Afro-Americans viewed the war both with more
enthusiasm and with more pessimism than they had felt at the
outbreak of the First World War. On the one hand, they could
eagerly support a war to defeat Hitler's racist doctrines. On
the other hand, they did not believe that any display of
patriotism on their part would significantly diminish racism at
home. During the First World War they had thought that a
demonstration of patriotism would help to knock down the walls of
antagonism. Instead, they found that manliness on the part of
Afro-Americans, even in the name of patriotism, was a threat to
those whites who believed that Negroes should be kept in their
place. Afro-Americans were prepared not to be disillusioned in
that way again. For them, the war would still be a double
struggle-fighting racism at home as well as abroad.
The Second World War began to affect Americans long before the
country was actually drawn into the fighting. Although the
American nation stood on the sidelines for the first two years,
America became a major source of money, supplies, and
encouragement for Britain and France.
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