BLACK LABOR AND RACE "San Francisco Bay Area in World War II " Author, Dr. Cleveland Valrey The impact of war on African Americans has been widely debated in the American press, the mass media, and in public opinion. Did World War II represent a period of unprecedented racial progress, or did America by its unequal treatment of black people socially, in the workplace, and economically in the United States; fail to honor its stated ideals of "making the world safe for Democracy"? President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), in an address assailing Nazi propaganda relevant to human problems and actual social conditions asserted that: "The essence of our struggle today is that man shall be free. Free to live, work, worship, and pursue his own goals. There can be no real freedom for the common man without enlightened social policies. In the last analysis, they are the stakes for which the democracies are today fighting." Indeed, did the United States follow through on FDR's assertion of freedom? Is there an issue of Black Labor and Race today? Are we in new era of race and labor relations?