Americans All

Set against a backdrop of riots and anxiety, this issue promotes tolerance by reaffirming America’s democratic values and emphasising respect for the rights of others, as well as describing the implementation of practical efforts to fight prejudice in the military, media and education. From the National Conference of Christians and Jews, to journalist Virginius Dabney advocating an end to segregation in the South, the effect of the film is to reassure as well as inspire.

This film, which was released in the USA in July 1944, offered US audiences a morale boosting reminder of what America really stood for at a time when rabble-rousing right winger Gerald L. K. Smith, of the isolationist America First party was hoping to run for office in the 1944 US Presidential Elections. Smith was an anti-Semite who believed that white Christian America had to be saved from a Jewish conspiracy. Opening with footage of newspaper headlines about the Los Angeles Zoot Suit riots and unrest in Detroit, the film also features footage of one of Smith’s speeches and although there is no sound, the gestures give a sense of Smith’s histrionic style.