"To Refuse to Fight as Slaves": Civil Disobedience against Military Segregation in Early Cold War America

Before President Harry S. Truman ordered Executive Order 9981 in July 1948 and subsequently announced that its ultimate goal was to enforce desegregation in the military, an unexpected civil rights movement had rocked blacks and whites alike. For four months, A. Philip Randolph's and Grant Reynolds' civil disobedience campaign vigorously pushed for the integration of the military. They pledged to advise the youth of America to openly resist the draft and military service in case Congress or the President would not officially end military segregation. Previous research on the civil rights movement has overlooked this important campaign that launched an intense discussion of the appropriate means and ends of the civil rights movement in the early Cold War.

For one, this paper looks at their campaign uncovering its underlying motives and argumentation. For the other, it looks at the reaction among African Americans and whites to the campaign that went against conventional and acceptable concepts of civil duty and patriotism. The paper reveals how concepts of gender and national identity were questioned, used, and shaped with the radical approach to the attainment of civil rights. It exemplifies the conflicts over new movement strategies and the importance of masculinist rhetoric in the African American quest for military equality and in the white attempts to counter it. The importance of military service as essential in proving one's dedication to the American nation, one's right to equal rights and, deeply inherent therein, and the preservation of traditional gender roles and responsibilities are displayed. The paper thereby adds an important and fresh aspect to the growing research on civil rights that, despite its flourishing, still underrates the contested elements of the civil rights movement right after the Second World War.