Transcript

The Great War: African Americans and World War I

TRANSCRIPT

NARRATOR: On June 5th, 1917, nine and a half million American men, from Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn to San Francisco’s Chinatown—marched into city halls and county courthouses to register for the draft.

Each man filled out a registration card, noting his occupation, and his place of birth. At the bottom, the instructions read: “If person is of African descent, tear off this corner.” The first step in the creation of a strictly segregated army.

Chad Williams, Historian: African American troops were very explicitly seen as a problem. That’s how they were described by the War Department, the problem of black officers.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: A Senator from Mississippi, I think correctly, says once you draft a negro man and give him a gun and tell him to fight with it, it's one short step for him thinking that he should fight for his rights at home.

NARRATOR: Young African-American men from all across the country were drawn to [an all black regiment] from Harlem.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: When Wilson frames the war as a war for Democracy, he offers up something that seems to promise for African-Americans expanded possibility. They go into the war thinking if we demonstrate that we are capable, that we have this ability, the country won’t be able to help but redeem their promise to us.

NARRATOR: Faith in Wilson’s assurances, however, were hard to reconcile with the brutal reality of race relations in America.

Jeffrey Sammons, Historian: Blacks have no political power. So [some Blacks are] saying, why should we be fighting for this nation and these you know white people who are oppressing us?

NARRATOR: The situation in the Jim Crow South was even worse: a toxic mixture of rigid segregation, and almost daily episodes of racially motivated brutality.

In July, in East St. Louis, Illinois, an exchange of gunfire between blacks and local police provoked an explosion of mob violence that reduced entire black neighborhoods to ashes and left hundreds of men, women and children dead. Seven weeks later, a battalion of black troops stationed outside Houston encountered a campaign of harassment and violence from local whites. They responded by marching into the city and engaging in a pitched battle with local police.

Chad Williams, Historian: This was the worst fears of white southerners come true. A group of black soldiers taking up arms and killing white people. There was a hasty trial. 13 soldiers were executed without the opportunity to appeal their convictions. And they very quickly became martyrs.

NARRATOR: Throughout the summer of bloodshed, the president said nothing.

A. Scott Berg, Writer : Woodrow Wilson grew up in the south. By any measure Woodrow Wilson was a racist. He introduced Jim Crow to Washington, D.C. At a time when it was just starting to loosen up, he brought it back and it became for all intents and purposes the law of the land.

Adriane Lentz-Smith, Historian: Wilson is so disappointing. Because on the one hand he’s got this abstract vision of a more just world that has all of this potential and possibility in it. And then on the flip side, for all of his big ideals, he is such a narrow-hearted little man.

NARRATOR: Angered by Wilson’s refusal to speak out against the violence, 8,000 demonstrators conducted a “Silent Protest Parade” down Fifth Avenue. They marched to the sound of muffled drums, carrying signs that read: “Mother, Do Lynchers Go to Heaven?” and “Mr. President, Why Not Make America Safe for Democracy?”