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African American Homefront Thesis

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The American Homefront
Even though some sacrificed the ultimate price fighting overseas to defend their country and housewives leave home and enter the nation 's factories. African Americans continued, filling vacated factory jobs and Mexican Americans were courted to cross the border to assist with the harvest season. More teenagers pitched in to fill the demand for new labor. Americans of all ages and races on the American Homefront all stepped up to the plate during the devastation of World War II.
Sybil Lewis is an African American women from Scapula, Oklahoma who was working in a small black owned restaurant in Los Angeles, California. Lewis, found an ad in the local newspaper offering to train women for defense work for better pay. Lewis eventually got the job as a riveter. The riveter used a gun to shoot rivets through the metal and fasten it together. The bucker used a bucking bar on the other side of the metal to smooth out the rivets. Bucking was harder than shooting rivets; it required more muscle. As said in Women in War Industries Interview with Sybil …show more content…

Mexican Americans were seen as the ones who would take your job because they work for cheaper pay. Stereotyped as criminals, unintelligent, and not loyal. The experiences of fighting alongside white Americans in the military, as well as of working in factory jobs for lower wages, made Mexican Americans less willing to tolerate the second-class citizenship that had been their lot before the war. Having proven their loyalty and "Americanness" during World War II, Mexican Americans in the postwar years wanted to have the right guaranteed by our Constitution as a reward for faithful service; World War II and Mexican Americans Published by the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC)

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