Muscle

Members of the Coast Guard at Fort Story, Virginia, cleaning a large gun/cannon after it was fired.

Photo by Alfred T. Palmer, 1942.

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[American Memory link]

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From Racial Segregation to the Oval Office (2 of 3)

[see Part 1 here]

America in the '30s and '40s had many racially-segregated hearts and neighborhoods. But other forces were also at work.

On Chicago's South Side in 1941, youngsters of different hues kept company. (Russell Lee)

In 1936 Mississippi, as children of tenant farmers (aka sharecroppers), their fortunes were entwined. (Dorothea Lange)

In 1939 they worked shoulder-to-shoulder as shoeshine boys in Texas. (Russell Lee)

Meanwhile, their mothers, aunts, and elder sisters built aircraft together in California during World War II. (These women are identified as Vivian King and Kathryn Polinaire.)

Their fathers, uncles, and older brothers worked in tandem to construct warships such as the Booker T. Washington. (A photo caption explains this was the "first liberty ship named for a Negro." The man on the left is experienced welder Jessie Lucas. The one on the right is apprentice Rodney Chesney.) (Alfred T. Palmer)

When a women's organization refused to allow African-American opera singer Marian Anderson to perform in its concert hall in 1939, thousands of its members resigned - including the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. With assistance from the Roosevelts, Ms. Anderson later delivered a free, open-air concert to a racially-diverse crowd of 75,000.

In the 1942 photo above, the singer christens the Booker T. Washington. (Alfred T. Palmer)

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[American Memory link]