As Black doughboys and sailors fought to “make the world safe for democracy,” they also faced a two-front battle for equality within the military as well as back home. Many government officials and military commanders baselessly doubted that African American troops could perform well in combat. They assigned approximately 89% of Black servicemen (compared to 56% of all other soldiers) into supply, construction and other labor or support units – and often ordered these units to perform the most tedious, arduous and at times gruesome tasks. To many African Americans, enlisting to fight in the Great War offered a chance to show their patriotism that could hopefully improve their opportunities and treatment at home. Yet racism was as endemic in the armed forces as it was in the rest of America at the time.
In July 1918, when America’s military was in need of soldiers for World War I, W.E.B Du Bois wrote an article called “Close Ranks” for the Crisis, a journal distributed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) In “Close Ranks”, Du Bois urged African Americans participation and join America’s war efforts against Germany, despite subjugation to the Jim Crow Laws, legal slavery under the guise of sharecropping, and domestic terrorism from the Klu Klan Klux. In the article Dubois states, “Let us not hesitate. Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder without our own White fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy. We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly without eyes lifted to the hills.”
That article, among many other variables, inspired African Americans all over the country to join the military. Through fighting and sacrificing their lives, African Americans believed they would have earned their right to true equality in America. However, during and after the war, the progress they sought never showed any signs of fruition. During the war, the African American troops were treated as second-class citizens by their White counter parts and were essentially locked out of the war. Sadly, after the war ended, race riots broke out in numerous American cities during the 1919 “Red Summer.” Many African American troops, all of them war heroes, were physically attacked while in uniform. While the veterans had been fighting abroad, the cultural landscape of the United States had shifted.
Many Southern African Americans had moved to Northern states in order to avoid the Jim Crow laws and discrimination of the South during the Great Migration. Their White neighbors did not always welcome them. As the African American veterans settled back in, the Black community found a shared identity and sense of pride and purpose. The returning veterans, who bravely fought for their country in Europe, were often met with racism and denied basic rights upon their return to the United States. Instead of reverting to their previous status, they defended themselves and their communities. Therefore, one can argue African Americans participation in WWI had the opposite effect of what it was intended, which was to take steps forward toward social and racial harmony. Instead, what African Americans received was civil unrest and terrorism by White nationalist for years following the war.
