John W. McCormack speaks to Boston about the war effort

In commemoration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day -- when Allied forces stormed the beaches of France and began their bloody eleven month march toward Nazi Germany -- I thought it might be interesting to reflect on the city of Boston during the war.

McCormack in the 1960s

One of my favorite moment's in Boston's WWII history is US Congressman John W. McCormack's Fourth of July oration. Speaking to a packed crowd in Faneuil Hall's second floor, known for two centuries as "Great Hall" and for slightly less as "the Cradle of Liberty," McCormack explained to Bostonians why they had to put in long hours at the Navy Yard or the factory, why they had to put every extra cent into war bonds, and why they had to send their sons and husbands to war:

"In this war more than any other," he said, "we are fighting powerful enemies who are imbued with the monstrous doctrine of hatred -- anti-religious hatred, economic hatred, and racial hatred -- determined to enslave the world." He ridiculed the Axis powers, criticizing their disdain for "the rule of majority, because their power lies in their own success in pillaging and destroying -- in the burning of books and the persecution of minorities, in the destruction of the dignity and personality of the individual."

Faneuil Hall

This speech, with was answered with thunderous applause and not a few war bond purchases, is an example of a countless number of local efforts to clearly and honestly explain the necessity of "the good war" to the American people on a local level. In reflecting on its origins -- coming from an America with a segregated army and from a home front torn asunder that same year (1943) with race riots, it is easy to dismiss speeches like McCormack's as propaganda. It is harder, but no less honest, to see it for what it was: a call to the people of Boston, and the United States, to strive toward a society free of these tyrannies. It could not have been lost on a politician regularly facing legislation and letters on both sides of the race issue that he was describing an America that was fantastical at the time, but looking back, it is equally difficult for us to recognize that we still have a long way to go, and that men like McCormack and his contemporaries put us on a path for a better tomorrow many yesterdays ago.