As far back as 1937 Charles Houston, who had been an army lieutenant in World War I, had been sending letters to President Roosevelt asking that Negroes be given the right to serve on a nonsegregated basis in the military. But as World War II broke out, the armed forces remained segregated. Blacks were also trying to break through the Jim Crow line that kept them from good-paying jobs in factories that produced military equipment and weapons. Marshall and the NAACP got involved in two widely publicized cases, one against the Boilermakers Union in Rhode Island and the other against the largest marine shipworkers’ union in San Francisco. Both unions segregated their black workers into auxiliary labor groups, which kept the blacks out of any union leadership posts and limited their rights to equal pay and job protection. Just as Marshall had been in the forefront of integrating the steelworkers’ union in Baltimore, he wanted to end Jim Crow in these industries. While Marshall worked in court to break down segregation among boilermakers and shipbuilders, A.
