Postwar Desegregation
Picketers outside the July 1948 Democratic National Convention demand that the party include equal rights and anti-Jim Crow planks in its official platform and desegregate the armed services. Leading the pickets is A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Randolph headed the March on Washington Movement that pressured President Roosevelt to desegregate defense employment during World War II, and he led the committee that convinced President Truman to desegregate the armed forces in 1948. © Bettmann/Corbis.