
Definiti
on Essays on RacismBy the 1930s a few judicial decisi
ons began to nibble at the edifice of racial segregati
on, and both the Great Depressi
on and the New Deal policies exercised a certain leveling effect between poor whites and poor Negroes. Migrati
on outside the South c
ontinued, if
only in search of n
ondiscriminatory relief. However, it took World War II to unleash forces powerful enough to undermine the racial status quo. Negro migrati
on to the large industrial centers of the North, the Great Lakes, and as far as the West Coast greatly accelerated during the war and c
ontinued thereafter. By 1960
only 61 per cent of Negroes were living in the South and
only 21 per cent of the southern populati
on were Negro. More servicemen than ever before fought and lived abroad, albeit in a Jim Crow army, and came in c
ontact with societies in which racial bigotry did not exist. The str
ong incentive not to waste manpower motivated the establishment of Fair Employment Practices Commissi
ons and opened up new occupati
onal opportunities for Negroes.
Racism, of course, was far from dead, as shown by the wartime internment of United States citizens of Japanese descent c
ond
oned by Franklin D. Roosevelt.