Man the Guns: Race, Masculinity, and Citizenship from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement

TitleMan the Guns: Race, Masculinity, and Citizenship from World War II to the Civil Rights Movement
Publication TypeBook Chapter
Year of Publication2014
AuthorsEstes, Steve
EditorHagemann, Karen, and Sonya Michel
Book TitleGender and the Long Postwar: The United States and the Two Germanys, 1945–1989
Pagination185–203
PublisherJohns Hopkins University Press
CityBaltimore, MD
Abstract

This essay  examines the intersection of race and masculinity in the United States in the post-war period. It argues that World War II influenced the development of the civil rights movement of Afro-Americans in  three ways. First, African American men who served in the military gained a new sense of themselves as men and altered white perceptions of black manhood, particularly outside of the South. Second, the baby boom that accompanied the war, created a new emphasis on fatherhood that gendered the fight over school integration in ways that scholars have only recently begun to acknowledge. Third, the gender assumptions underpinning the GI Bill reinforced the ideal of white fatherhood, subsidized white flight, and underwrote the de facto segregation that continues to define American housing patterns to this day. 

URLhttps://www.wilsoncenter.org/book/gender-and-the-long-postwar-the-united-states-and-the-two-germanys-1945-1989
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891048421

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