Blacks, Loyalty, and Motion-Picture Propaganda in World War II

Abstract

White America fought World War II as a remarkably unified country. In black America, however, a strong current of apathy, and sometimes barely muted opposition to the Allies, was evident. For blacks the war brought into sharp relief their duality in American society. Franklin D. Roosevelt identified Allied war aims with democracy's Four Freedoms. But Walter White, executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), pointed out that blacks had to for the right to fight for democracy. Horace Cayton, a Chicago sociologist and black leader, posed the issue starkly in December 1941: Am I a Negro first and then a policeman or soldier second, or should I forget in any emergency situation the fact that . . . my first loyalty is to my race? Millions of blacks had to ask themselves that question during World War II.1 That potential fissure in the drive for mass mobilization alarmed wartime policy makers. As the agency charged with interpreting war aims to the public and arousing mass support for the war, the Office of War Information (OWI) played a crucial, if little known, role in trying to mobilize black support and in interpreting American race relations to an international audience. This article analyzes the racial aspects of OWI's propaganda campaign, in particular its longest-lived and most significant effort its liaison with Hollywood motion-picture studios. Although black leaders and OWI policy makers hoped to work together to improve Hollywood's portrayal of people of color, the objectives of black leaders and those of the propagandists proved to be incompatible.2