Divided Arsenal: Race and the American State during World War II

This book describes and analyzes FDR’s methods of war mobilization, by focusing on his administration’s race manpower policies. Widespread but little-known racial violence threatened to disrupt the American war effort, and the Army as well as production officials struggled throughout the war to control and retain the allegiance of African-Americans. Like the century’s three other Democratic presidents fighting wars, FDR struggled to contain racial unrest by deploying new policy tools suited to particular forms of friction.