Fighting for Democracy at Home
| The work of holding U.S. democracy to its promise of equality, was taken up by countless "Negro mothers," George Saitos, and African American soldiers who serve as exemplars of the deeds of excluded groups in their shaping of American democracy. On the eve of World War II, on April 28-30, 1939, over a thousand delegates from over 120 organizations met in Los Angeles to form El Congreso de Pueblos de Hablan Española, the first national, civil rights organization for Latina/os. El Congreso called for an end to segregation in public facilities, housing, education, and employment, and endorsed the right of immigrants to live and work in the U.S. without fear of deportation. Its southern California chapter created a woman's committee and platform, which recognized the "double discrimination" faced by Mexican American women in jobs, schools, and health because of their race and gender. |
| About the time of President Roosevelt's speech outlining the Four Freedoms, African American union leader A. Philip Randolph announced that if the administration failed to take action against racial discrimination in the defense program, he would organize and lead a mass march on Washington. Six days before the scheduled march, on June 25, 1941, the President signed Executive Order 8802 that banned work discrimination on the bases of race, creed, color, or national origin for defense contractors. And the President appointed the Committee on Fair Employment Practice to monitor compliance with the executive order. Although employers routinely violated the anti-discrimination mandate of the President's executive order, African, Asian, Mexican, and Native Americans flocked to defense industry work. More than one million African Americans left the South during the war for better paying jobs in the North and West. California witnessed an increase of 258,900 African Americans between 1940 and 1950, and they comprised thirteen percent of the workers in the Bay Area's four leading shipbuilding companies. About 40,000 Native Americans worked in defense industries during the war, and twenty percent of Native American women living on reservations left for jobs mainly in urban areas. One of them was Faith Feather Traversie, a Yankton Lakota, who was classified as "white" to allow her to work at Mare Island Navy Yard. Traversie was one of the few women welders at the Navy Yard, and she worked with Asian women and Latinas. Excerpts of Traversie's interview appear in the Supporting Materials. That migration of women led to changes in gender relations on Native American reservations, and in the self-esteem and independence of some women as shown in the oral history of a Mexican American mother, Beatrice Morales Clifton, excerpted in the Supporting Materials. |
Democracy—A Work in Progress
| Because of democracy's contradictions, it is fought over. It is a work in progress. Its promises and ideals do not always conform to its realities and practices. Those who have been denied power and privilege have been particularly instrumental in extending democracy's reach because they inhabit the margins and borders delineated by the phrase, "we, the people." By insisting that they too are embraced by that community, excluded groups have expanded the meaning of who is an American, and helped to secure the very rights and privileges that were denied them for the enjoyment of all Americans. |