(narrator) In the fall of 1932, the United States underwent a profound political change, marked by the election of a new president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a distant cousin of Theodore. Much as Teddy Roosevelt was seen as something of an advocate for African Americans, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a hundred times that. African Americans are becoming an ever-increasingly important part of the democratic political coalition. More African American's are moving North, they're joining unions, they're joining the NAACP in unprecedented numbers. (Adam Green) African Americans who are involved in unions, members of churches, and African Americans who are publishing newspapers and magazines are all finding ways to bring their influence to bear on the federal government and saying do your job! We're talking about constitutional rights here. We're talking about citizens who are being abused here. Do your job or don't expect our support. [airplane engines roar; loud explosions] (narrator) In December 1941, the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Second World War. [loud explosions] (Douglas A. Blackmon) President Roosevelt convened a meeting of the Cabinet at the White House to discuss preparations to fight this war against Japan and Germany. The president asked what are the things that the Japanese are going to attack us for in the course of the war, that are problematic? Someone said the treatment of the Negro. (narrator) Months earlier, the Department of Justice had established a civil rights section, but its focus was on labor issues, not racial equality. Now, the president asked his attorney general if this unit might be used to demonstrate a commitment to racial change. And what stands at the intersection of African American rights and labor rights? Peonage and involuntary servitude. They can't just attack segregation head on during World War II, because they still need the white Southerners who are part of the democratic coalition. But they did sincerely believe that these peonage cases were pretty bad and they required a response. (woman) "Mrs. Roosevelt, I am a colored mother and I need your help." (narrator) In the decades since the Pace trial, the federal government had paid little attention to the continued complaints of forced labor sent to the White House, the Department of Justice, and the NAACP. (woman) "My boy answered an advertisement in our Post Paper for a job. They are being guarded all night by armed guards and not allowed to write home. Please don't send this letter back, because I'm afraid if they find out I've written to you, they'll kill my boy. Viola Cosley." Nearly 80 years had passed since the United States ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Now, in December 1941, President Roosevelt took steps to finally enforce it. Just five days after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt's attorney general issued Circular 3591. It said that federal attorneys were to aggressively prosecute any case of involuntary servitude or slavery, not only those defined as peonage. (Risa Goluboff) He says, whether they're being held there because of a threat of imprisonment or out of violence, whatever the mechanism is that is holding people in slavery, you should go after it. And he says this is part of the war effort. These cases are important because we need to make sure that African Americans feel like their rights are being taken care of. (Douglas A. Blackmon) And within months, there was a prosecution underway of a man in Texas who had been holding an African American worker as a slave for almost 15 years. He was convicted by a federal jury in 1942 and went to federal prison. I mark that as the technical end of slavery in America.