Protesting the segregated Armed Forces and black exclusion from defense industry jobs, A. Philip Randolph and Bayard Rustin formed MOWM (1941–47) “to mobilize five million Negroes into one militant mass for pressure,” using “Non-Violent Civil Disobedience and Non-Cooperation.”

The movement buoyed civil rights. Randolph, Walter White (NAACP), and T. Arnold Hill (National Urban League), meeting President Roosevelt and his advisers in September 1940, sought desegregation of the military, where more than 1,000,000 blacks would serve, with more and better jobs for blacks in every industry with a federal contract. The administration stalled; so, in January 1941 Randolph proposed a July 1 March on Washington to force action. MOWM chapters organized; their rallies drew 23,500 in New York, 20,000 in Chicago, 15,000 in St. Louis, and thousands elsewhere. The Amsterdam News (New York) also reported “100,000 IN MARCH TO CAPITOL.” Unsuccessfully, the president sent New York's mayor and Mrs. Roosevelt to dissuade MOWM leaders. On June 25 he signed an order. Providing that “there shall be no racial discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government,” it created the Committee on Fair Employment Practice to monitor nondiscrimination by federal and contract-employers. Though cancelling the march, MOWM continued to pursue nonviolent protest.