African American Involvement in WWII

This project-based lesson engages students with primary sources (posters, photos, and manuscript documents) to analyze and evaluate the involvement of African Americans in World War II. 

Weblink address (URL): 
African American Involvement in WWII
Home Page- source

Standards & Objectives

Learning objectives: 

Students will:

  • Identify a role that African Americans filled in World War II and discuss how the role offered new opportunities and/or reflected racial attitudes of 1930s and 1940s.
  • Examine efforts by activists and organizations to promote change and evaluate effectiveness of Executive Orders to change policies for labor and military.
  • Cite specific textual evidence (posters, photos, and/or manuscripts) to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from multiple texts.
Essential and guiding questions: 
  • How did the involvement of African Americans in World War II reflect racial attitudes and segregation?
  • How did the role of African Americans in the war impact social and economic conditions for African Americans during and after World War II?
  • How did labor programs and Executive Orders affect opportunities for African Americans? 

Lesson Variations

Blooms taxonomy level: 
Applying
Extension suggestions: 
  • Student GoogleDocs or PowerPoints can be linked to school website to be shared with school community. A student or teacher panel can vote on their favorite museum room.
  • Virtual Museum can also be a flipped classroom activity. Students can use Venn Diagram graphic organizer to  compare/contrast perspectives of two different African Americans from different branches of service or home front jobs. 

Helpful Hints

MATERIALS AND RESOURCES USED:
Oral Histories

  • Violet Hill Askins Gordon
  • Oneida Miller Stuart
  • Roscoe Tyson Spann
  • Robert P. Madison

Prints and Photographs:

  • Dorie Miller
  • Tuskegee Airmen
  • Rosie Pictures: Select Images Relating to American Women Workers During World War II
  • Tuskagee Airman
  • African American Nurses
  • Buffalo Soldiers
  • Members of an artillery unit…break
  • Photographs and Signs Enforcing Racial Discrimination

Manuscripts

  • Eleanor Roosevelt letter lobbying against
  • lynching
  • A. Phillip Randolph March on Washington
  • President Truman Executive Order 9981
  • FDR Executive Order 8802 Prohibition of
  • Discrimination in the Defense Industry
  • Mary McLeod Bethune speech “What Does
  • American Democracy Mean to Me?” (American Public Media website)
  • Bolton Act: Making the Nursing Profession
  • More Accessible to Everyone (Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing)

Resources

  • Primary Source Analysis Tool, interactive
  • Analyzing Primary Sources
  • Analyzing Photographs and Prints
  • Analyzing Oral Histories
  • Virtual Museum Template