African Americans viewed wartime labor shortage as a great economic opportunity. About 1.5 million African Americans left their rural homes and headed to industries in cities in the North and West. However, as blacks filled vacancies second in line to whites, an explosion of racial tension and riots fueled the oppression of African Americans. Philip Randolph organized 100,000 African Americans to march on Washington, D.C, where they would protest racial discrimination in the expanding war industries and to demand integration of African Americans in the military forces. In effect, FDR issued Executive Order 8802 banning discrimination in hiring workers in defense industries and federal government. Despite these accommodations, high violence in industrial cities still prominently existed over discriminatory housing and employment practices ("African Americans in World War II").