With the notable exception of the internment of Japanese Americans, World War II still has a reputation as a "good war" for civil liberties. In 2019, for example, the authors of a leading history survey text declared that "Franklin Roosevelt had been a government official during World War I. Now presiding over a bigger world war, he was determined to avoid many of the patriotic excesses."
But President Roosevelt's civil liberties abuses extended far beyond the internment camps. There are few better examples of this than the government's campaign against the black press. Historian Patrick Washburn, the leading authority on that topic, concluded in A Question of Sedition: The Federal Government's Investigation of the Black Press During World War II that "the black press was in extreme danger of being suppressed until June 1942."
