An important feature of the dictatorship was a ban on social and political organizations considered a threat to the idea of national integrity. Black associations, such as the Frente Negra, which was created in 1931 as a political party for Afro-Brazilians and whose agenda revolved around denouncing and overcoming racial discrimination, were thus banned in 1937. Challenging the ideas of African biological inferiority, intellectuals of the Frente Negra used the newspapers to inform Afro-Brazilians of their rights and to advocate for education for black people as the only way to effectively fight racism and inequality (Domingues, 2008, pp. 517-34).  
At the same time, Vargas' political propaganda emphasized the idea of one nation, one culture and one people. Whenever issues of racism arose, the government discourse played with the idea of a society of tolerance and inclusion, based solely on the fact that Brazil, in contrast with the United States of America and South Africa, had no laws of racial segregation. Under the same government, in 1938, the chief of police of São Paulo city, in response to a request by shop owners, prohibited black people from taking their Sunday stroll in one of the city's commercial streets (Nascimento, 2000, pp. 203-35). After World War II, while racism was increasingly the subject of debate worldwide, the Brazilian government concentrated its efforts on building a national image of a united society, without conflict or exclusion. By law and according to the propaganda, all Brazilians were considered equal, and talk of racism became taboo and a sign of anti-nationalism (Skidmore, 1974; Bacelar, 2001; Munanga, 1999).