How did the experience of World War II-on the home front and abroad-lay crucial groundwork for the civil rights movement and African Americans' greater access to "the American promise" in the 1950s and 1960s?

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Access to Jobs: The conversion to a wartime economy in the United States created labor shortages that opened assembly-line jobs in defense to African Americans, causing black unemployment to drop by 80 percent during the war and giving new employment options to men and women who had previously been limited to agricultural and domestic labor. African Americans continued to earn only 50 percent of the average white worker's wages, but economic improvements made it possible for the black community to mount more visible and effective protests against racial discrimination.
Demographic Shifts: The war brought a major wave of migration as 5.5 million African Americans moved from the rural South to centers of industrial production in the North and West, making a majority of African Americans city dwellers for the first time. Blacks' migration intensified racial antagonisms in many cities, but it also created denser black communities and a substantial black voting bloc that made national politicians more attentive to racism and discrimination and other issues that concerned African Americans.
Emergence of Black Political Organizing: Black protest and organizations were as old as American racism but, until the 1940s, had limited visibility and influence. The growing black population in urban centers made higher levels of organizing possible. The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black newspaper, called for a “Double V” campaign for African Americans to seek “victory over our enemies at home and victory over our enemies on the battlefields abroad.” Black organizations demanded that the federal government require companies receiving defense contracts to integrate their workforces and threatened to bring 100,000 African American marchers to Washington if the president did not comply. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People grew in this period and put more focus on court challenges to segregation. The Congress of Racial Equality formed in 1942 and organized pickets and sit-ins against Jim Crow restaurants and theaters. Groups like these formed the political basis for black organization in the 1950s and 1960s.
Greater Federal Government's Intervention: Owing in large part to the demands of African American activists, the federal government took on a greater role in preventing racial discrimination in some parts of the country in the 1940s. In mid-1941, Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802, authorizing the Committee on Fair Employment Practices to investigate and prevent racial discrimination in employment in businesses that had federal defense contracts. At the end of the war the federal government created the G.I. Bill, which provided numerous benefits to black and white veterans, including job training, education, and low-interest loans to purchase homes and businesses. These benefits were not always administered equally, especially in the South, but thousands of African Americans did benefit economically. After the war, President Harry S. Truman acted more boldly on civil rights than any previous president. His successes were limited, but he did desegregate the armed services and create important groundwork for later presidents—including Eisenhower and Kennedy—to continue to address civil rights.
Ideological/Cultural Shifts: The fight against Nazi Germany and its ideology of Aryan racial supremacy in the 1940s raised many whites' awareness of the extent and intensity of racial prejudice in the United States and broadened white sympathy for African Americans' struggles. The rhetoric of American freedom and democracy that was used during World War II and the Cold War also made white politicians and citizens more sensitive to racial issues. Political figures began to realize that racial segregation and discrimination in the United States endangered its claim that it was the leader of the free world. New awareness and sensitivity to racial issues created an opening for the civil rights movement to push more effectively for its goals and resulted in changes such as the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954.
International: World War II effectively ended European empires in Asia and Africa and spurred anticolonial struggles around the world. Anticolonial struggles in Asia and Africa provided rhetoric and models for black activism in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

How Did the Experience of World War II-On the Home