In December 1946, in Palo Alto, California, flames consumed the newly constructed home of John T. Walker, a Black veteran just back from serving in the Navy during World War II. Arsonists left a note that read:
We burned your house to let you know that your presence is not wanted among white people. You should know by now we mean business. Niggers who are veterans are making a mistake thinking they can live in white residential districts.
The arsonists struggle to reconcile their racism with the respect they know veterans have earned, adding:
Since you are a veteran, we are warning you for the last time to clear out. If you were not a veteran, you would be dead now. Usually the Klan strikes without warning, but since you are a veteran, we have been unusually kind in giving you a chance to save of your black hide."
Walker’s experience was by no means exceptional. He was among the 900,000 Black servicemembers who returned home from the war only to receive a welcome message that was essentially, “Thank you, but no thank you, for your service.” Even worse, in the Jim Crow South, home to three-quarters of the Black servicemembers, many attacked these veterans when they sought to exercise the very freedoms for which they had fought.
“Every effort was made to make this absolutely clear… The war has changed nothing in regards to race relations,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Leon Litwack. “What [hostile white communities] failed to note: Black Americans are no longer willing to take it.”
The year 1946 proved a turning point in Black resistance to legal segregation in America, in large part because of the efforts of Black veterans. In the face of assaults, lynchings and police brutality, these Americans stood at the vanguard 75 years ago when they mounted challenges to long-denied access to housing, employment, political participation and social integration. They made 1946, in Litwack’s words, “the true birth of the Civil Rights Movement.”
At the start of the war, Black Americans made a pact with their country: They’d fight this war, but the nation would have to recognize them as full citizens when they return. In December 1941, the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading Black newspaper, published a letter from James G. Thompson, a Wichita, Kansas, defense-industry worker, who wrote:
“[I]nsofar as the ‘V for Victory’ sign for the allied combatants meant “victory over aggression, slavery and tyranny…, then let colored Americans adopt the double VV for a double victory: The first V for victory over our enemies from without, the second V for victory over our enemies within.”
Thompson plainly asked, “Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?” Inspired by Thompson’s letter, the Courier launched “The Double V Campaign,” rallying African-Americans to demand full citizenship rights at home in exchange for their collective sacrifices abroad.