January 1940

The Federal Housing Administration's underwriting manuals through the 1940s explicitly instruct appraisers to downgrade properties in racially mixed neighborhoods and to ensure neighborhoods remain 'racially homogeneous.' The FHA recommends physical barriers — highways, walls — to separate Black from white areas. Between 1934 and 1962, the FHA backs $120 billion in home loans; less than 2 percent goes to non-white borrowers. The agency is a primary engine of residential segregation.

The Home Owners' Loan Corporation's color-coded maps, created 1935-1940 and used through the 1950s, designate Black neighborhoods in red as 'hazardous' for mortgage lending. The FHA adopts these standards and explicitly states in its 1938 underwriting manual that 'incompatible racial groups' threaten property values. Banks and savings institutions use the maps to deny mortgages in 239 cities. The practice prevents Black families from building equity through homeownership while channeling federal subsidies to white suburbs.

The U.S. Public Health Service continues its study of untreated syphilis in Black men in Macon County, Alabama. By 1940 approximately 399 infected men are being observed without treatment. Physicians including Dr. John Heller oversee the study. Penicillin becomes available as a cure by 1943 but is deliberately withheld from subjects.

The Second Great Migration (1940-1970) sees approximately 5 million Black Americans leave the South for Northern and Western cities, driven by wartime industrial jobs, continued racial terror, and mechanization of Southern agriculture. Destination cities — Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland — become majority-Black in many neighborhoods as white families flee to newly built suburbs with FHA backing. The migration transforms American demography, culture, and politics while transplanting racial inequality from Southern sharecropping to Northern urban poverty.

The Second Great Migration (1940-1970) sees approximately 5 million Black Americans leave the South for Northern and Western cities, driven by wartime industrial jobs, continued racial terror, and mechanization of Southern agriculture. Destination cities — Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland — become majority-Black in many neighborhoods as white families flee to newly built suburbs with FHA backing. The migration transforms American demography, culture, and politics while transplanting racial inequality from Southern sharecropping to Northern urban poverty.

Defense mobilization drew Black Southerners northward and westward at rates exceeding the first Great Migration. Between 1940 and 1950, roughly 1.6 million Black Americans relocated — to Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Oakland, and New York — encountering segregated housing, union exclusion, and racial violence alongside expanded economic opportunity.

The wartime Double V Campaign — victory over fascism abroad and racism at home — fueled a ninefold NAACP membership increase between 1940 and 1945. Black soldiers and workers who had risked their lives for democracy returned unwilling to accept second-class citizenship, radicalizing the postwar civil rights movement.

By 1940, an estimated 80 percent of Detroit's residential neighborhoods are covered by restrictive deed covenants barring sale to Black residents. The National Association of Real Estate Boards requires member agents to maintain racial homogeneity of neighborhoods as an ethical obligation. Black residents arriving in the Second Great Migration are confined to the Paradise Valley and Black Bottom neighborhoods. When these are demolished for urban renewal and the Chrysler Freeway in the 1950s, Black residents are displaced with nowhere to move.

By 1940, an estimated 80 percent of Detroit's residential neighborhoods are covered by restrictive deed covenants barring sale to Black residents. The National Association of Real Estate Boards requires member agents to maintain racial homogeneity of neighborhoods as an ethical obligation. Black residents arriving in the Second Great Migration are confined to the Paradise Valley and Black Bottom neighborhoods. When these are demolished for urban renewal and the Chrysler Freeway in the 1950s, Black residents are displaced with nowhere to move.

Throughout the 1930s–40s, Black residents in Northern cities faced routine police brutality — beatings during arrests, killings ruled justified — with no criminal accountability. The NAACP documented hundreds of cases annually. In Chicago and Detroit, police routinely enforced informal color lines in housing through targeted violence.

The Rural Electrification Administration, created 1935 to bring electricity to rural America, is administered through local cooperatives that systematically exclude Black farmers and Black-owned farms from electrification. By 1945, most white rural homes in the South have electricity while most Black farm households do not. The disparity affects farming productivity, household conditions, and children's ability to study at night. Federal infrastructure investment, like highway and housing policy, channels benefits to white Americans while bypassing Black families.

By the 1940s, Ida B. Wells-Barnett's three decades of anti-lynching journalism (1892-1930) provides the factual and moral foundation for the NAACP's federal legislative campaign. Her documentation that lynching victims were rarely charged with the crimes attributed to them — that the system was about racial control, not justice — remains the definitive analytical framework. The NAACP's Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill hearings in Congress regularly cite her statistics. Her work demonstrates that meticulous documentation of racial terror can create political pressure even without immediate legislative victory.