African Americans on Pittsburgh’s World War II Home Front: A Lesson

A coal miner waiting to go underground at the Pittsburgh Coal Company's Montour No. 4 mine, near Pittsburgh, November 1942. Photograph by John Collier Jr., Library of Congress.

This lesson belongs to a series on the World War II home front in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one of the nation's American World War II Heritage Cities. Using photographs, a background reading and wartime newspaper excerpts, it looks at what African Americans in Pittsburgh experienced and contributed during the war, the discrimination they faced, and the Double V campaign launched by the Pittsburgh Courier.

Essential question: How did African Americans in Pittsburgh contribute to the home front effort and to the civil rights movement?

By the numbers

• In the 1940s, Pittsburgh's African American population grew from 62,000 to 86,000, not counting the surrounding mill towns. Black residents made up 8.2% of the city in the 1930 census and about 12% in 1950 — while the city's population as a whole grew just 1.4% from 1930 to 1950.
• 75 cents an hour was the pay offered for furnace men in a 1943 Courier ad from the Duquesne Smelting Corporation — worth $17.39 in today's money, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index, when the lesson was written.

A reader named Willa Smith, writing to the Courier in March 1942, said the paper's Double V emblem had struck her powerfully: it mattered deeply to Black Americans, it showed the world their goals, and it meant more to them than the drives urging people to buy war stamps and bonds.

Background reading: living and working in wartime Pittsburgh

Where people lived. African Americans came to the Pittsburgh area for work, both before and during the war. Terrace Village, a 3,000-unit housing project, opened in 1940 in the Hill District; about 40 percent of Hill residents, Terrace Village included, were white.

The Hill. In the 1940s the Hill District was full of thriving Black-owned businesses — cleaners, tailors, printers, shops, restaurants and a hotel — along with Jewish businesses. Unlike downtown and most other neighborhoods, it was interracial. Dance halls and nightclubs made it a center of jazz, much of it along Wylie Avenue, the main commercial street, and an annual parade celebrated local businesses and groups.

The Pittsburgh Courier. Begun as a small Black weekly for the Hill, it grew into the largest African American weekly in the country. It exposed discrimination, reporting widespread violations of Pennsylvania's anti-discrimination laws — segregated restrooms at work sites, exclusionary automobile clubs and more. The Pittsburgh Interracial Action Council protested too, for instance by holding an interracial picnic at a pool that had been for whites only — one of many challenges to segregation that brought gradual progress.

Work. In 1941, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802: "There shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries and in Government, because of race, creed, color, or national origin." It brought more Black workers into defense industries, but it did not end discrimination on the job.

• In the "Steel City," Black workers in mills and factories helped make the steel for tanks, ships and other war materials. A grease plant was another employer.
• Black men worked in coal mines, producing the energy that kept wartime transport and distribution moving.
• They were usually paid less and given worse jobs, often with added health risks such as harmful gases.
• Black women worked and served despite narrow opportunities — mostly in segregated jobs such as cleaning, with more openings in the Hill District — and volunteered, including selling war bonds and supporting drives.

Double V. Black Americans served at home and overseas and still faced discrimination. A letter to the Courier from James G. Thompson asked, "Should I sacrifice to live half-American?" From it came the Double V: victory over the Axis abroad and victory over racial discrimination at home. Black newspapers and civil rights leaders took it up, and it spread nationwide with pins, clubs, hats and more — a way to insist that the freedoms Black Americans were fighting for overseas belonged to them at home. Their resilience helped win the war and laid groundwork for major changes in American society.

Newspaper excerpt 1: The Pittsburgh Press, October 19, 1942

Teacher tip: discuss the historical terms for race and disability that the article uses and that aren't used today.

An unnamed top official of the War Manpower Commission (WMC) said the "manpower crisis" came from workers being in the wrong places, not from a real shortage — made worse by employers and unions acting as if it were peacetime.

• Many war plants still refused to hire Black workers, women, older workers or people with disabilities, even where labor was short.
• Shortages in nearly 150 skilled trades could be met only by training unskilled workers, yet many industries weren't expanding training.
• Some plants that refused women could have replaced 30 or 40 percent of their workers with women.

WMC chairman Paul V. McNutt had just issued a policy urging employers to remove all barriers to women, train them on an equal basis with men, open supervisory and technical jobs to them, and study every job for ones women could fill. He blamed the problem on contracts placed in labor-shortage areas (WPB chairman Donald M. Nelson had ordered future ones sent to labor-surplus regions where possible), employers "pirating" and "hoarding" workers, recruiting and draft boards pulling skilled workers into the military, hiring barriers rooted in pre-war standards and prejudice, and too little output from workers already in war jobs.

The official estimated that raising productivity by 20 percent would more than make up for the workers lost to the Army through December 1943, if it reached its goal of 7,500,000 men.

Newspaper excerpt 2: The Pittsburgh Courier, March 28, 1942

The Courier's editorial on its own campaign described Black Americans as more united behind the Double V — victory for democracy at home and abroad — than ever before, from coast to coast and beyond. It urged everyone with a Double V pin to wear it proudly, and insisted the campaign belonged to all Americans, not only Black Americans. Victory abroad meant defeating Hitler, Mussolini and Japan. Victory at home meant defeating disenfranchisement, laws against interracial marriage, residential segregation, economic discrimination, Jim Crow, social and educational inequality, and every attempt to weaken the Bill of Rights. Without democracy at home, the editorial argued, what happened abroad would matter little.

Discussion questions

• Background reading: Why did the Hill District matter? What role did the Courier play? How did Black Pittsburghers contribute to the war, what challenges did they face, and how did the Double V confront them?
• Excerpt 1: What causes of the manpower crisis, and what solutions, does the WMC name? Executive Order 8802 dates from 1941 and the article from October 1942 — what does it show about progress against discrimination?
• Excerpt 2: What did a Double V pin symbolize? Why did the Courier say democracy at home needed constant vigilance?

Extensions

Documentaries. A Beacon for Change: The Pittsburgh Courier Story (WQED, 28:06) and The Pittsburgh History Series: The Wylie Avenue Days (American Archive of Public Broadcasting, 1:01:11); also WQED's The Good Fight (28:01).

The Courier and Jewish rights. Pittsburgh had — and has — a large Jewish community. A 1938 study by Dr. Maurice Taylor counted 22,000 Jewish residents in Squirrel Hill (41% of the city's Jewish population; a different neighborhood from the Hill District) and 11,000 in the Hill District. The Courier covered Jewish rights at home and abroad. In an October 30, 1943 column on anti-Jewish riots in Boston, Courier columnist Marjorie McKenzie argued that a country that learns to scapegoat Black Americans learns to hate, and will reach for more victims — Jews, Mexican Americans, Chinese and Japanese Americans, immigrants. She called on these groups to accept one another's differences as equals and join forces for a shared future. Students can compare her argument with the Double V's aims. (Note: the column uses terms that are now offensive; discuss them with students.)

Sources

Based on "(H)our History Lesson: African American Contributions on the Home Front in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, WWII Heritage City," written by Sarah Nestor Lane, an educator and consultant with the National Park Service's Cultural Resources Office of Interpretation and Education, funded through the National Council on Public History's cooperative agreement with the National Park Service; rewritten in hubnx's own words. The lesson quotes The Pittsburgh Courier (March 14 and 28, 1942; October 30, 1943) and The Pittsburgh Press (October 19, 1942).