Last edited Mon Jun 24, 2019, 01:55 AM - Edit history (1)
Um, yes and no... African Americans were supported by the New Deal, like any Americans - 250,000 of the 3 million in the CCC were AA, for example, although there was discrimination in FHA loans at the same time. Then again, after Phil Randolph started planning the 1941 march, FDR signed Executive Order 8802.
FDR's record is mixed, but it was certainly better than Hoover's had been, and better than anyone else who might have made it to the White House in 1932, 1936, or 1940...
See:
[link:http://www.fdrlibraryvirtualtour.org/graphics/05-20/5-20-NewDeal_confront_pdf.pdf|]
As far as combat troops in WW 2, no, actually; African American Army combat units deployed very late in the war (the 92nd and 93rd infantry divisions did not go overseas until 1944, and the 2nd Cavalry Division was deployed overseas the same year and then broken up to provide replacements and service units).
AAs were certainly discriminated against, but based on battle casualties in the 92nd (~6,000, including attached units and personnel that were not AA) and 93rd (~250), "cannon fodder" they were not.
In general, the two combat divisions were used sparingly in WW 2, largely because of institutional racism within the Army. For similar reasons, the 92nd had six of its nine African-American infantry battalions replaced by "white" and/or Asian American battalions in the winter of 1945, before the final Allied offensives in northern Italy.
And as far as equipment goes, even the segregated Army combat units - the three divisions, the separate regiments, and the separate battalions, like the 761st Tank Battalion - had the same equipment as "white" units; the TO&Es were exactly the same, because logistics would have been snarled by having different issues of equipment. The 761st had the same M4 medium tanks as any any "white" medium tank battalion when it went into action in 1944, for example.
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