During the years of and following World War Two, there was a colossal shift that occurred in racial politics in the United States. The main change was in relations between African-Americans and White Americans. Chester Himes wrote If He Hollers Let Him Go, with the close-to-home perspective as an African-American author living under these altering circumstances himself. Written in the first person of a man named Robert Jones, the novel reflects on these years of intense social change that arose during and after the war. It shows the shifting attitude people were acquiring and the changing in boundaries in the workforce and in daily living situations. The war ended a decade-long depression for whites, and a century-long depression for blacks. These post war changes and changes in racial relations were not only restricted to African-Americans, but also Japanese-Americans had a particularly difficult time during and after the war too. The United States was at a turning point, and by default there would be innovative actions taken, some good, some bad. Changes in race relations happened to be the main focus of the country's new structuring energy. The story of Robert Jones is a vivid account of these changes, first-hand.
"All I ever wanted was just a little thing," Robert Jones says, "I just to be a man." There is a sense right from the very beginning of this novel that Robert Jones wants too much from the society into which he was born. As the nation changes however, his dreams do not seem as farfetched as they previously had. .
It was not until World War Two that the racial problems between white and black Americans, which had always been thought of as uniquely southern, began to gain national attention. This resulted, in part, because of the continuing migration of African-Americans from the South to the increasingly urbanized North and West. This migration was steady through the 1920s and even during the Great Depression did not slow dramatically.