The Impact on the Homefront WWII Propaganda

Disney cartoon promoting war bonds

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Ford Willow Run Plant – encouraging women to work for the war the effort

Home front Propaganda

US government propaganda film explaining the Japanese Internment camps

Bracero Program – government propaganda promoting the program illustrating economic benefits to US business

Mexican American experience In Los Angeles, groups of white sailors, soldiers, police officers, and civilian men from all over the West Coast responded to a press-instigated outcry against the "zoot-suiter menace." Mobs seeking to punish those perceived as delinquent, violent, disrespectful, and un-American patrolled downtown L.A., many wielded bats and crowbars. T hey targeted anyone wearing the conspicuous zoot suit, an audacious outfit favored by young, urban, Mexican-American and black men during the 1940s. During the riots, which raged for a full week, hundreds of young people—predominantly Mexican-American, African-American, and Filipino-American—were stripped of their clothing and beaten. Only after state and federal authorities stepped in did the violence cease

African-Americans and the Home Front The expansion of manufacturing, along with federally mandated desegregation in the war industries, did enable many African-Americans to actively serve their country in a number of new ways. But, perhaps more importantly, mobilization enabled blacks to secure well-paid jobs. Higher wages and other incentives empowered African-Americans, particularly southern blacks long stifled by a culture of segregation and racial violence, to move to the Northeast and the West where war industry jobs were most plentiful. During the 1940s, over one million black Americans left their homes in rural regions in the South and the Midwest, seeking freedom and fortune in cities such as Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Richmond, Vallejo, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Yet many blacks discovered that material opportunities were not often accompanied by civil rights or by racial justice. Housing discrimination, in particular, limited their mobility. New black arrivals from the South, "could see the vestiges of discrimination" in California. Inequality in the West, she explains, "was going to be exactly like Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, and Georgia and every place else if we didn't do something. And although the nation was engaged in a war against fascism abroad, legal segregation and lynching continued to hinder and devastate the lives of African-Americans in the South. from Schmoop.com

Migration of African Americans spurred violence Intolerance for ethnic diversity, race mixing, and concern for rising crime rates sparked some of the century's most violent race riots. In 1943 alone, violent clashes broke out in over a dozen cities including Los Angeles, Detroit, New York In one instance, white citizens in a Detroit neighborhood organized a protest over the construction of a public housing development. The public display led to fights between white and black residents and ultimately resulted in city wide riots which left 34 people dead and over $2 million worth of property, largely in black neighborhoods, destroyed. Schmoop.com

Navaho Code Talkers This short film was shown at the dedication of the Navaho Code Talkers Memorial

D Day invasion as told by German soldiers and American Soldiers