Date of Award
2023
Degree Type
Open Access Master's Thesis
Degree Name
History, MA
Program
School of Arts and Humanities
Advisor/Supervisor/Committee Chair
Joshua Goode
Dissertation or Thesis Committee Member
JoAnna Poblete
Terms of Use & License Information
Rights Information
© 2023 Zoё Scott-Goss
Keywords
African American, Democracy, Double V Campaign, Soldiers, World War II
Subject Categories
History
Abstract
This thesis examines the Double V Campaign and focuses on the movement as an expression of African American aspirations for the recognition of their full American citizenship rights. The Double V Campaign helped many black Americans reconcile the paradoxes of being asked to fight for a country that denied African Americans their full citizenship rights. Despite no political or social changes occurring as a direct result of the campaign, the movement taught African Americans to avoid mistakes of the past and provide a roadmap for alternative and potentially successful ways to mobilize; lessons that proved essential in the successes of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. African Americans also still face racial inequalities in the military today and many aspects of the campaign can still be seen in the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement in the 21st century, demonstrating how the black community continues to seek the second victory for racial equality. The first chapter will examine World War I and how the treatment of black male soldiers during this war for democracy set the foundation for the campaign. The second chapter will explore the Double V Campaign against the backdrop of World War II. The movement was critical in highlighting the agency of the black press and how influential it was for the black community. More importantly, the Double V Campaign was an accumulation of the anger many African Americans felt after not receiving more rights after World War I, which played an important part in changing the African American mindset from being passive participants in gaining more rights (as they were in World War I) to active participants who now demanded change. Finally, the third chapter will focus on the legacy of the Double V Campaign and how the ideals behind the movement are still influential in America today. The Double V Campaign is rarely discussed in American or World War II history. This thesis aims to place the Double V Campaign in its rightful place as a historically significant movement that showed the resiliency of African Americans in the U.S. to secure civil rights through many roadblocks that were entirely based on the refusal to live as half Americans.
ISBN
9798342762663
Recommended Citation
Scott-Goss, Zoё. (2023). “Should I Sacrifice to Live Half-American?”: An Examination of the Double V Campaign. CGU Theses & Dissertations, 880. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/880.
