United We Win is OWI Poster No. 18, issued in 1943 for the War Manpower Commission. Howard Liberman's photograph shows a Black worker and a white worker riveting an aircraft section beneath a full-width American flag.
What the sheet prints
A flag runs across the top of the poster from edge to edge. Under it, two men work on the same piece of an airplane, one Black and one white, close enough to share the job. The type is spare:
UNITED WE WIN
OWI PHOTO BY LIBERMAN
OWI Poster No. 18 Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D.C.
[illegible — printer's job-number line]
WAR MANPOWER COMMISSION • WASHINGTON, D.C.
Who issued it
The War Manpower Commission and the Office of War Information issued the sheet in 1943, printed by the Government Printing Office, with a photograph by Howard Liberman. The Library of Congress holds it (item 93506602, LC-DIG-ds-13150) with no known restrictions; the archive retrieved it on 27 September 2026.
How to read it
The picture makes a claim with no words at all: these two men belong on the same line, doing the same skilled work, under the same flag. That is the right ideal, and it is the one the Constitution's promise of equal protection points toward. A federal poster putting it on factory walls in 1943 was saying something worth saying.
It was also a picture of a hope, not a report. The sheet says nothing about who was hired, at what wage, or where the two men could live, and the archive record does not supply those facts either. "United" describes the photograph. Whether it described the country was a question the poster left to its viewers, and one they were entitled to press.
The case study Famous bylines, a federal subsidy, and a novelist who told Americans to hate names this poster as one of two examples from the program, alongside Americans Will Always Fight for Liberty. More OWI work is gathered at the Office of War Information hub.
Sources
- FRAME object record, "United We Win," 1943. U.S. War Manpower Commission and Office of War Information; OWI photo by Howard Liberman. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ds-13150, retrieved by the archive 27 September 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work; no known restrictions on publication).
