[Footnote 1-13: The 1940 strength figure is
extrapolated from Misc Div, AGO, Returns Sec, 9 Oct
39-30 Nov 41. The figures do not include some 3,000
Negroes in National Guard units under state
control.]

_Civil Rights and the Law in 1940_ (p. 008)

The same constants in American society that helped decide the status
of black servicemen in the nineteenth century remained influential
between the world wars, but with a significant change.[1-14] Where once
the advancing fortunes of Negroes in the services depended almost
exclusively on the good will of white progressives, their welfare now
became the concern of a new generation of black leaders and emerging
civil rights organizations. Skilled journalists in the black press and
counselors and lobbyists presenting such groups as the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the
National Urban League, and the National Negro Congress took the lead
in the fight for racial justice in the United States. They represented
a black community that for the most part lacked the cohesion,
political awareness, and economic strength which would characterize it
in the decades to come. Nevertheless, Negroes had already become a
recognizable political force in some parts of the country. Both the
New Deal politicians and their opponents openly courted the black vote
in the 1940 presidential election.

[Footnote 1-14: This discussion of civil rights in
the pre-World War II period draws not only on Lee's
_Employment of Negro Troops_, but also on Lee
Finkle, _Forum for Protest: The Black Press During
World War II_ (Cranbury: Fairleigh Dickinson
University Press, 1975); Harvard Sitkoff, "Racial
Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second
World War," _Journal of American History_ 58
(December 1971):661-81; Reinhold Schumann, "The
Role of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People in the Integration of
the Armed Forces According to the NAACP Collection
in the Library of Congress" (1971), in CMH; Richard
M. Dalfiume, _Desegregation of the United States