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Black Americans found an ally in the New Deal promoted by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s. The horrors of the Nazi regime in Germany made racism less defensible, and the Supreme Court began to recognize Black rights to freedoms whites already enjoyed.

While conditions in the South for Blacks did not change, the racial climate nationally did shift. More Blacks moved North, and the domestic war effort saw racial restrictions eased in labor unions and in employment.

The protests against segregation continued during the war years, in spite of efforts to quiet all domestic disagreements while the war overseas went on.

The promise that equality would extend to all Americans did dampen some aggressive anti-racist efforts until the war's end but also served to increase anticipation among Blacks of greater freedoms in the future.

By the war's end, some progress had been recorded, but the status of most Blacks in the South remained the same. At the