here were some outbreaks of racial hatred during the war years, but generally those years are seen as aiding the struggle for equality and civil rights because military service gave blacks a sense of empowerment and because new employment opportunities were also developed (Schaller, Scharff, and Schulzinger 29-32).
The fact that the war years brought about some reexamination of the issue if race is seen in the 1949 play Forward the Heart, reviewed in Time magazine February 7, 1949. The story of the play is that a young man who has been blinded in the war sees no reason to live until he falls in love with his mother's maid, only then discovering that the maid is black. The review is not favorable, but it is not because the subject matter is deemed unacceptable but because the writing is not good enough and because the anonymous reviewer sees the issues as complex and hard to bring together in a play. The ability of the young man to overcome any prejudice and to want to marry the girl shows a progression in thought that is interesting, wh
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