Philip Randolph, union organizer and leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters - met with Roosevelt and demanded racial integration and equality in the Armed Forces and desegregation in the defense industries.
Roosevelt to discuss the issue of job discrimination in the defense industry.Īfter significant correspondence between African American leaders and activists and the Roosevelt administration, three of those leaders - Walter White, executive secretary of the NAACP Thomas Arnold Hill, director of industrial relations for the National Urban League, and A. factories were gaining lucrative government contracts to manufacture guns, ammunition, airplanes and other military equipment.Yet, African Americans were being denied the opportunity to work in these well-paying jobs.īlack leaders began to meet with President Franklin D.
was emerging from the Great Depression, and Europe was already at war, the defense industry was increasing production and putting thousands of men to work.
