Loyalty in Time of Trial: The African American Experience During World War I

Loyalty in Time of Trial

The African American History Series

Series Editors:

Jacqueline M. Moore, Austin College

Nina Mjagkij, Ball State University

Traditionally, history books tend to fall into two categories: books academics write for each other, and books written for popular audiences. Historians often claim that many of the popular authors do not have the proper training to interpret and evaluate the historical evidence. Yet, popular audiences complain that most historical monographs are inaccessible because they are too narrow in scope or lack an engaging style. This series, which will take both chronological and thematic approaches to topics and individuals crucial to an understanding of the African American experience, is an attempt to address that problem. The books in this series, written in lively prose by established scholars, are aimed primarily at nonspecialists. They focus on topics in African American history that have broad significance and place them in their historical context. While presenting sophisticated interpretations based on primary sources and the latest scholarship, the authors tell their stories in a succinct manner, avoiding jargon and obscure language. They include selected documents that allow readers to judge the evidence for themselves and to evaluate the authors’ conclusions. Bridging the gap between popular and academic history, these books bring the African American story to life.

Volumes Published

Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift

Jacqueline M. Moore

Slavery in Colonial America, 1619–1776

Betty Wood

African Americans in the Jazz Age: A Decade of Struggle and Promise

Mark Robert Schneider

A. Philip Randolph: A Life in the Vanguard

Andrew E. Kersten

The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms

James Westheider

Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer

Jerald Podair

African Americans Confront Lynching: Strategies of Resistance

Christopher Waldrep

Lift Every Voice: The History of African-American Music

Burton W. Peretti

To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression

Cheryl Lynn Greenberg

The African American Experience During World War II

Neil A. Wynn

Loyalty in Time of Trial: The African American Experience During World War I

Nina Mjagkij

Loyalty in Time of Trial

The African American Experience during World War I

Nina Mjagkij

Published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

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Copyright © 2011 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mjagkij, Nina, 1961-

 Loyalty in the time of trial : the African American experience during World War I / Nina Mjagkij.

 p. cm.

 Includes bibliographical references.

 ISBN 978-0-7425-7043-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7425-7045-0 (electronic)

 1. World War, 1914-1918—Participation, African American. 2. United States. Army—African American troops—History—20th century. 3. African American soldiers—History—20th century. 4. African Americans—Social conditions—20th century. 5. Racism—United States—History—20th century. 6. United States—Race relations. I. Title.

 D639.N4M55 2010

 940.3089′96073—dc22

2010047942

™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to

Thomas A. Schroeder (1946–2009)

and

Scott J. Ecoff

Contents

Acknowledgments

Chronology

Introduction

Chapter 1    The Land of Jim Crow: African Americans on the Eve of World War I

Chapter 2    From Field to Factory: The Wartime Migration of African Americans

Chapter 3    Fighting to Fight: The Struggle for Black Officers and Combat Soldiers

Chapter 4    Raising a Jim Crow Army: The Mobilization and Training of African American Troops

Chapter 5    Over There: African American Soldiers in France

Chapter 6    Closing Ranks? African Americans on the Home Front

Epilogue     Returning to Racism

Appendix    Documents

Notes

Bibliographic Essay

Index

About the Author

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my friends and fellow scholars Jacqueline M. Moore and Andrew E. Kersten for reading drafts of the entire manuscript. Their comments and suggestions were invaluable. Equally important was a semester-long sabbatical from Ball State University. Two scholars in particular deserve credit for stimulating my interest in African Americans during World War I: Reinhard R Doerries at the Universität Hamburg and Roger Daniels at the University of Cincinnati. I am also grateful to Michael Joseph Hradesky at Ball State University, who created the maps for this book, and my friends Cynthia Lord, RN, for answering my obscure medical questions, and James Westheider, for sharing his knowledge of the Des Moines Officers Training Camp with me. Special thanks to my graduate assistants Allison Tourville and Stuart A. Keenan, who located numerous articles, books, and documents that were essential to my research. The editor at Rowman & Littlefield, Niels Aaboe, who suggested the title, and his assistants Michelle Cassidy, Sarah David, and Elisa Weeks, who tracked down photos and secured necessary permissions, were helpful in many ways. I am also thankful for the support of Belle T. Choate, Teri L. Merritt, and Dr. Irene Fox, who helped me navigate through the most trying time of my life. My family in Germany—Anatolij I. Mjagkij; Alea, Ben, Christian, and Tatjana Brixel; Steffi Zell; Helga Siebert; Gisela and Jürgen Höhn—though far away, you are always in my thoughts and in my heart. Last but not least, I would like to thank my friends Marion Baljöhr, Oscar Flores, Hadley and Brian Decker, Tre Eisenberg, John M. Glen, Kriste Lindenmeyer, Mollie Spillman, and Mary Syverson, who supported me every step of the way.

Chronology

Introduction

No, we have not gained all our rights, but we have gained rights and gained them rapidly and effectively by our loyalty in time of trial.

—W. E. B. Du Bois, Crisis (September 1918), 217

Prior to World War I, the loyalty of African Americans to their country had been severely tested. Reduced to chattel property during slavery and second-class citizenship in its aftermath, African Americans had little reason to support the nation in time of trial. Nonetheless, they had done so and served in arms during the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War. When the United States entered World War I in April of 1917, civil rights advocate W. E. B. Du Bois once again called on African Americans to be loyal to their country, despite the persistence of segregation and discrimination. Du Bois, like many other race leaders, had high hopes that the war would bring about racial equality. After all, President Woodrow Wilson had pledged to make the world safe for democracy, and was America not part of the world? Racism, Du Bois believed, would have no place in a democratic postwar world, and he urged African Americans to close ranks and forgo the struggle for civil rights for the duration of the war.¹ Du Bois’s call for black loyalty reflected the optimism of many race leaders who viewed the war as a chance to accelerate racial progress. Black men’s willingness to die for their country, they anticipated, would force the nation to reconsider the second-class citizenship status of African Americans.

However, other African Americans were less hopeful. To them, the president’s promise of democracy, sounded like smug hypocrisy. Disillusioned by years of racial oppression and the denial of democratic rights, they pointed out that Wilson—the first Southern president since the Civil War—had permitted the deliberate and systematic segregation of African Americans in civil service jobs as well as the introduction of a flood of racist bills into Congress. Moreover, his administration had made no efforts to stop discrimination, end mob violence, or overturn the Army’s policy of segregating black troops. Wilson’s performance in the years leading up to World War I, they insisted, was a clear indication that the federal government was not willing to grant African Americans anything in exchange for their wartime support. The war, they concluded, was a white man’s war from which African Americans had nothing to gain.

Most African Americans shared neither Du Bois’s optimism nor the pessimism of those who opposed black participation in the war. The majority of blacks, particularly those who lived in the rural South, were initially indifferent. For them, the war and the complexities of European politics had little meaning. The assassination of some Austro-Hungarian archduke in a strange place called Sarajevo was of no immediate importance to their daily lives. However, that changed when the government initiated the draft in May of 1917, which required all young men, regardless of race, to register for military service. More than 2.2 million black men reported to local draft boards and nearly 370,000 of them were inducted into the Army. Since failure to comply with the Selective Service Act carried stiff penalties, black voices of dissent became less pronounced.

Race leaders who viewed black military service as an important step toward racial equality celebrated the draft as an acknowledgment of black manhood and citizenship. Yet, they remained concerned about the extent of and capacity in which the participation of black men would be permitted in the nation’s defense. African Americans had limited opportunity to serve in arms, due to a military policy that dated back to the Civil War. At the start of that war, the Lincoln administration had opposed arming African Americans, largely to appease the slaveholding states of the upper South—Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware—which had sided with the Union. However, pressure from abolitionists and military necessity had forced the administration to reconsider its policy. In 1862, Congress authorized the recruitment of all-black regiments, and in the following year the War Department created the Bureau of Colored Troops, formally introducing military segregation. Eventually, 186,000 black soldiers, constituting roughly 10 percent of the Union Army, served under white command in segregated units.

After the Civil War, the military reduced the size of its peacetime standing army; however, it maintained its Jim Crow policy. As a result, African Americans were limited to service in four all-black regiments: the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry and the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry. In the late nineteenth century, the black cavalry units protected white settlers from Indian attacks on the western frontier, where they acquired the nickname Buffalo Soldiers. In 1898, when America fought against Spain during the Splendid Little War, the black regiments took part in the expedition to Cuba, and in the following years black troops helped to suppress the Filipino independence struggle. By the eve of World War I, a total of 10,000 professional black soldiers served in the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry Regiments, mostly in remote posts in the American West. In addition, 5,000 black men had joined segregated National Guard units in Tennessee, Massachusetts, Maryland, Ohio, Illinois, Connecticut, New York, and the District of Columbia, and another 5,000 worked as cooks, waiters, and coal handlers in the Navy.

However, when the nation entered World War I, the Army did not mobilize the professional black troops for service in Europe but assigned them to the Mexican border, Hawaii, and the Philippines. Likewise, members of the all-black National Guard units received their first service assignments in the United States. Du Bois and other race leaders, who had urged African Americans to support the nation’s war effort, were alarmed by the Army’s failure to use black soldiers in combat. Moreover, they were troubled when the military relegated the majority of the black draftees to service and labor battalions and forcefully retired Colonel Charles Young, the highest-ranking of only three black officers. African Americans, they concluded, could not demonstrate their patriotism or their courage under fire, if the Army excluded black soldiers from fighting in the front lines or leading men into battle.

Determined to use the war to showcase black loyalty, race leaders pressured Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to give black soldiers and officers a chance to prove themselves in battle. Baker consulted with his staff, who advised him not to train black men in arms, claiming that African Americans lacked the necessary intellect and discipline to become good soldiers. Some Southern whites also voiced objections. Baker weighed his options and caved to black demands. Disregarding the recommendations of his staff, he created two black combat divisions and a black officers training camp and appointed a black man as special racial advisor. Many African Americans applauded Baker’s actions. Black men’s sacrifices on the battlefield, they hoped, would reinforce black claims for equal rights once the war ended.

Race leaders were equally determined to demonstrate black patriotism and loyalty at home. Urging black civilians to put aside their demands for civil rights while the nation was at war, they reminded them: "first your County, then your Rights!"² Most African Americans did close ranks and contributed money, time, and resources to the nation’s war effort. They staged patriotic rallies and supported the various war bond drives. They raised funds for social services organizations, including the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Christian Associations, which catered to the needs of the black troops in training camps in the United States and in the trenches of France. They organized entertainment for the soldiers on leave, rolled bandages for the Red Cross, knitted socks for the men in the trenches, planted victory gardens, and participated in food conservation campaigns. In addition, 400,000 rural black Southerners took jobs in defense industry centers in the North and helped to furnish the nation and its European allies with military equipment and other necessary supplies.

Although African Americans did not demand civil rights in exchange for their loyalty, they did insist that the government protect them from racial violence and speak out against discrimination. When a deadly race riot erupted in East St. Louis three months after the United States entered the war, African Americans took to the streets. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the nation’s leading civil rights group, organized the first black protest march in the history of the United States. Drawing on popular wartime rhetoric, protestors challenged the government to address the discrepancy between America’s war aims and the persistence of racism in the United States.

The black press, which played a crucial role in publicizing African American demands, used the same strategy to pressure the government to address racial grievances. America’s racial practices, black editors insisted, were inconsistent with the nation’s democratic ideals. Racist violence and discrimination, they pointed out, undermined black loyalty and patriotism, which endangered home-front unity, demoralized black soldiers, and threatened national security. Afraid that German agents would attempt to capitalize on black discontent, government officials initially tried to stifle black protest. They threatened black editors with censorship and harassed others who were critical of America’s racial policy. However, growing concerns about declining black morale and fears of racial unrest also forced the Wilson administration to deal with black complaints. Many African Americans were hopeful that black loyalty had indeed paid off.

However, when World War I ended in November of 1918, African Americans quickly realized that the nation was not willing to grant them civil rights. As the military demobilized, many black workers lost their jobs to returning white veterans, lynchings increased, and numerous race riots erupted in cities throughout the country. African Americans were disappointed. They had helped to make the world safe democracy, but, despite their loyalty in time of trial, democratic rights eluded them in their own country. Some disillusioned African Americans gave up all hopes for civil rights and instead focused on strengthening the black community. They patronized black businesses, organized black labor unions, and established black self-help groups. Yet others emerged from the war with a renewed determination to challenge Jim Crow. Proud of their home-front support and military service, they joined the ranks of the NAACP, which attracted an evergrowing number of African Americans in the postwar decade and helped pave the way for the modern civil rights movement.

CHAPTER ONE

The Land of Jim Crow

African Americans on the Eve of World War I

In the years prior to World War I, racism, discrimination, and segregation shaped the lives of African Americans in all parts of the country. In the South, where nearly 90 percent of the nation’s 10 million African Americans lived, the black population endured racial conditions that did not differ much from slavery. Rural African Americans in particular, who made up almost 79 percent of the black Southern population, were trapped in a system of economic exploitation, political disfranchisement, legal oppression, and violent repression. African Americans living in the Southern cities enjoyed a higher degree of personal freedom, but, just like the rural black population, they lacked the right to vote, did not enjoy legal equality, and were subject to intimidation and violence. In the North, East, and West, which were home to 10 percent of the nation’s black population, the majority of African Americans eked out a living, predominantly in cities. Segregation and discrimination relegated them to low-paying jobs and confined them to substandard housing in decrepit neighborhoods. In many states, they had the right to vote, but because of their small numbers, they lacked any political power.

The poor conditions of African Americans, particularly in the rural South, were largely the product of government neglect in the years following the Civil War. The Thirteenth Amendment, adopted in 1865, had freed 4 million slaves, but the federal government had failed to provide them with financial resources to ensure their economic independence from white Southerners. With no money to move North, many African Americans stayed in the South. Some relocated to Southern cities, while others remained on the plantations where they had worked as slaves. They dismantled the former slave quarters and used the materials to built small one-room wooden cabins. Frequently, these were no more than dilapidated shacks with dirt floors and leaking roofs. They lacked windows and proper furniture and did little more than provide shelter from the South’s sweltering heat or the occasional torrential rain storms. Here they raised their children and those of friends who had been sold to other parts of the South prior to the Civil War. Often the only means of support available to African Americans in the South was to farm for white plantation owners who had lost their slave workforce but not their lands as a result of the Civil War.

By 1910, nearly 76 percent of black Southern farmers worked as sharecroppers. Under this system, white plantation owners rented parcels of their land to the former slaves, who promised to pay at the end of the harvest season a share of their crop in lieu of rent. However, until the black sharecroppers could harvest any crop, they needed seeds, tools, and equipment as well as food and clothing for their families. With no money in their pockets, they were forced to conduct business with the white landowner, who provided them with necessary supplies in exchange for putting a lien on their crop, sometimes charging as much 60 percent interest. Thus, by the time the black farmer harvested his crop, he owed the white planter not only a share of his crop for rent, but also for the items he had purchased in the plantation store. Since white plantation owners routinely defrauded and overcharged African Americans, black farmers often owed them more money than their crops generated. As a result, black sharecroppers entered the new planting season with debt, which incurred high interest rates and ensured that they owed white planters even more money at the end of the following year’s harvest. Sharecropping and the crop-lien-system kept the black farmers in perpetual debt and trapped in economic bondage. Unable to pay off their debts and gain financial independence, black sharecroppers were bound to the land of white plantation owners, just like the