1943

At the Casablanca Conference, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill decide against opening a second front against the Germans. Instead, Allied forces plan to focus on Sicily and on ending the German U-boat threat in the Atlantic. The Soviet Union continues to take the brunt of the German offensive. Roosevelt announces the doctrine of unconditional surrender.

African-American actor Paul Robeson plays the title role in a record-breaking run of Shakespeare’s Othello on Broadway; the production is acclaimed as a landmark in race relations.

After six months of combat, the U. S. Marines secure Guadalcanal Island; the U. S. Navy and Marines employ an island hopping strategy to gain control of the Pacific.

Axis forces surrender North Africa to the Allies.

Navy personnel in Los Angeles assault Mexican Americans wearing zoot suits while authorities stand by in the Zoot Suit Riots. Race riots also break out in New York City and Detroit that summer.

The Allies, led by General Omar Bradley, land in Sicily; Italy surrenders.

Leonard Bernstein conducts the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for the first time.

Folksinger Woody Guthrie publishes American Folksongs, a collection of his best-known works.

In West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the U. S. Supreme Court rules that the state cannot compel students to declare a belief, stating that “no official. . . can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

In the Moscow Conference Declarations of 1943, the United States, the Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain pledge to continue the war against the Axis powers, to establish an international organization to maintain peace and security, and to cooperate with one another to bring about an agreement to control armaments in the postwar period.

The U. S. Congress passes the Smith-Connally AntiStrike Act of 1943, which gives the president the power to seize any plant or industry where a labor dispute might interfere with war production.

At the Teheran Conference, President Franklin Roosevelt, Premier Joseph Stalin, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill schedule the opening of the long-awaited second front against Nazi Germany.

The leaders of the United States, Great Britain, and China issue the Cairo Conference Statement, which charts Allied military strategy for the war in the Pacific theater.