Wilmington, North Carolina: A World War II Shipbuilding City

Commerce grew in Wilmington, North Carolina, in the first half of the twentieth century, but from 1929 the Great Depression wrecked the region's economy and put many people out of work. The Wilmington Relief Association, formed by local citizens after the stock market crash, helped by subsidizing public works. What finally revived the economy was a wartime shipyard, which turned Wilmington into "The Defense Capital of the State."

Ships for Britain

By January 1941 Great Britain desperately needed supplies, but the United States lacked the merchant ships to carry them. At President Roosevelt's request, the U.S. Maritime Commission ordered two hundred new ships, and to build them launched the Emergency Shipbuilding Program, creating new shipyards on the Atlantic, Gulf and Pacific coasts. Southern yards were also meant to boost the region's economy and draw on its large labor force, natural resources and warmer climate.

On February 3, 1941, the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company began building a yard on the east bank of the Cape Fear River, run by a new subsidiary, the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company.

The shipyard

• It was the largest wartime industrial effort in North Carolina, peaking at 21,000 employees in 1943. That year about 20,000 people worked there, including 1,628 women and 6,000 African Americans.
• Women started as tool checkers, and many moved up to skilled work such as welding and running woodworking machines and drill presses.
• African Americans worked in many skilled jobs, as riveters, riggers, drillers and shipwrights, which was unusual for a Southern shipyard. Some crews were integrated, but the company segregated facilities such as the cafeteria and locker rooms.
• The workers, nationally recognized for efficiency and advanced techniques, built 234 ships between 1941 and 1946. The yard was one of ten in the country specializing in Liberty ships, mass-produced cargo vessels designed to carry ammunition, tanks, vehicles and other supplies.

A crowded city

The yard drew people to the area, and Wilmington's population rose from 33,000 to 50,000. The influx strained the city and caused housing and food shortages. The federal government built 1,700 housing units, and a lot beside the shipyard became a trailer camp. Workers and families who still found no housing built makeshift shelters from tents and old railroad cars.

The USO clubs

The USO club downtown at Second and Orange Streets, opened in 1941, drew hundreds of thousands of service members from nearby bases such as Camp Davis, Camp Lejeune and Cherry Point. Volunteers ran radio broadcasts, dances, plays, childcare and art shows for about 35,000 service members a week, and the basement became a dormitory for up to 600 men.

Jim Crow laws restricted the club to white service members, so a separate club for African American service members was built on Nixon Street, fifteen blocks north. The downtown club still stands as the Hannah Block Historic USO/Community Arts Center. The Nixon Street club was sold to the Boys Club in 1947 and later demolished, with a new building put up on the site around 1978.

Remembering

After the war, preservation efforts spurred by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 put most of downtown Wilmington on the National Register of Historic Places. The battleship USS North Carolina, moored in the Cape Fear River, became a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

In September 2020 Wilmington was named an American World War II Heritage City. The program, created by the John Dingell Jr. Conservation, Management and Recreation Act of 2019 and coordinated by the National Park Service, honors communities' home-front contributions and their efforts to preserve that history.

Sources

• National Park Service, American World War II Heritage City program, "Wilmington, North Carolina": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/wilmington-north-carolina.htm
• The NPS page's 1941 photograph of a Liberty ship launch, from East Carolina Digital Collections, is not reproduced here.