(H)our History Lesson: Wilmington, NC: Comparing and Connecting WWII Home Fronts

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• WWII Wilmington Lesson Series: Introduction

About this Lesson

This lesson is part of a series teaching about the WWII home front, with Wilmington, North Carolina, as a WWII Heritage City. The lesson contains photographs, reading, and a primary source, with an optional activity, to contribute to learners’ understandings of Wilmington, N.C. as a WWII Heritage City. It combines lesson themes from the three other lessons in the collection to summarize the city’s contributions and encourage connections to the overall U.S. home front efforts. 

Objectives:

1. In a culminating product:
a. Identify important WWII location(s) in Wilmington, N.C. and describe their historical significance
b. Summarize the contributions of Wilmington, North Carolina service members and civilians to home front wartime efforts
c. Evaluate the struggles, and contributions, of African Americans in Wilmington and Northeastern North Carolina.
d. Optional: Describe similarities and differences of Wilmington, N.C. and other WWII home front(s).

Materials for Students:

1. Photos
2. Readings 1 & 2
3. Maps, project materials (as needed)
4. Student graphic organizers (comparison matrices, single-point rubric for meeting standards, single-point rubric for meeting objectives)

Student Graphic Organizers

1. Create Comparison Matrices for your students to use. To compare two cities, create a one-page sheet with three columns and four rows.  Label the left column Theme/Topic and the other columns City 1 and City 2.  For a Comparison Matrix for three cities simply add an additional column.

2. Create two Single-Point Rubrics to assist students’ self-assessment. One is for assessing proficiency in meeting teacher-selected standards. One is for assessing proficiency in meeting objectives.

3. For the rubric on standards, create a one-page sheet with three columns and four rows of content. Label the first column “Areas for Improvement,” the second column, “Proficient (Meeting Standard),” and the third column, “Areas of Exceeding Standard.”  Leave the first and third columns blank.  In each row of the second column identify a Standard and indicate a space for noting the evidence for meeting the standard.  Include a space at the bottom of the page for assigning points for each column.

4. For the rubric on objectives, create a one-page sheet with three columns and four rows of content. Label the first column “Areas for Improving toward Objective,” the second column, “Proficient (Meeting Objective),” and the third column, “Areas of Exceeding Objective.” Leave the first and third columns blank. In the four rows of the second column identify these four objectives: 

   1. Objective: Identify important WWII location(s) in Wilmington, N.C. and describe their historical significance. 

   2. Objective: Summarize the contributions of Wilmington, North Carolina service members and civilians to home front wartime efforts. 

   3. Objective: Evaluate the struggles, and contributions, of African Americans in Wilmington and Northeastern North Carolina. 

   4. Objective: Optional: Describe similarities and differences of Wilmington, N.C. and other WWII home front city(s). Include a space at the bottom of the page for assigning points for each column.

Getting Started: Essential Question

Why was Wilmington chosen as a World War II Heritage city, and what are its similarities and differences to other Heritage cities?

Photos 1, 2: Wilmington City Designations, Then and Now

Sign in upper left corner designating Wilmington as an All-America City, awarded by the National Civic League (1967)

New Hanover County Public Library

Sign designating Wilmington as America’s 1st WWII Heritage City.

Star News

Read to Connect

Reading 1: Heritage City Designation

Excerpt from: “House Report 115-998, “To Direct the Secretary of the Interior to Annually Designate at Least One City in The United States as An ‘American World War II Heritage City,’ and for other purposes” (October 30, 2018)
“. . .PURPOSE OF THE BILL
The purpose of H.R. 6118 is to direct the Secretary of the Interior to annually designate at least one city in the United States as an ``American World War II Heritage City''.
BACKGROUND AND NEED FOR LEGISLATION
On December 7, 1941, military forces of the Empire of Japan attacked the U.S. Naval Fleet and ground bases at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. On December 8, 1941, one day after what President Roosevelt referred to as, ``a date which will live in infamy,'' the United States declared war against the Empire of Japan. Three days later, on December 11, 1941, Japan's ally, Germany, declared war on the United States. Sixteen million Americans, mostly young working-age men, served in the military during World War II, out of an overall United States population of 113 million.
While an unprecedented number of Americans served in World War II, the country drastically increased its war production on the home front, serving not only the needs of the armed forces of the United States but her allies as well--in what President Franklin Roosevelt called ``The Arsenal of Democracy.'' The combination of millions serving in the military, during a period of necessary and drastic increases in production, led to significant social changes on the American home front.
The World War II period resulted in the largest number of people migrating within the United States in the history of the country. Individuals and families relocated to industrial centers for good paying jobs out of a sense of patriotic duty. Many industrial centers became ``boomtowns,'' growing at phenomenal rates. One example, the City of Richmond, California, grew from a population of under 24,000 to over 100,000 during the war.
Another boomtown was the City of Wilmington, North Carolina. During World War II, Wilmington was called ``The Defense Capital of the State.'' Wilmington's largest employer, the North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, constructed 243 cargo vessels. Wilmington was also home to many strategic defense industries, including fertilizer plants, pulpwood and creosote factories, dairies, and concrete floating drydock manufacturing. Wilmington was also the site of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad headquarters and a P-47 fighter plane training area. The City and its surrounding area hosted training for all five military branches, and the City's population more than doubled with the influx of military personnel, forcing everyone to cope with a strain on housing, schools, transportation, the food supply, medical and social services. . . .”

Questions for Reading 1
1. What was the purpose of the bill (H.R. 6118) according to the report?
2. Why is Wilmington described as a boomtown in the report?
3. Are there other cities you think of when considering home front contributions during wartime? Which, and why?
Extension: Research the importance of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and the site of the headquarters in Wilmington.

Photo 3: The Barn (jazz club and ballroom)

Jazz bands and giants like Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Dizzy Gillespie performed at this jazz club and ballroom, which was located on South 11th St. The Barn was considered one of the earliest examples of integration in Wilmington; community members of all races would come to dance on the same floor.

Come Hear North Carolina

Reading 2: Excerpts from the interview of Margaret Rogers, who grew up in Wilmington during wartime

[Interview : December 2, 1998; Wilmington North Carolina]
This interview was a part of the oral histories collected in “World War II: Through the Eyes of the Cape Fear,” a joint project by the William M. Randall Library and Cape Fear Museum.

So as we were outside as small children at school, we often saw the prisoners. The teachers devised a game to help us when we were outside and we learned to climb trees and that was a way to protect ourselves when there were prison breaks. There weren't very many prison breaks, but the prisoners did escape and they would run through the schoolyard, through Community Hospital area over onto 13th Street usually, then down Church Street. . . .

So we would see the prison guards as they chased them. So we were very familiar with them. We often were allowed to go across the street and give candy and gum to the prisoners and then sometimes being children, we would go across the street without the teacher's permission.

Even at home when we were not in school and they would have prison breaks, I had a chance to watch them chase them. I was an only child, but I was a tomboy I guess you would call it and I learned to climb easily. I just had a problem getting down. I could always get up. My problem was getting down. But when I would discover the prisoners running through the neighborhood, I would climb the garage door, jump on top of the garage, then hop on top of the house and sit next to the chimney and I could watch the guards chase the prisoners through the neighborhood.
One of the things we did during that time on weekends was to go across what is now Cape Fear Memorial Bridge. It wasn't there at that time. You went across the northeast Cape Fear River Bridge and we'd go out on Highway 74/76 and park on the side of the highway because you could see those liberty ships. There were so many stockpiled there that they ran from the river, from the highway all the way back to the state port and you could literally step from one ship to the other without touching the water for miles. I guess it would not be a form of entertainment for the children today, but it was fascinating to us. . . .
It wasn't all grim. There were wonderful memories of entertainment and outings, although you had to be careful about going around the beaches. We had the colored USO which is now the Community Boys Club. It was one of the two USOs in Wilmington, larger USOs at 9th and Nixon. You had a nightclub at 11th and Meares known as The Barn and all of the big name entertainers - you had Cab Calloway came. You had Lionel Hampton.

Big band music for blacks and whites was your choice of music because we didn't have rock and roll at that time and in a way, it was a good thing because you learned to appreciate different types of music. I had a small radio, one of the earlier versions of a portable and my mother would only allow me to listen to that radio at certain times and I used to take it at night and put it under my pillow so she couldn't hear it when I went to bed and listen to a radio station from Nashville called Randy's Record Mart and they played all of this type of music so I began an appreciation for music at an early age.

With the military bases so close to Wilmington, with Camp Davis up at Holly Ridge and Camp LeJeune, Moffett Point which is Camp Johnson now. You had a lot of military people who came into town on the weekends so The Barn was very important to them. As a small child, I was not allowed to go to The Barn of course. In fact, I was never allowed to go to The Barn even as a teenager before it finally closed, but children have a way of getting to see what they want to see.

I was allowed to go and visit a classmate who lived at 11th and Dawson whose name was Ruth Mosby and The Barn was a couple of blocks from her house so as we played outside of course, we skipped down the street and go around the back, sneak in the back and we could watch these performers as they were rehearsing and it was a beautiful place. To me it seemed too huge to understand. I just could not imagine a dance hall that large, but it was a wonderful place and it did give the black community some place to go to forget their problems for a little while.

Most of the women who were domestics continued their domestic jobs during that time and that in itself helped a lot of them, a lot of the families to survive because as I mentioned earlier, in a lot of cases, they were allowed to bring home food that was left over when they finished dinner. So this helped to supplement the diet. We think Wilmington is crowded now and it is and it's so much larger than I ever could have imagined it would be because when I was growing up, the city limits stopped at 17th Street.

So to think as much traffic as we have now, imagine what the traffic was like when you had all these convoys coming down the highway. All of the ships coming in, the sailors and they were everywhere. The soldiers were everywhere. So you became so accustomed to seeing a person in uniform, all of the little children when they played their games wanted to play war games because we really had no idea of the severity of it.

It was as you grew older that you really began to understand what this was all about. But at that time we played games when we saw the planes flying over very low and we ran and hid behind whatever because a child does not think that that plane if it were an enemy plane could have fired a gun and killed you on the spot.

Quotation to consider:

“Growing up in Wilmington during World War II was fascinating, although at times very scary and the memories remain with you forever. It's not something that you think about once in a blue moon. It's something that stays with you.” – Margaret Rogers, December 2, 1998 in interview

Questions for Reading 2, Photo 3
1. What are examples of people and places Ms. Rogers describes as observing as a child?
2. Connect Photo 3 to Ms. Rogers’ description of The Barn. What was significant about The Barn? Why does it stand out in Ms. Rogers’ memories?
3. Ms. Rogers shares about women who were domestics continuing domestic jobs. Based on what you have read across the other Wilmington lessons, what are other ways women contributed to the home front efforts (both paid and volunteer work)?
4. How does Ms. Rogers compare her childhood perspectives to what she knows today?
5. Consider both readings: two very different pieces! How do they both embody Wilmington as a Heritage city?
Extension: Research the location and history of the Prisoner of War camps in Wilmington.

Culminating Activity/Mastery Product

To demonstrate student understanding, support students in creating a final product that meets the following objectives:
a. Identify important WWII location(s) in Wilmington, N.C. and describe their historical significance
b. Summarize the contributions of Wilmington, North Carolina service members and civilians to home front wartime efforts
c. Evaluate the struggles, and contributions, of African Americans in Wilmington and Northeastern North Carolina.
d. Optional: Describe similarities and differences of Wilmington, N.C. and other WWII Heritage city(s)
Mastery products should be:
. . . student-led; Students work as individuals or in collaborative groups.
. . . student-directed: Students are offered a variety of choices for product type (report, slide presentation, artwork with written descriptions, video product, etc.).
. . . student-organized; Teacher facilitates by providing students with the comparison matrices and/or resource links from throughout the series of lessons.
. . . student-assessed; Teacher supports student-self-assessment and reflection by providing students single-point rubrics to assess for meeting standards (image Number 4) and/or lesson objectives (image number 5). Instructions for creating these student graphic organizers are above.

Note: Depending on time and scope, the comparison of Wilmington to another WWII Heritage city(s) within the mastery product (objective d) may be omitted. However, comparing cities is recommended, as it connects students to a deeper understanding of the WWII home front.


Please view American World War II Heritage City Program - World War II (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)

Photo 4: Single-Point Rubric (Standards; Blank) [Teacher selects priority standards for assessment.]

Single-Point Rubric (Standards; Blank) [Teacher selects priority standards for assessment.]

Courtesy of Sarah Lane

Photo 5: Single-Point Rubric (Objectives)

Single-Point Rubric (Objectives)

Courtesy of Sarah Lane