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...han they had experienced during World War I. Black newspaper editors insisted during 1939 and 1940 that black support for this war effort would depend on fair treatment. They demanded that black soldiers be trained in all military roles and that black civilians have equal opportunities to work in war industries at home. African Americans were some of the quickest and most energetic to condemn the risings of fascism in Europe. They instantly understood the risks Nazism and its Aryan doctrines imposed on the world. Some had read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and had taken offense to its unfavorable comments toward blacks. It was also claimed that in 1936 Hitler had refused to treat African American Olympic stars Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf with common decency in Berlin. Also the knockout of the black idol Joe Louis in 1936 by Max Schmeling had fueled some bitter emotions toward Nazism and it was fueled once again when Louis exacted his complete revenge in 1938. At the beginning of the war African Americans watched wages skyrocket at plants holding defense contracts but had still not seen a change in the rigid anti-black policy. In 1941 A. Philip Randolph, head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, a union whose members were mainly black railroad workers, planned a March on Washington to demand that the federal government require defense contractors to hire blacks on an equal basis with whites. “Philip Randolph told the president that (blacks) wanted him to issue an unequivocal executive order to effectuate the speediest possible abolition of discrimination in war industries and the armed forces” (White 192). “On June 25, 1941, the president issued Executive Order 8802 specifically banning discrimination on account of race, creed, color, or national origin in industries holding government contracts for war production and in the training for jobs in the war industries. The Order set up a Committee on Fair Employment Practices responsible only to the President to investigate and take corrective action against discrimination” (193). Some hostility toward African Americans was inevitable. In an America at war, the familiar patterns of black-white relationships were altered. One of the results of this was an increase in tensions, fears, and aggressions. “In the South many white people found it convenient to blame someone for the new challenges in race relations, and they decided upon Eleanor Roosevelt. Viewing her as a symbol of outside interference, they claimed she was the inspiration behind the “Eleanor Clubs” fo...