A Step in the Right Direction!!
A worker labelled 'Labor' hammers up a sign reading 'Workers Wanted Regardless of Color' while a man labelled 'Management' steadies it, and a discarded sign reading 'Workers Wanted / White Only' lies at their feet. The tell is card stacking: a single percentage increase (85 per cent in Baltimore war plants) is given without the starting number or the plants' total hiring.
Propaganda techniques used in this cartoon
- Date
- 1943
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Office of War Information (cartoon artwork; artist Charles Alston)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Labor, Race and ethnicity, Home front
- Event
- World War II
- Regime
- Roosevelt administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 208, OWI War Effort Cartoon Artworks (NAID 535594), retrieved October 3, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work)
Office of War Information. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 208, 208-COM-10 (NAID 535604).
Text on the object
WORKERS WANTED REGARDLESS OF COLOR LABOR MANAGEMENT WORKERS WANTED - WHITE ONLY "Between May, 1942, and January, 1943, Negro employment in Baltimore's principal war plants increased eighty five per cent." .......... NEWS ITEM Alston OWI "A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION!!"
