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One of the ways that the various African American leaders’ differences will be expressed is
in their support for political leaders. The Republican Party which, early on championed
political and social equality for blacks -- even if only for their own political gain – had
lost interest in African Americans as a political agenda since the compromise of 1877. They
sat idly by as southern redemption and white supremacy returned African Americans to slave
like conditions that existed prior to the Civil War. African Americans, however, were
faced with few political alternatives. In 1914, WEB Du Bois took an unusually bold step
in declaring his support for the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. To this day, I'm honestly
not quite sure what he was thinking. Before becoming president, Woodrow Wilson was the
president of Princeton University -- the only Ivy League University at the time that refused
to admit blacks. As you read, the Du Bois the first African-American to receive his
PhD from Harvard University. Du Bois attended Harvard University after having applied to
and been rejected from Princeton University. Additionally, as President Woodrow Wilson
oversaw the segregation of Washington DC, and he provided what passed for academic research
for the film, Birth of a Nation -- a film that vilified reconstruction efforts, glorified
southern redemption and especially glorified the role of the Ku Klux *** in returning
and restoring the social order that it existed prior to the Civil War. It was an endorsement
that WEB Du Bois would be ridiculed for, and one that he himself would later regret.
As it became clear that the United States was going to be drawn in to the global conflict
known at the time as the Great War, and later World War I, Woodrow Wilson declared it, "a
war to make the world safe for democracy," and once again, a very familiar pattern is
going to reemerge. To African Americans, this was an opportunity to become part of the struggle
that, if victorious, would bring about an end to tyranny and democratic rights for all
world citizens. It was a prize that many African Americans could not help but fight for. The
WEB Du Bois urged African Americans to close ranks, and support the war effort as a path
to finally earning respect of the country and gaining full citizenship. Not to sound
like a broken record, but we have of course, we've seen this movie before. On the other
hand, maybe THIS time things will turn out differently.
Well, as you probably guessed things didn't turn out quite the way WEB Du Bois had hoped.
While many African Americans supported the armed forces, the military reciprocated that
support with rigid segregation and racism. While there were ten thousand black regulars
in the Army and five thousand in the Navy, the Marine Corps did not allow black enlistments
at all. As was the case with the Buffalo soldiers who fought the Indian Wars under the most
difficult circumstances under the harshest conditions, African Americans in the military
during World War I were minimally trained and with the most meager of equipment and
supplies. It was assumed that African Americans lacked the intelligence and discipline to
be good soldiers. Their inadequate military training oftentimes made this a self-fulfilling
prophecy. At Camp Hill Virginia, African American soldiers experienced conditions inferior to
those of their white counterparts. They lived in tents with no floors and no blankets, and
even black officers did not get the respect of white enlistees.
The military did not plan to use African American troops in combat. Instead, they were to occupy
only the most menial roles: loading and unloading ships as kitchen workers and driving on supply
lines. Although African American servicemen often failed to get respect from their own
countrymen, their experiences abroad instilled them with a sense of empowerment, and they
were often treated with a great deal of courtesy and respect by the European allies. In October
of 1918, though, the all-black 368th infantry was sent to the line of battle at the Argonne
Forest. Although their mission to hold the line failed, unit was commended for its bravery.
The US Secretary of War praised another all-black unit, the 369th Infantry, as the best all-round
regiment in France. The 369th later won the French Croix de Guerre, France's highest military
honor, for helping capture a railroad junction in the fall of 1918. Throughout World War
I, the 369th never lost a foot of ground and never had a man captured.
The respect they had earned abroad gave the African American servicemen high hopes that
they would return to America that would embrace them as heroes. As we will see in the next
clip, however, the America they returned to was fraught with racial tension. The great
migration of African Americans North to fill a much-needed labor supply stirred racial
animosity, particularly among poor whites with whom they were now in direct competition
for jobs. Any hopes that African Americans had for returning
to a more democratic America were dashed during the "red summer" of 1919. Within a year of
the war, more than seventy Blacks were lynched including 10 Black soldiers of whom several
were still in uniform. Bloody riots had arisen in all parts of the country including; Longview,
Texas, Chicago, Illinois, Knoxville, Tennessee, Omaha, Nebraska, Elaine, Arkansas, and Detroit,
Michigan. The Ku Klux *** had re-emerged and was held accountable for floggings, brandings
with acid, episodes of tarring and feathering, hangings, and burnings. Add to that the NAACP
report in 1922 that tallied up 3436 lynchings between the years of 1889 and 1922. This reality
pushed many African Americans to seek alternative ideologies. The mantle of Booker T. Washington's
ideology of Black Nationalism would be taken up by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, but as we
discussed Black Nationalism has its drawbacks and limitations. The NAACP in its ideology
of integration would also be a popular ideology in the 1920s, but the red summer of 1919 clearly
showed that the goal of integration may very well be unattainable. Perhaps with the influx
of poor white Eastern Europeans would bring alternative ways of framing old problems.
The new group of ethnic Europeans had fled harsh conditions and economic exploitations
not unlike those faced by African Americans. Perhaps joining forces, they could create
a class-based solidarity that would cut across racial and ethnic lines. As we will see in
part 2 of this lecture in unit 3, interethnic cooperation between poor whites and blacks
did have the potential to pose a real threat to the elite white power structure. But as
we will also observe, class-based unity had drawbacks of its own.
That’s all for this episode. You can see everything you’ve seen here as well as the
entire archive of episodes at my website www.africanelements.org. You can also join the discussion on our Facebook
Group African Elements. I'm Darius Spearman. Thank you for watching.