By YVONNE FRENCH
Before sit-ins, before freedom riders, before Brown vs. Board of Education, desegregation and busing, before civil rights as we know it, there were the New Deal and World War II.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the New Deal and World War II opened up opportunities to some African Americans, opportunities that had long been denied.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs gave black artists, photographers and writers a chance to document American life through their own eyes. They and their white counterparts who worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) often turned pen and lens to focus on African Americans as their subject matter.
Debra Newman Ham, a former African- American history and culture specialist in the Library's Manuscript Division who is now a history professor at Morgan State University, documented the changes blacks experienced during the 1930s and 1940s (as well as other decades)in The African American Mosaic: A Library of Congress Resource Guide for the Study of Black History & Culture. The guide directs readers to collections of the Library in their areas of interest.
For example, in a chapter on the Depression and World War II, from which this article is drawn, Dr. Ham explained that "one of the features of the New Deal programs was that they tended to make use of a broader definition of culture than had previously [existed] in the United States. ... Not until the Works Progress Administration did black artists find favorable conditions outside of their own communities to develop their art."
During the war, she wrote, "black soldiers were no longer willing to quietly accept a segregated army or the discriminatory conditions they had previously endured. [They worked] to ensure blacks could participate in all units of the military."
The WPA
President Roosevelt established the WPA in 1935. It had a number of administrators who were sympathetic to blacks. Among them was Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior, whose papers, available in the Manuscript Division, contain information about his authorization of a 1939 concert by Marian Anderson at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to let her perform at DAR Constitution Hall.
Another example of government support of African American talent within the WPA was the Federal Writers' Project, which "helped to promote the first Negro studies to be conducted in the United States on an extensive scale," wrote Jerre Mangione in The Dream and the Deal: The Federal Writers' Project 1935- 1943 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972). Mr. Mangione's book is one of several that Dr. Ham discusses in her book, which is an exhaustive, annotated bibliography of Library holdings that relate to black history and culture.
The Federal Writers' Project helped the Federal Emergency Relief Administration collect and transcribe oral interviews with former slaves. The collection is now part of an archives of African American resource materials within the WPA collection in the Manuscript Division.
The resource guide points readers who want to learn more about folk narratives by blacks and whites from New Orleans to the Louisiana Writers' Project's Gumbo Ya-Ya (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1945), a term meaning "everybody talks at once."
The Federal Writers' Project not only wrote about blacks, but also employed them. Zora Neale Hurston published three of her books while working on the Florida Writers' Project.
Gordon Parks, a contemporary black photographer, wrote that WPA photographer Aaron Siskind drew a pictorial contrast between the vivid nightlife of Harlem and its inhabitants' tired, hopeless lot. "In the evenings they gave in to whatever their bodies wanted and, without shame, broke into laughter, song and dance to kill the memories of the day; to keep alive what little hope there was left; and to help fill those empty spots in their souls," Parks wrote in a forward to a catalog of a 1981 compilation of Depression- era photographs by Siskind.
Siskind also documented early civil rights efforts for the Farm Security Administration. He photographed church and labor groups organizing to do away with the poll tax. Parks also depicted the importance of religion in people's lives, specifically that of charwoman Ella Watson, who worked the night shift for 26 years cleaning government offices to support her children and grandchildren.
Religion
During the Depression years, one of the most popular black religious leaders was Father Divine. He drew large crowds of people to his Harlem headquarters by feeding them in his soup kitchens or "heavens," as he called them.
According to the resource guide, another religious leader who contended with Father Divine for followers in Harlem was Daddy Grace, who built "Houses of Prayer" for his devotees in cities around the nation.
Housing
Although the New Deal offered an outlet for the talents of many black artists, many doors remained closed. Housing, for example, continued to be segregated. Patterns of segregation can be traced in the Geography and Map Division, where census statistics, surveys and housing maps allow researchers to piece together a history of unfair social and economic practices.
The drawings of architect Arthur B. Heaton, located in the Prints and Photographs Division, show segregation by race, sex and job title. Design plans for the Washington Railway and Electric Co. building show rooms labeled "toilet room colored," "toilet for conductors and motormen," "white barnmen's locker room," "colored barnmen's locker room," "toilet room white," "locker room for conductors and motormen," and "women's room," Dr. Ham wrote.
Education
However, she noted, "The changes wrought by the Depression and World War II did not stop forward movement in the area of higher education for African Americans." Thousands got college educations through the G.I. Bill, and the United Negro College Fund began to raise money for black colleges and universities during the war.
World War II
The war years saw decisive steps forward in equality for blacks. The papers of A. Philip Randolph, available in the Manuscript Division, document his protest against segregation in the armed forces and defense industries. Randolph's threat to bring thousands of blacks to march on Washington caused FDR to issue an executive order that there should be "no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color or national origin."
Gen. Noel Parrish, whose papers are also in the Manuscript Division, was known as the World War II commander of Tuskegee Air Base, where the first black airmen were trained by the Army Air Corps.
Later, fashion photographer Toni Frissel photographed the all-black 332nd Fighter Pilot Squadron in combat in southern Europe and north Africa as part of an army publicity project. Images include pilots being briefed by Col. Benjamin O. Davis, planes in formation, aerial views of the airfield and the men playing cards and chess at night in the officers club. About 250 of Frissel's photographs are on file in the Prints and Photographs Division.
The Prints and Photographs Division also has 23 groups of photographs of blacks during World War II from the Office of War Information, including images of black women in the role of "Rosie the Riveter."
Black journalists covered African Americans overseas in the military and helped focus public attention on the role of blacks in the military. The book From the Back of the Foxhole: Black Correspondents in World War II by John D. Stevens discusses the topic at length, according to Dr. Ham.
One person who helped the war effort at home and overseas was heavyweight boxer Joe Louis. Known as the "brown bomber," Louis was a hero in the 1930s and '40s. Having defended the heavyweight boxing championship title 20 times before the war, Louis was then inducted into the army. "His presence helped boost morale because many African Americans saw him as a symbol of black prowess," Dr. Ham wrote. In 1942 he appeared on a World War II poster, one of a series of civilian propaganda posters in the Prints and Photographs Division.
Music
Any discussion of the 1930s and 1940s would be incomplete without talking about music. "Big band music came to be regarded as a symbol of American optimism and determination," according to Dr. Ham, who adds that "recordings available at the Library of Congress are the best sources for this music." Gospel, which already had deep roots, continued to grow in popularity. The Library has sheet music for almost every gospel song deposited for copyright. Bibliographies and finding aids are available for recordings of Negro spirituals, oral slave narratives, the legend of John Henry and pieces by blues singer Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter and Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton.
Alan Lomax of the Library's Archive of American Folk Song persuaded Jelly Roll Morton to tell his story, which he recorded in 1938.
"What emerged was a distinctly 'Mortonocentric' view of the evolution of jazz, blues and ragtime in which Jelly Roll was the inventor of every style of black American music later than the spiritual and earlier than soul. Jazz historians and ethnomusicologists are still dealing with this material, which is obviously slanted, yet has a richness rare for any comparable figure," wrote Dr. Ham.
Film
Then as now, movies were an important part of the social subtext. Before the war, films with all-black casts came into their own. "The films depict a wholly black realm, without white influence, in which all the characters, villains and heroes alike, behave with dignity in clear opposition to the standard Hollywood stereotypes. Offering blacks a cinematic world of their own was a powerful statement on behalf of equality, articulating racial consciousness and pride," Dr. Ham wrote.
Some wartime movies portrayed blacks as important supporting characters, including Dooley Wilson as Sam in Casablanca (1943).
"The advance of civil rights and the move toward integration turned the focus away from black-cast films toward adopting these themes in Hollywood 'social consciousness' films dealing with black issues. In this way, Hollywood absorbed for a time much of the drive that formerly fostered independent black-cast filmmaking, reflecting a trend in race relations that would lead to many changes on the American scene," said Dr. Ham.
In all, the 1930s and '40s was a period of wider acceptance for blacks, from artists employed under New Deal arts programs to rank-and- file Marines whose color didn't matter when they were fighting in the Pacific. Hence, black artists and soldiers paved the way for future civil rights victories and helped to focus attention on African American race and culture.