Almost a million African Americans entered the industrial labor force during the war. By 1944 African Americans accounted for 25% of the workers in foundries and 12% in both the shipbuilding and steel industries.
Race-related riots occurred in 47 cities during the war.
The government spent $100 million on recruiting workers by the thousands from Mexico. The imported workers, known as braceros, worked in 21 states. In 1944 they harvested crops worth $432 million.In much of America in the 1940s, racial segregation was strictly enforced, both by Jim Crow laws and by age-old custom. The civil rights movement was still in its infancy. Laws ensuring voting rights and equal access to jobs and public facilities were decades away
