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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2019
This chapter analyzes whites who actually served in World War II, asking to what extent their military service had racially liberalizing effects on them, relative to similarly situated non-veterans. For veterans, the results are somewhat mixed. White veterans were indistinguishable from non-veteran whites on many measures of racial prejudice, and they were equally committed to segregation both in the armed services and in society more broadly. They were, however, more supportive of federal anti-lynching legislation in the war’s immediate aftermath, and southern white veterans were more supportive of black voting rights in the early 1960s. Relying on archival materials related to small-scale experiments in the military, this chapter also considers the counterfactual where Roosevelt had moved to integrated the armed forces during or prior to U.S. entry into World War II, highlighting the potential consequences for white racial attitudes of FDR’s refusal to integrate the armed forces during the war
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