that year culminated with an interracial banquet honoring A. Philip Randolph. Randolph was strongly patriotic, but he continuously pressured the government to secure racial equality for African Americans. The MOWM called the banquet a rally for victory over Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini by “enforcing the Constitution and abolishing Jim Crow.” The political action of African Americans was the wind to their sails. Earlier that year in Detroit, the NAACP, other black associations, and the United Auto Workers supported a demonstration against racism in Detroit that 10,000 attended. This was promising for the MOWM organization, which was planning its own march against racism in Washington.
Attendees sang “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “God Bless America,” “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and a song that would become much more famous in the 1960s, “We Shall Not Be Moved.” The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had been singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at their gatherings for years, and it was even published in their newspaper the Messenger, but now in the midst of the war, the song was literally and figuratively encased in Americana and the new patriotic form of militant integrationism.
World War II was a watershed in American race relations. One million black men were drafted, and a half a million were stationed abroad.9 Another million African Americans at home worked in wartime industries.10 White workers panicked at this infusion of blackness into the labors of citizenship and militarism. And in many places they responded violently, with attacks on black soldiers and defense industry workers. But this backlash didn’t sway African Americans from wartime effort; they were fighting for the ideals of the nation: democracy, equality, and liberty, both at home and abroad.
Black schools were part of these efforts as well. In 1944, the Fort Valley State University student paper in Texas published a selection of poems from black college students fighting in the armed forces. They were printed under the heading “Lift Every Voice and Sing Said the Poet: Poems from Our Men in the Armed Forces.”
The first poem, “Jungle Paradise,” by Roy L. Rumph, tells of the discomforts of “New Guinea,” where Allied forces were stationed. New Guinea was colonized by the Dutch. The Japanese attacked it in 1941 and 1942 with the hope of making their way past it and advancing all the way to Australia. American forces were stationed in New Guinea and charged with halting Japan’s incursion. It was a particularly uncomfortable place for American soldiers, and many suffered from malaria and dysentery.
Rumph’s first stanza reads:
Out here in the jungles of New Guinea
It rains most every day
And the big mosquitos encountered here
Can carry a bunk away!
The poem concludes with:
So take me back to the U.S.A.
Let me hear the trolley bell
For this Godforsaken country
Is a substitute for hell!
There is no hint, in this poem at least, of identification with the colonized people of New Guinea, whose native land was being fought over by colonists and fascists. As such, it is a quite distinct articulation of black identity from what emerged in 1930s black leftist communities, although both used the anthem as a form of representation. This playful poem was not, like many others, an expression of global blackness. Instead it reads as simply, and humorously, American.
Following that poem there were two by Corporal Harrison E. Lee. The first is a love poem to a girlfriend left behind in the States, the other is called “The Forthcoming Day” and repeats “over the road to hell, we wished for the victory bell” a refrain finally altered to “over the road to hell, we can hear the victory bell.”11 That the road to victory, in war and in America, was “hell” was a much bolder testimony to black suffering than Johnson’s stony road and bitter rod. But the double V sentiment in this particular poem is submerged. Again, it is rather straightforward Americana.
“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was not in and of itself, however, an ode to the United States, even if it was placed in the midst of patriotic assertions. And it especially was not a war anthem. Johnson noted that his and Rosamond’s song was not bloodthirsty in the manner of other American anthems. That is true. But during World War II “Lift Every Voice and Sing” was caught up in the spirit of war. And this was yet another example of how black communities used the song distinctly from the authors’ intended purposes. It was the Johnson brothers’ song, but it was black America’s anthem.
In 1942 the Southern Sons recorded “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” with “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” as the B side. “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” was based upon contemporary folklore about a chaplain who was said to have uttered after the attack on Pearl Harbor, “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” suggesting that the bombing made even the meek and mild ready for war. The review of the Southern Sons record in the Dallas Morning News describes it as follows: “‘Praise the Lord’ . . . emerges as a real spiritual which is probably something like what composer Frank Loesser had in mind before the dance bands appropriated it and stylized it for dancing. Another good wartime spiritual, ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ is sung by the quintet on the reverse side.”12
Even the editors at Time interpreted “Lift Every Voice” as a feature of wartime Americana. In the September 14, 1942, issue, an article reads,
A thousand Negroes stood last week in a public park in Dallas singing to an orchestra’s accompaniment. On the program was a number entitled “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Called out Director A. H. Jackson: “How many of you know the song?” Almost every hand shot up.
Wherever Negroes gather in the U.S., hands rise just as quickly to such a question. To them “Lift Every Voice and Sing” is the No. 2 song to the national anthem. While white people bemoan the lack of suitable patriotic songs, even find fault with “The Star-Spangled Banner”’s annoying octave-and-a-half range, colored people have quietly adopted a rousing anthem of their own. . . . Timelier today than its author could have realized is its first chorus:
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us;
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.13
While the implication in the Time piece was that the victory being sought was abroad, African Americans were explicitly seeking victory both here and there. However, some black commentators believed that singing the anthem was a threat to this
goal. In response to such detractors, Peter Dana of Atlanta’s Daily World wrote, “James and Rosamond Johnson’s beautiful and moving song ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing,’ sometimes called the ‘National Negro Hymn’ and sometimes the ‘National Negro Anthem’—both erroneously—has been taking quite a beating in certain portions of the colored press, but on talking, singing, thinking and feeling national unity this reporter sees no reason why that fine and stirring song which would sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us, should appear to be a counter-force to unity or common national aspirations.”14
But even when “Lift Every Voice” was deployed in the most patriotic fashion possible, for African Americans it usually served the spirit of the Double V campaign. And that was difficult work. The contradiction between America’s self-conception as free and the reality of the unfreedom of its black citizenry was made manifest in the war, and extended in its aftermath. This was not a peculiarly southern problem. In the North, violent responses to efforts at residential integration were quite common. For example, in 1945, when a black family moved into the second floor of an old unpainted house on Throop Street in a Polish and Italian section of Chicago, five of their windows were immediately shattered, and “neighbors” threatened to burn their house down. This was simply one instance of many in which mob violence was the response to residential desegregation across the Midwest and Northeast. It was also consistent among white workers, who often struck to protest the hiring of black workers alongside them. Whiteness and its benefits were usually jealously guarded, notwithstanding the nation’s fight against Nazism.
Time reported on a Chicago white minister who responded uniquely and courageously to this violent incident:
Last week the Rev. Douglas Cedarleaf, 31, decided to take a stand. First, he preached a sermon, “Vandalism in Throop Street,” to his Erie Chapel Presbyterian Church [white] congregation [which included the Strongs]. Then he taught them the great Negro anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” And then he asked them to escort the Strongs home. Some 135 of the congregation’s 175 did. Throop Street heard them coming: they were all singing the anthem. At the Strongs’ doorstep they formed a circle. Curious neighbors leaning out of their windows saw the minister give the Strongs a Bible, heard him preach another sermon on tolerance.15
That Time published this story was a sign of the ascension of racial liberalism. Notably, this new racial liberalism entailed a rejection of Marxist or socialist critique, and even the social democratic impulses of the New Deal, and limited its progressivism to a stand against explicit racial discrimination. That is to say, it is worthy of note that the story did not include a discussion of the economic exploitation of black tenants, or the suppression of their wages relative to white people. The problems of black Chicagoans were compounded by residential segregation but by no means limited to it. And even the problems of residential segregation were as much economic problems as anything else. White residents saw accumulation in the value of their homes the whiter their neighborhoods remained. And excluding black families from them, as well as the crowding and ghettoization in black communities, made it extremely difficult for black families to accumulate wealth. So while racial liberalism was in some ways a dramatic step forward in the expression of American values, it fundamentally ignored the fact that class and economic power were not simply important but fundamental to how black people had been kept at the bottom of the social order. They were usually the last hired and the first fired. They were the most exploited and occupied the least respected jobs and neighborhoods.
However, African Americans could see some tangible gains in the era of racial liberalism. The United Negro College Fund was established in 1943, and through the collaboration of a number of historically black colleges and donors it kept the doors open to many institutions that had fallen into financial crisis during the Depression. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was elected to Congress in 1944. And black union membership rose from 150,000 to 1.25 million between 1935 and the end of the war.
Victory at home nevertheless remained a difficult task. And black associational life was filled with discussions about how to achieve it. The Georgia 1945 NAACP convention, attended by Martin Luther King Sr., who was both an NAACP member and a member of the Colored Elks Club, was titled “Achieving Democracy in a Post-war Georgia.” Conference attendees sang “America” and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the first day of the gathering. They began with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” on both the second and third day. On the third and final day, Martin Luther King Sr. provided the invocation, and NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, who was then in the midst of executing Charles Hamilton Houston’s plan to equalize and desegregate the South, delivered the keynote address about legal paths to integration. Everyone present knew arduous work confronted them. The country would not embrace them easily, notwithstanding the noble service of African American servicemen and women during the war.
A 1961 short story by Herbert L. Shore published in Phylon (a journal founded by DuBois at Atlanta University) retrospectively rendered the doubleness of blackness that made postwar celebrations of victory over fascism abroad something of a fool’s errand for black Americans. It is told from the perspective of Ben, a white lieutenant and second-generation immigrant who is haunted by the death of one of his fellow navy men, a black man from his hometown referred to as “Lijah.” Ben goes to Lijah’s family to offer his condolences. In the midst of his visit, other visitors arrive and tell the family that a police officer has just killed a black boy for stealing a little bit of coal. They describe a procession from the morgue to the city hall in protest, and Ben saw it, too, in his mind’s eye:
They were tramping on the pavement, and the blue-coated men stood still and silent. Ahead was the city hall, white and clean in the sunshine. The cars stopped at street corners, while the crowd passed. Then they began to slow down, barely moving, forming a huge throng before the city hall. The coffin was passed hand over hand above the heads of the crowd until it came to rest on the steps of the city hall and suddenly the crowd was bareheaded. A Voice began, “Lift every voice and sing, / Let earth and heaven ring . . .” And others joined, swelling the sound to a hymn of defiance.
This domestic death in the midst of a story of wartime death frees Ben to tell Lijah’s parents how Lijah died but also how he lived under the U.S. flag, segregated on a warship, where he was routinely insulted and debased in the midst of the fight against fascism.16 In this story, the anthem is not situated in the midst of Americana. Instead it is a “hymn of defiance” toward American racism and hypocrisy. Ben is forced to painfully confront this hypocrisy. Lijah’s parents already know it all too well. It is the story of their lives as black Americans.
Strategic conflict in black activist circles over how to pursue civil rights grew tense in the postwar period. DuBois’s difficulties became symbolic of that conflict. In the early 1930s he opened the pages of the Crisis to wide-ranging discussions of the utility of Marxist thought, racially based economic cooperatives, and other leftist institutions participating in the fight against race prejudice. This led to increased antagonism between him and his colleagues at the NAACP, especially the moderate executive director who succeeded Johnson in 1930, Walter White. DuBois first resigned in 1934, attributing his departure to a protest over the NAACP’s lack of a coherent economic policy for black folks during the Depression. He accepted an appointment as chair of the Sociology Department at Atlanta University, where he had already been teaching as a visiting professor during the winter of 1934. At Atlanta he founded and edited Phylon from 1940 to 1944. There, too, he published his most important historical work, Black Reconstruction.
In 1944, at seventy-six years old, DuBois accepted an invitation to return to the NAACP to serve in the newly created post of director of special research. Although the organization was still under Walter White’s leadership, the NAACP was addressing the labor issues that DuBois
considered paramount as well as legal discrimination. Even the court strategy of its legal branch focused increasingly on the economic consequences of segregation. In rehiring DuBois, the board seemed to recognize that his economic, labor, and global political concerns mirrored those of the black community writ large. Clearly, DuBois thought that his return meant that the organization would both study and bring pressure to bear on the U.S. government regarding the coming postwar settlement and how it would affect black peoples in Africa and the diaspora. When the United Nations held its founding conference in San Francisco, DuBois represented the NAACP there and served as a consultant to the U.S. delegation. During this period, he also wrote two more books that spoke directly to these concerns: Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945) and The World and Africa: An Inquiry into the Part Which Africa Has Played in World History (1947). Both criticized European nations and the United States for their colonial and neocolonial ravaging of Africa and Asia.
Because of the crises caused by the Depression and World War II, there weren’t any Pan-African congresses for the eighteen years between 1927 and 1945. But in 1945, George Padmore, an Antiguan Trinidadian Marxist, reignited the tradition and organized a Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England. The participants, recognizing DuBois’s central role in the development of the Pan-African Movement, declared him the president of the congress in 1945. However, this congress differed from previous ones. There were more African representatives than in the past, and this time they didn’t come as individuals but as representatives of political parties. The same was true of the participants from the West Indies. Delegates at this gathering, in general, were more radical in their assertions than delegates of the past congresses. They wanted an end to colonialism and the exploitation of African resources by European countries, and they discussed tactics for the destruction of colonialism and resource exploitation, including strikes and boycotts. Trade unionists, students, and socialists in attendance pushed the congress to be more outspoken as a collective body. Delegates from the Caribbean and Africa asserted the right to elect their own governments, arguing (as DuBois had fifty years earlier) that political power was essential to ending racial domination.
