ABSTRACT
In Germany, Hitler and the Nazis rose to power on a platform of racism and anti-Semitism. And African Americans strenuously protested the invasion of Ethiopia, a black kingdom in Northeast Africa, by Italian fascists in 1935. When Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939 triggered the start of World War II in Europe, the neutral United States was far from ready for war. As the United States began gearing up for war, Randolph used threats of a black march on Washington to force the Roosevelt administration to prohibit discrimination in defense industries and government. Black leaders pressed hard to gain for blacks the opportunity to fly in combat. In 1940, William Hastie, a black federal judge and dean of Howard University's law school, was appointed as civilian aide to the secretary of war to assist with the large numbers of African Americans in the armed forces.
