# Americans All (1942), nine surnames and a non-discrimination pledge

Americans All is a 1942 War Manpower Commission poster. Workers labeled with nine surnames, among them Nienciewiscz, Du Bois, Cohen, Hrdlicka and Williams, service a tank above a signed quotation from Franklin D. Roosevelt calling for full participation of all workers without discrimination (NAID 513802).

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      Americans All

      Americans All (1942), nine surnames and a non-discrimination pledge
      A 1942 War Manpower Commission poster lists nine workers' surnames over a tank and quotes Roosevelt against job discrimination by race, creed, color or

## Techniques named on the archive record

TestimonialPlain folksGlittering generalities
      Date1942Made byWar Manpower CommissionMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513802; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) War Manpower Commission. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-352 (NAID 513802).
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  Americans All is a 1942 War Manpower Commission poster. Workers labeled with nine surnames, among them Nienciewiscz, Du Bois, Cohen, Hrdlicka and Williams, service a tank above a signed quotation from Franklin D. Roosevelt calling for full participation of all workers without discrimination (NAID 513802).

## What the sheet prints

A tank fills the picture, and workers are busy around it. Each is tagged with a surname, and the names point to many different family origins. Under them run two words, and under those a sentence signed by the President.

NIENCIEWISCZ · DU BOIS · COHEN · LAZARRI · HRDLICKA · SANTINI · SCHMIDT · WILLIAMS · KELLY

AMERICANS ALL

"...it is the duty of employers and labor organizers to provide for the full participation of all workers without discrimination because of race, creed, color, or national origin."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Transcription in the FRAME record, with the names run onto one line. Imprint War Manpower Commission, Washington, D.C.; U.S. Government Printing Office: 1942-O-476311. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513802, local id 44-PA-352.

## Who issued it

The War Manpower Commission issued the sheet. The quotation is signed by Roosevelt, but the poster gives no date or document for it, and the FRAME record does not identify one. This page does not supply a source the sheet lacks.

## How to read it

This is one of the better arguments in the 1942 poster file. It says, in a federal voice, that employers and labor organizers should provide for the full participation of all workers without discrimination because of race, creed, color or national origin. Equal treatment is a constitutional principle, and here it is printed on a factory wall.

The list of names deserves a second look. "Schmidt" is on it, in a year when Germany was the enemy; it reads as a statement that German Americans were Americans. The names lean heavily toward European ancestry. No surname on the list is identifiably Japanese, and in the same year people of Japanese ancestry were being ordered out of their San Francisco neighborhoods by military notice (the exclusion order). The poster's principle was right. The government's practice that year did not match it.

The phrase "Americans All" is broad on purpose. Its strength is that it does not ask anyone to stop being Cohen or Kelly to be counted. Compare Pvt. Joe Louis Says, a 1942 poster that enlists a Black champion without mentioning discrimination at all, and the Four Freedoms posters for the period's other statements of principle. The Office of War Information index lists more. The same government that printed "Americans All" signed Executive Order 9066 that year; the Roosevelt administration essay reads the two together.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Americans All, 1942. War Manpower Commission. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-352, NAID 513802, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/americans-all-war-manpower-commission-1942/