he Changing Patterns of
Black Protest_ (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1976), p. 16.]

Men like Walter F. White of the NAACP and the National Urban League's
T. Arnold Hill sought to use World War II to expand opportunities for
the black American. From the start they tried to translate the
idealistic sentiment for democracy stimulated by the war and expressed
in the Atlantic Charter into widespread support for civil rights in
the United States. At the same time, in sharp contrast to many of
their World War I predecessors, they placed a price on black support
for the war effort: no longer could the White House expect this
sizable minority to submit to injustice and yet close ranks with other
Americans to defeat a common enemy. It was readily apparent to the
Negro, if not to his white supporter or his enemy, that winning
equality at home was just as important as advancing the cause of
freedom abroad. As George S. Schuyler, a widely quoted black
columnist, put it: "If nothing more comes out of this emergency than
the widespread understanding among white leaders that the Negro's
loyalty is conditional, we shall not have suffered in vain."[1-17] The
NAACP spelled out the challenge even more clearly in its monthly
publication, _The Crisis_, which declared itself "sorry for brutality,
blood, and death among the peoples of Europe, just as we were sorry
for China and Ethiopia. But the hysterical cries of the preachers of
democracy for Europe leave us cold. We want democracy in Alabama,
Arkansas, in Mississippi and Michigan, in the District of Columbia--in
the _Senate of the United States_."[1-18]

[Footnote 1-17: Pittsburgh _Courier_, December 21,
1940.]

[Footnote 1-18: _The Crisis_ 47 (July 1940):209.]

This sentiment crystallized in the black press's Double V campaign, a
call for simultaneous victories over Jim Crow at home and fascism
abroad. Nor was the Double V campaign limited to a small group of
civil rights spokesmen; rather, it reflected a new mood that, as
Myrdal pointed out, was permeating all classes of black society.[1-19]
The quickening of the black masses in the cause of equal treatment and
opportunity in the pre-World War II period and the willingness of
Negroes to adopt a more militant course to achieve this end might well
mark the beginning of the modern civil rights movement.

[Footnote