Negroes were given new work experiences. Along with many of their
white fellows, they acquired new skills and a new sophistication that
prepared them for the different life of the postwar industrial world.
Most important, military service in World War II divorced many Negroes
from a society whose traditions had carefully defined their place, and
exposed them for the first time to a community where racial equality,
although imperfectly realized, was an ideal. Out of this experience
many Negroes came to understand that their economic and political
position could be changed. Ironically, the services themselves became
an early target of this rising self-awareness. The integration of the
armed forces, immediate and total, was a popular goal of the newly
franchised voting group, which was turning away from leaders of both
races who preached a philosophy of gradual change.

The black press was spokesman for the widespread demand for (p. 126)
equality in the armed forces; just as the growth of the black press
was dramatically stimulated by urbanization of the Negro, so was the
civil rights movement stimulated by the press. The Pittsburgh
_Courier_ was but one of many black papers and journals that developed
a national circulation and featured countless articles on the subject
of discrimination in the services. One black sociologist observed that
it was "no exaggeration to say that the Negro press was the major
influence in mobilizing Negroes in the struggle for their rights
during World War II."[5-4] Sometimes inaccurate, often inflammatory, and
always to the consternation of the military, the black press rallied
the opposition to segregation during and after the war.

[Footnote 5-4: E. Franklin Frazier, _The Negro in the
United States_ (New York: Macmillan, 1957), p.
513.]

Much of the black unrest and dissatisfaction dramatized by the press
continued to be mobilized through the efforts of such organizations as
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the
National Urban League, and the Congress of Racial Equality. The NAACP,
for example, revitalized by a new and broadened appeal to the black
masses, had some 1,200 branches in forty-three states by 1946 and
boasted a membership of more than half a million. While the
association continued to fight for minority rights in the courts, to
stimulate black political participation, and to improve