World War II brought economic recovery to the United States and left the na-
tion in 1945 a productive giant possessing military power on an unprece-
dented scale. Obviously, the war unsettled virtually every aspect of life across
the United States, but nowhere was its effect more dramatic than in Texas.
The state's economy recovered and never looked back as diversification in-
creasingly became the rule. Population growth, slowed notably by the Great
Depression, resumed, and a gain of more than 1.2 million residents during
the war decade brought the total to 7,711,194 by 1950. This increase came in
spite of the fact that a good many black Texans left the state for work in Cal-
ifornia and northern cities during the 1940s. By 1950 the state's 977,458 African
Americans represented only 13 percent of all Texans. Departing blacks were
replaced, however, by a rising Mexican American population that reached ap-
proximately one million in 1950. More and more Texans moved into towns
and cities, and the urban population rose from 45 to 60 percent, the largest
increase during any decade in the state's history. Essentially, then, Texas en-
tered World War II a largely impoverished, rural, agricultural state and
emerged from the war decade thriving and far more urbanized and industri-
alized than ever before. The foundation for these changes was in place prior
to 1941, of course, but the war provided the impetus for spectacular growth.

The December 7, 1941, attack on military installations at Pearl Harbor caught
United States forces by surprise and shocked most Americans, but the onset
of hostilities, somewhere, was hardly unexpected. After all, aggression by
Germany and Italy in Europe and Japan in the Far East had thrown much of
the world into war by 1939, and the United States, although technically neu-
tral, had in several ways come to the aid of the victims of the Axis powers,
as the aggressors called themselves. Most important, in the spring of 1941
Congress, at the urging of President Roosevelt, passed the Lend-Lease Act,
which in effect simply gave war material to nations fighting the Axis. At first

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