Breaking Rank: How the World War II Resistance of White American Soldiers to Racial Equity Fueled the Civil Rights Movement

In the lead up to the bloody summer of 1943, the US Army possessed clear data from a survey of service members that frustration among Black GIs over their mistreatment and the persistence of segregation was pervasive, and that occasional conflict might devolve into open rebellion. A similar questionnaire soliciting soldiers for their opinions on race relations and racial segregation was administered to a cross-section of all White soldiers. The data affirmed what the army knew from previous surveys, namely, that the majority of White soldiers, including GIs from the North, wanted segregation to be maintained. Simply gathering this data had been a fraught endeavor. The researchers who ran the army’s survey program excluded Black service members initially—the notion that the army should even be asking soldiers for their opinions was controversial enough—and they only started to after the army’s research staff had been “sufficiently protected against possible repercussions.” Not only did army researchers know just how opposed the majority of White soldiers were to integration, but they had used their findings to show the “soundness” of the army’s “one-rule” segregation policy. During the war, the army did attempt limited desegregation. It was met, however, with White resistance, which, in turn, further enflamed racial tensions. So much so that by late summer of 1944 some Black soldiers were starting to gird themselves for the opening of a new, quite literal front in the war against racial fascism, on American shores. Using survey data and thousands of open-ended survey responses from Black and White soldiers, which have been made accessible only recently, this paper considers how the wartime resistance of White soldier to integration led Black Americans in their quest for racial justice and equity to reduble their efforts, whatever the cost.