Negro Jobs in Defense of our Country
Unlike previous marches to Washington, the very idea of the Negro March of 1941, a march that in fact never actually occurred, was enough to produce a very tangible result. On June 25, 1941, after weeks of negotiation between the march organizers and the likes of New York City Mayor Fieorello LaGuardia and Eleanor Roosevelt, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8002 which created a Fair Employment Practices Committee to encourage fair hiring practices in the emerging national defense industry.
At a time when the U.S. remained the only power not engaged in the world conflict, and with President Roosevelt increasingly distracted by events abroad, a leading spokesman for the African-American community, A. Philip Randolph took the lead in planning for a march of what he hoped to be "10,000 Negroes" on the nation's capital to protest discriminatory hiring practices in the armed services and the defense industry.
Randolph and his associates had grown increasingly discouraged by the lack of progress toward integration in each branch of the service, and a burgeoning $10 billion defense industry which was creating jobs for white Americans, but not blacks. During the depression years, blacks had increasingly sought to assert their rights, and the organization of "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" campaigns had set an important precedent in the black struggle for economic as well as social equality. And yet, as the defense industry grew, the refrain too often heard by black applicants was "Nothing Doing!"
In organizing for the march, Randolph knew he had to overcome the stereoptypes of the indolent black worker. He recruited a broad based coalition of African American leaders who brought with them experience in lobbying, mass action, and orgainzation building. Randoph's own organizational prowess and repeated overtures to public officials drew President Roosevelt's attention. Moroever, the President could ill afford a major embarrasment as he sought to keep the U.S. out of war. Randolph and his fellow organizer Walter White, were quite emphatic when they met with Roosevelt, but the organizers showed resolve and the administration felt it important to negotiate or face the reality of a march. Roosevelt, still in the midst of overseeing a sub par economy and increasingly concerned about war in Europe, told his aides in an emphatic order on June 7, 1941 that referenced the impending march, to "get it stopped."
By appointing a team of negotiators including his wife and the lively Mayor of New York City, he allowed a negotiation that a resulted in a major vctory for the March organizers. Thus, the Negro March, a march that in fact never occurred, set an important precedent by demonstrating the effectiveness of even the threat of unified mass protest. It thus became the impetus for future mass demonstrations, includng the Civil Rights March of 1963.