We, Too, Are Americans ─ African American Women in Detroit and Richmond, 1940-54

During World War II, factories across America retooled for wartime production, and unprecedented labor opportunities opened up for women and minorities. In "We, Too, Are Americans," Megan Taylor Shockley examines the experiences of the African American women who worked in two capitals of industry - Detroit, Michigan, and Richmond, Virginia - during the war and the decade that followed it, making a compelling case for viewing World War II as the crucible of the civil rights movement.
As demands on them intensified, the women working to provide American troops with clothing, medical supplies, and support services became increasingly aware of their key role in the war effort. Middle-class African Americans worked to desegregate voluntary associations (such as the Red Cross and the USO) and institute a policy of respectability that would undercut pernicious racial stereotypes. Working-class black women began to use their indispensability in industry to leverage demands for equal employment, welfare and citizenship benefits, fair treatment on factory floors, good working conditions, and other considerations previously denied them.
Shockley shows that in the decade and a half preceding Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, as these women strove to redefine citizenship, backing their claims to equality with lawsuits, sit-ins, and other forms of activism, they were forging tools that civil rights activists would continue to use in the years to come.

Megan Taylor Shockley is an assistant professor of history at Clemson University.