“Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder, and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth or under the earth which can deny that he has earned the right of citizenship in the United States.” Wise words from Frederick Douglass who strongly advocated African American involvement in the Civil War in order obtain themselves citizenship and civil rights. Although some rights were obtained, they still weren’t equal to their white counterparts. The Jim Crow1 laws that were enacted after the Reconstruction period are a prime example. This idea of “separate but equal” segregation had pervaded every aspect of American society since the 1890s and the military was no exception. When African Americans volunteered for duty or were drafted following the attack on Pearl Harbor, they were relegated to segregated divisions and combat support roles, such as janitors, cooks, and quartermaster. The military was similar to the Deep South in terms of its segregation. Through this, it was easy for African Americans to see the hypocrisy between the conditions at home and the war aims that Roosevelt gave in his “Four Freedoms” speech. Despite this, African Americans participated in the war efforts and launched the “Double V3”campaign in hopes of establishing those equal rights. The Army accepted black enlistees but created separate black infantry regiments and assigned white commanders to them. The Navy segregated the units as well and gave them the most menial jobs on the ship. The Marines initially didn’t even accept African Americans at the time and at the training base, black and white soldiers were kept apart. But in the chaos of war, it was hard to enforce segregation. The first example of this chaos was during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Dorie Miller, a black sailor upon the U.S.S. Arizona who had been trained as nothing but a mess ma