Ilona M. answered • 01/31/21
I use different approaches to make my lessons interesting
Historians studying the experience of African/Americans in World War II keep asking one main question: “Was World War II a watershed event for African Americans?” Did WW II represent a continuation of policies of/segregation and discrimination on the home front and in the military, or did it represent the beginning of stop from the past that informed the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s? Historians of the 1960s focused on the war experience as a “watershed” leading to the civil rights upheavals of the 1960s. Although African-Americans had lost much of the wartime years, however the social and economic progress by the early 1950s, the gains in the military, job training,and political organization served as a catalyst for the protests of the 1950s. This later helped fuel civil rights actions. The fact that outstanding contributions to/the war effort did not result in tangible andlong/term gains inflamed African/Americans and encouraged activism. More recently, historianshave tempered the notion of the 1940s as “watershed” or“revolution”in the Black experience, but still emphasize its significance in the modern Civil Rights Movement.
