456. The Double V Campaign: African-Americans, World War II, and Segregation

Willie Hiatt via Zoom

During World War II, African-Americans were expected to enlist in the military and support the war effort even as deeply rooted racism endured at home. The Double V movement stood for victory over fascism in Germany and Japan, and victory over segregation and Jim Crow laws at home—a powerful critique of America’s hypocritical rhetoric of freedom and liberty. This lecture explores how advocacy for desegregation of the military, access to defense employment, an end to segregation, and a national anti-lynching law served as an important precursor to the Civil Rights Movement that began in earnest a decade later.

10-12 noon                                                                                                                  1 Session

Tuesday, May 20                                                                                                        Fee:  $30

 [A Zoom link will be sent to you prior to each session, typically on the day before your class and the morning of your class.  If you have any questions or need help getting online, feel free to call us at 516-480-5733 and we’ll get right back to you with assistance.]

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Willie Hiatt, a Kentucky native, is an Associate Professor of History at Long Island University,

Post Campus, and a former Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University (2019-20).

He’s the author of The Rarified Air of the Modern: Airplanes and Technological Modernity in the Andes (Oxford, 2016). His current research is an oral history project examining how Maoist

insurgents in Peru targeted high-tension towers during the Shining Path movement (1980-92).