In 1941 labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph organizes a mass movement that forces President Roosevelt to take steps against racial discrimination in defense industries. The NAACP legal campaign against segregation wins significant victories in the Supreme Court in voting rights, education, and interstate transportation cases. Deadly race riots in Detroit and New York in 1943 are followed by a postwar wave of violence against African-Americans in the South.

Jackie Robinson plays his first game for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, breaking the color bar in major league baseball, and in 1948 President Truman orders the armed forces to begin desegregation.

During this time, only a handful of African-Americans are employed as journalists by white-owned newspapers as the print media are almost completely segregated.