African Americans and World War I

AFRICAN AMERICANS AND WORLD WAR I

Jim Crow

In 1914, 90 percent of African Americans lived in the states of the former Confederacy, where so-called Jim Crow statutes had legalized the segregation of Americans by race. These statutes had been validated by a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 1890s, culminating in the famous 1896 "separate but equal" doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, which made segregation the law of the United States. To make matters worse, President Woodrow Wilson appointed to his cabinet officials who were openly prejudiced, and who extended segregation within federal departments. Nowhere was the separation of races more strict, more prone to violence, or more hypocritical than in the American armed forces that were supposedly fighting for freedom and democracy in Europe. Nonetheless, the social upheavals created by World War I reshaped race relations in the United States in fundamental ways.

At Home

The war years accelerated the migration of African Americans out of the rural South, where agriculture had been plagued by floods and crop failures, including a devastating plague of boll weevils that decimated the cotton crop. At the same time, factory owners in northern cities sent recruiters to draw workers northward with glowing reports of high wages and good living conditions. During the 1910s the African American population of the North and West grew by 333,000. Meanwhile, the lynchings and racial clashes that blacks faced in the rural South began to spread to southern cities: in 1917 riots occurred in East Saint Louis and Houston; racial tensions spread into the North, as well. As American participation in the war neared, African American leaders split on what approach to take regarding the war effort. The new National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hoped that the war would promote changes in the American legal system, and lobbied to have Congress pass a wartime measure to outlaw lynching. Their effort failed. More-militant activists expected little from the Wilson administration, and parodied patriotic rhetoric with slogans such as "Make America Safe for Democracy." The government responded by threatening to suppress African American periodicals critical of the government and by coercing publishers to quell rumors that black troops were being sent to the most dangerous areas of the front.

THE GREAT MIGRATION

African Americans began a half-century exodus from the South during the First World War. A series of economic jolts in the middle of the decade, including floods and crop failures, left thousands of black sharecroppers and tenant farmers destitute and homeless. At the same time, the war severely curtailed the number of immigrants arriving from Europe, and a labor shortage in northern industrial cities opened employment opportunities. In 1916 the idea that the North offered a better way of life spread like wildfire through the states of the former Confederacy, and many white southerners became alarmed at the flight of cheap labor from their states. In 1916 the Pennsylvania Railroad hired 10,000 people from Georgia and Florida alone. Between 1910 and 1920 northern and western states registered an increase of 330,000 African American inhabitants. The migration opened industrial employment to blacks, staved off a labor shortage during the war, and changed the face of northern cities. The exodus continued into the 1920s and surged again during the Second World War.

Source:

John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss Jr., From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, seventh edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1994).

Patriotic Service

The vast majority of African Americans displayed loyalty to the war effort, purchasing millions of dollars worth of Liberty Bonds, organizing food conservation programs, and working with draft boards. Large numbers of young black men joined the armed forces, often hoping the nation would reward their service with greater measures of racial justice, a dream that proved elusive. Even the kinds of service African Americans were called on to perform disappointed many of them. The U.S. Navy employed most of its fifty-three hundred African Americans in noncombat, primarily menial positions (many worked as stewards.) The Marine Corps accepted no blacks in its ranks. The army declined black volunteers, even while drafting blacks in disproportionate numbers. African American doctors and dentists were commissioned as privates; African American soldiers were not allowed to train as pilots. Nearly 90 percent of black troops, whether educated or skilled, worked as laborers in the services of supply. The few white officers who protested the treatment of African Americans troops were told by the secretary of war that blacks should be glad that the service they were rendering was less hazardous than that of white soldiers.

At the Front

The 92nd Division of the United States armed forces was composed exclusively of African American soldiers, although it and all other black units were commanded by white officers. Not only did white officers refuse to share quarters and privileges with black soliders, but many whites refused to salute black officers or follow their orders. Finally, after agitation from the NAACP, the War Department created a special training facility for African American officers, but these officers were usually regarded with little respect, especially in the South. In France, where black soldiers were cordially welcomed by French troops, American commanders took steps to prevent the French from fraternizing with African Americans and from treating them as equals. To make matters worse, black officers were given second-class accommodations on troopships and in mess tents, and the troops received substandard equipment and training. Not surprisingly, the morale of black soldiers was sometimes low, and the 92nd Division did not always perform well at the front. The 368th Regiment failed to hold the line in the Argonne offensive. But the 369th Infantry out of New York was well regarded, having spent six months at the front with only two weeks rest, more than any other American unit. In recognition of their distinguished service, the French government decorated 171 soldiers of the 369th with the Légion d'Honneur and awarded the entire regiment the Croix de Guerre. Despite their wartime service, however, and the hope of black leaders that the ideals of democracy and equality would be strengthened at home, black troops returned to a land still deeply divided by race, with a white majority that refused to pay them the respect they had earned.

AFRICAN AMERICAN POPULATION BY STATE

	1910	1920
Alabama	908,000	901,000
California	22,000	39,000
Illinois	109,000	182,000
Kentucky	262,000	236,000
Louisiana	714,000	700,000
Massachusetts	38,000	45,000
Mississippi	1,009,000	935,000
New York	134,000	198,000
Ohio	111,000	186,000
Pennsylvania	194,000	285,000
Tennessee	473,000	452,000

Source:

Erik W. Austin, Political Feels of tit United Slatti Since 17S9 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

Sources:

John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, 5th edition (New York: Knopf, 1980);

Ronald Schaffer, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).