Divided Arsenal Race and the American State during World War II [Hardcover]

A comparison of the causes and effects of federal race policy during World War II.Divided Arsenal compares the causes and effects of federal race policy during World War II in factories, the Army, and agriculture. Two overarching executive imperatives--the full mobilization of industrial production and the maintenance of the New Deal Coalition--outweigh the goals of interracial reform. The history of industrial employment policies confirms the role of party and war-fighting concerns in both the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee and in the committee's subsequent investigative casework. While military racial policies were initially repressive by spurring black soldier resistance, they paradoxically facilitated steps toward desegregation by transforming the executive's calculation of military efficiency.Divided Arsenal compares the causes and effects of federal race policy during World War II in factories, the Army, and agriculture. Two overarching executive imperatives--the full mobilization of industrial production and the maintenance of the New Deal Coalition--outweigh the goals of interracial reform. The history of industrial employment policies confirms the role of party and war-fighting concerns in both the creation of the Fair Employment Practices Committee and in the committee's subsequent investigative casework. While military racial policies were initially repressive by spurring black soldier resistance, they paradoxically facilitated steps toward desegregation by transforming the executive's calculation of military efficiency.This book describes and analyzes FDR's methods of war mobilization, by focusing on his administration's race manpower policies. Widespread but little-known racial violence threatened to disrupt the American war effort, and the Army as well as production officials struggled throughout the war to control and retain the allegiance of African-Americans. Like the century's three other Democratic presidents fighting wars, lã-