Analyze the effects of World War II on the American home front, including the new roles of women and minorities, the Double V campaign, and the internment of Japanese Americans (Tennessee Academic Standards for Social Studies, United States History and Geography, US.32).

What this topic is asking

Standard US.32 asks how World War II changed life at home, especially for women and minorities. For the EOC that means understanding women entering the workforce (Rosie the Riveter), African Americans and the Double V campaign and continued migration, the contributions of Mexican Americans and American Indians, and the injustice of the internment of Japanese Americans.

Women in the workforce

With so many men in uniform, women took jobs that had been closed to them, especially in defense industries.

African Americans and the Double V

African Americans contributed heavily to the war while pressing for equality:

The labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened a march on Washington, pressuring President Roosevelt to issue an order banning discrimination in defense industries and creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee. African Americans served in the military (often in segregated units, such as the Tuskegee Airmen), and the Great Migration to northern and western cities continued. These wartime experiences helped build the postwar civil rights movement.

Mexican Americans and American Indians

Other groups also contributed:

• Mexican Americans served in large numbers and filled farm and industrial jobs, including through the bracero program, which brought Mexican laborers to work in U.S. agriculture.
• American Indians served in the armed forces, most famously the Navajo code talkers, whose language created an unbreakable battlefield code in the Pacific.

The internment of Japanese Americans

The war also brought a serious violation of civil liberties:

Why this matters for the EOC

This topic supplies document-based and point-of-view items (a Rosie the Riveter poster, an internment-camp photo, a Double V image) and cause-and-effect items (how the war expanded opportunity and exposed injustice). It is also a key bridge to the civil rights movement that followed.

Try this

Q1. Explain what "Rosie the Riveter" represented. [2]

• Cue. The millions of American women who took factory and defense jobs during the war, building the weapons and supplies for the war effort.

Q2. Explain the internment of Japanese Americans and the stated reason for it. [2]

• Cue. The government forced about 120,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast into camps under Executive Order 9066, claiming national security, but it was rooted in prejudice (and later apologized for).