Chapter
I
- After World War I
-
- For a decade or more after World War
I the American public as a whole was little concerned with the peacetime Army.
It was considerably less concerned with the Army's plans for the current or
future use of national manpower. For a time in the middle and late twenties,
war memoirs, fiction, and drama enjoyed a vogue, but the general interest
in contemporary military matters was aroused mainly by war revelations, public
controversies such as that surrounding Brig. Gen. William Mitchell's advocacy
of an autonomous air force, and changes in the high command of the services.
Demobilization, disarmament, international agreements for peace, and economy
in public expenditures were successively central to the thinking of the times.
They deflected public interest from serious concern with the internal problems
and needs of the armed forces. There was a general idea abroad that in the
event of a national emergency the Army, backed by the civilian population,
should be prepared. But the likelihood of a national emergency seemed remote
indeed in an era devoted to arms reduction and treaties of peace and friendship.
-
- American Negroes shared the general
public attitude. In the period immediately following World War I, they had
current and pressing domestic problems of their own to claim their attention.
- Northern manufacturing areas, where
heavy migrations of Negro labor from the South introduced a set of problems
generally unknown before the war, were in the throes of postwar readjustment.
Full-scale race riots had broken out during the war and in the years immediately
thereafter in East St. Louis, Houston, Chester, Washington, Chicago, and Tulsa.
Racial troubles on a smaller scale flared elsewhere. The Negro press, churches,
and social work organizations -the directing forces of Negro public opinion-
had their hands full dealing with these new postwar problems.
-
-
- Concern with the pressing problems
of the postwar period did not cause the Negro public wholly to lose sight
of its relations with the armed forces. The Army and military life had long
occupied a position of relatively greater concern and importance to the Negro
public than to Americans in general. Soldiering had been an honored career
for the few Negroes who were able to enter upon it. In the restricted range
of economic opportunities open to them, the military life ranked high. Thus
the Army and its policies remained a significant center of interest to Negro
organizations, to the press, and to the
- [3]
- public as a whole. It was one of the
few national endeavors in which Negroes had had a relatively secure position
and which, at least in time of war, could lead to national recognition of
their worth as citizens and their potential as partners in a common undertaking.
-
- Since the Civil War, the Army had
maintained four Regular Army Negro regiments, the 9th and 10th Cavalry and
the 24th and 25th Infantry. The men of these regiments were the legatees of
the Civil War troops out of which the units had been organized and of the
Indian fighters and plains soldiers who filled their ranks until the turn
of the century. Until World War II there were few Negro communities that did
not have several honored men of the Grand Army of the Republic who could be
pointed to with pride. Retired infantry and cavalry sergeants from the Regular
Army were often leading spirits in Negro community life. Some of the oldest
and best known of the Negro schools-Howard, Hampton, Fisk-were founded by
Union generals. One of the schools, Lincoln Institute, later Lincoln University,
in Missouri, was established with funds given by the enlisted men of regiments
of the United States Colored Troops after the Civil War. Wilberforce, in Ohio,
was proud of its pre-Spanish-American War status as the only Negro college
with a department of military training to which Army instructors were detailed.
-
- Orators and ministers, educators and
politicians, had extolled the Negro soldier as an example of courage and loyalty
and skill to such a degree that the names of Old and New World military heroes
of the colored races-Toussaint L'Ouverture, David Dumas, Chaka, Antonio
Maceo, Peter Salem-were familiar enough to be freely used on any patriotic
occasion. Battles and regiments were widely and fully commemorated in books
and pamphlets.1
Lithographs of Negro troops in action and, of military heroes were common
in Negro homes. The participation of Negroes in past wars was one of the richest
veins of material that could be worked by the supporters of Negro rights and
opportunities.
-
- Negroes, generally, were convinced
of the unbroken record of loyalty and courage of their soldiers. They were
certain of the benefits which participation in each of America's wars had
brought them. In 1918, when William E. B. DuBois, editor of The Crisis,
official organ of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP), sought to defend the thesis that winning the war must take
precedence over fighting for the Negro's rights, he wrote:
-
- The Crisis says, first
your Country, then your Rights! . . . Certain honest thinkers among
us hesitate at that last sentence. They say it is all well to be idealistic,
but is it not true that while we have fought our country's battles for one
hundred fifty years, we have not gained our rights? No, we have gained
them rapidly and effectively by our loyalty in time of trial.
- Five thousand Negroes fought in the
Revolution; the result was the emancipation of slaves in the North and abolition
of the African slave trade. At least three
- [4]
- thousand Negro soldiers and sailors
fought in the War of 1812; the result was the enfranchisement of the Negro
in many Northern States and the beginning of a strong movement for general
emancipation. Two hundred thousand Negroes enlisted in the Civil War, and
the result was the emancipation of four million slaves, and the enfranchisement
of the black man. Some ten thousand Negroes fought in the Spanish-American
War, and in the twenty years ensuing since that war, despite many set backs,
we have doubled or quadrupled our accumulated wealth.2
-
- There was little doubt among Negroes
during World War I that the record of the loyalty and courage of their soldiers
would be preserved in France and that the peace would be followed by gains
in status and opportunity similar to those listed by DuBois for wars past.
War gave them a renewed opportunity to demonstrate their loyalty and patriotism.
Their full support would bring its own reward.
-
- In World War I the bulk of the 404,348
Negro troops (including 1,353 commissioned officers, 9 field clerks, and 15
Army nurses) were in the Services of Supply-in quartermaster, stevedore, and
pioneer infantry units. Two infantry divisions, the 92d and 93d, were formed
and sent to France. The four Regular regiments were assigned to defensive
positions in the continental United States and its island territories.
-
- The 93d Division was not a true division
but four separate infantry regiments without trains or artillery. These regiments,
three of them National Guard, were assigned to the French, reorganized according
to French tables, and used as integral parts of French divisions on the Western
Front. They operated in Champagne, the Vosges, and in the Oise-Aisne offensive
from the early summer of 1918 to the end of the war. The 92d Division, largely
made up of draftees, spent fifty-one days in a "quiet" and two days
in an active sector in France. One of its regiments, the 368th Infantry, was
used for liaison between the French and American armies at the beginning of
the Argonne offensive while the remainder of the division was in reserve.
After five days the regiment, having experienced considerable disorder and
confusion, was withdrawn from the line. On 10 and 11 November, the whole 92d
Division was sent into action with the other three front-line divisions of
the U.S. Second Army to attack the second Hindenburg Line.
-
- Both the 92d and 93d Divisions had
Negro officers in junior grades but were otherwise generally commanded by
white officers. The 93d's National Guard regiments also had Negro field grade
officers, but with the exception of one regiment totally staffed with Negroes
(except for its commander in the last months of the war) few remained assigned
throughout the war. Both divisions experienced considerable shifting of Negro
and white officers among their various units, with many Negro officers being
eliminated.
-
- In assessments of Negro participation
in World War I, the two infantry divisions got the bulk of public and official
- [5]
- attention both during and after the
war. Their employment and conduct produced a fog of reports, rumors, and legends
which grew and changed with the passage of time. The Negroes' view of their
participation was considerably at variance with that of the Army's senior
commanders and of white officers of Negro units. Both views influenced heavily
the developing attitudes of the public and the Army toward the participation
of Negro troops in future emergencies. Both views had continuing importance,
for many of the Army's senior commanders of World War II were the younger
generals and field grade officers of World War I and many of the leading Negro
protagonists and spokesmen of World War II were the Negro officers and enlisted
men of World War I. Both had memories coming from direct experience or from
the accounts of their contemporaries. The two wars were not separated by so
long a span of years that one did not directly influence the other.
-
-
During World War I itself, few weeks passed
without a detailed reporting of the bravery of American Negro soldiers in the
nation's press. Nationally circulated magazines carried feature articles on
Negro fighters abroad and the Negro journals quoted from the great metropolitan
papers with approval. The United Press reported:
American Negro troops proved their value as
fighters in the line east of Verdun on June 12 . . . . The Germans attempted
a raid in that sector but were completely repulsed by the Negroes. The Boches
began a terrific bombardment at one minute after midnight (throwing over between
3,000 and 4,000 shells from guns ranging in size from 67 to 340 millimeters).
The bombardment was concentrated on small areas. Many of the shells made holes
from ten to fifteen feet across.
- In the midst of this inferno the Negroes coolly
stuck to their posts, operating machine guns and automatic rifles and keeping
up such a steady barrage that the German infantry failed to penetrate the
American lines. The Americans miraculously sustained only two wounded.3
-
- Confirmation of the skill and courage
of Negro soldiers was reported in other ways. The news of Pvts. Henry Johnson
and Needham Roberts, of the 369th Infantry (New York National Guard), who
together put to flight a German raiding party, killing or wounding twenty
or more of the enemy, was carried in newspapers all over the country and became
a subject for commendatory editorials. The Boston Post, under the heading
NO COLOR LINE THERE, commented: "In the service of democracy there is
no such distinction. General Pershing's late report places on the roll of
honor the names of two soldiers of one of our colored regiments, Privates
Johnson and Roberts . . . . This is the true ideal of service. No matter what
the color of the skin, we all recognize it." And the Pittsburgh Chronicle
Telegram said, quoting General Grant's Civil War comment: " `The
Colored troops fought nobly.' That was more than half a century ago. They
`fought nobly' in the plains, in the islands of the Pacific and the Atlantic,
wherever they have been called upon to fight . . . . And
- [6]
- now in France they are living up to
the reputation they have won on other, far distant fields." 4
When their unit returned, Johnson and Roberts were the subjects of laudatory
newspaper and wire service interviews read all over the country.
-
- Interest in the Negro units continued
high. A correspondent of the New York Times wrote of one Negro unit:
-
- The regiment's inspiration to great deeds on
the front was explained by a Negro lieutenant.
-
- "One of my men came to me several days
ago," he said, "and asked me why I had joined the army. He reminded
me that I was above draft age and he wanted me to tell him what I was fighting
for. I told him I was fighting for what the flag meant to the Negroes in the
United States. I told him I was fighting because I wanted other oppressed
people to know the meaning of democracy and enjoy it. I told him that millions
of Americans fought for four years for us Negroes to get it and now it was
only right that we should fight for all we were worth to help other people
get the same thing ....
-
- "I told him that now is our opportunity
to prove what we can do. If we can't fight and die in this war just as bravely
as white men, then we don't deserve an equality with white men, and after
the war we better go back home and forget about it all . . . ." 5
-
- When the French Government awarded
the Croix de Guerre to three of the regiments of the 93d Division, to a company
of the fourth regiment, and to the 1st Battalion of the 367th Infantry, 92d
Division, each award was chronicled in the press. The Literary Digest
summed up opinion on the award to the 369th Infantry:
-
- Exceptional tho the award of the
coveted French War Cross may be, the deeds of valor by which this negro regiment
won it are less exceptional than typical of the way in which all our colored
troops meassured up to the demands of the war. This is the verdict of newspaper
correspondents and of soldiers invalided home from the Western Front. Survivors
of the fighting now arriving in New York have "nothing but praise for
the colored troops," writes a reporter in the New York Evening Sun.
"They proved their valor on countless occasions, and it was one of the
common stories that Jerry feared the `Smoked Yankees' more than any other
troops he met." 6
-
- As the troops continued to return
home, articles assessing the role of Negro troops in the war began to appear.
"Like the Senegalese forces of the French Army," Current History
reported, "the black American troops held their own on European battlefields
and stood the test of courage, endurance and aggressiveness in moments of
the greatest stress. They fought valiantly at Château-Thierry, Soissons, on
the Vesle, in Champagne, in the Argonne, and in the final attacks in the Metz
region." 7
On the return of the 369th Infantry, first of the Negro regiments to parade
- [7]
- up Fifth Avenue in massed formation,
the New York Times wrote: "New York's Negro soldiers, bringing
with them from France one of the bravest records achieved by any organization
in the war, marched amid waving flags . . . ," and Nicholas Murray Butler,
President of Columbia University, offered a resolution reading, "No American
soldiers saw harder or more constant fighting and none gave a better account
of themselves . . . . When fighting was to be done, this regiment was there."
8
Even the regimental band, "the band that introduced jazz to France,"
came in for high praise. It was considered one of the four best in the world,
ranking with the British Grenadiers, the Garde Republicaine, and the Royal
Italian Bands, one journal declared.9
-
- There was praise, too, for the Negro
service troops in France, especially for the stevedores, and for the high
motivation of Negro draftees. A reporter writing a series on the National
Army camps told of a unit of 1,600 men at Camp Lee:
-
- Ten days after they arrived in camp
with the first quota last fall, the call came for them to go immediately to
France for special service. The call was sudden and unexpected. General Cronkhite
[Maj. Gen. Adelbert Cronkhite] knew that the men had not expected to leave
this country for several months. He thought that some of 1,600 might have
good reasons for not wanting to leave at once, so he called for volunteers
from the 5,000 other colored troops who were in camp to fill whatever vacancies
there might be in the oversea unit. Every one of the 5,000 volunteered for
immediate oversea service. Then the unit was marched to a hall. The general
- said that there were volunteers to
take the place of any who wished to remain behind. Only 20 percent of the
1,600 availed themselves of the opportunity to stay at home. 10
-
-
- While statements of praise presented
a highly flattering picture of Negro troops in World War I, the public was
not unaware that beneath the surface other rumors were running thick and fast.
The 369th Infantry, "characterized by some as `possessing black skins,
white souls and red blood,' " The Outlook commented, "ought to silence
for all time the slanderous charge that Negroes are cowards and will not fight;
and the service which these representatives of their race have rendered in
the war to make the world safe for democracy ought to make forever secure
for that race in this their native land their right for life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.11
-
- Cowardice was not the only charge
that worried Negroes at home. During the war other disturbing reports had
spread through the larger cities: Negro troops were being abused by their
white officers; systematic attempts were being made to "break" and
demote Negro officers; American white officers were attempting to import the
worst features of color prejudice into France; Negro troops were being employed
as "shock troops" in the
most dangerous battle zones and as labor troops where the work was hardest.
Other rumors of
- [8]
- COLONEL YOUNG AS A CAPTAIN
-
- wholesale
arrests of Negro officers and enlisted men made the rounds. Many of these
allegations were dismissed as
German propaganda, and all of them were formally denied by General John J.
Pershing.12
But the Houston riot of 1917, involving troops of the ,24th Infantry, was
no rumor. Committees were still working in 1919 to reverse the death sentence
of the soldiers involved.
-
- As reports came back from Negro soldiers
themselves, many of these rumors, especially those dealing with discriminatory
treatment of Negro officers and men, revived. During the course of the war,
Negroes had expressed two major grievances. One centered on retirement in
June 1917 of Col. Charles Young, highest ranking Negro Regular Army officer,
on the eve of what many Negroes had expected and hoped would be his
appointment to a field command. 13
The other had to do with the formation and staffing of the 92d Division.
-
- It was widely believed that the 92d
Division was established by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker and approved
by President Woodrow Wilson over the objections of the Army's General Staff.
Before it left the country for France, there were rumors that the division
had not been given properly selected men and that there were deficiencies
in the technical training of both officers and enlisted men. Deficiencies
in literate and skilled men might
have been remedied by transfers of men from other regiments, but, The Crisis
informed its readers, permission to make these transfers had been denied.
"Unless this decision is reversed," the magazine predicted, "the
Ninety-second Division is bound to be a failure as a unit organization. Is
it possible that persons in the War Department wish this division to be a
failure?" the magazine asked. 14
After the war, Negroes linked the retirement of Young and the staffing of
the 92d as part of the same official strategy. The Army General Staff "knew
what Young could have made of
- [9]
- the 92d Division," The Crisis
said after his death.15
-
- Young's retirement dashed the high
expectations of Negroes, and the colonel soon became a symbol of their disillusion.
They pointed out that he was one of the few field grade officers with Pershing
in Mexico whom the general had recommended to command militia in the federal
service.16
Others subsequently supported the claim that Young was retired "because
the army did not want a black general" by quoting white officers who
had said as much in public addresses.17
-
- Colonel Young, over the years, attained
the stature of a martyred hero. The Negro public became convinced that if
Young, with his rank and West Point background, could be treated so, the lot
of other Negro officers must have been difficult. Stories of wholesale inefficiency
on the part of Negro officers reached the press, but Negroes were frankly
skeptical of their accuracy. As early as the spring of 1919, DuBois, who had
gone to France immediately after the armistice in search of material for a
projected history of the war, concluded: "So the word to acknowledge
the Negro stevedore and the fighting black private has gone forth, but the
American army is going to return to America determined to disparage the black
officer and eliminate him from
the army despite his record." 18
-
- The Negroes' version of their part
in World War I was that the root of all trouble in the Negro units lay in
animosities that developed between American white and Negro troops, and especially
in those originating with white American officers. American Army attitudes,
as contrasted with French public attitudes, were blamed for developing racial
frictions. The American high command refused, according to this view, to regard
Negro troops as full fledged American soldiers, whereas the French, unexposed
previously to large numbers of Americans, insisted upon treating Negroes as
a part of the 1918 Army of Liberation to be accepted in the same manner as
any other American troops. Negroes remembered the 92d Division's Bulletin
.15, issued at Camp Funston, Kansas, in March 1918. This bulletin urged the
men of the division to avoid raising the color question, "NO MATTER HOW
LEGALLY CORRECT," arid advised them that "the success of the Division
with all that success implies is dependent upon the good will of the public.
That public is nine-tenths white. White men made the Division, and they can
break it just as easily if it becomes a trouble maker." The bulletin
was interpreted as symbolic of the Army's approach to racial matters. Mass
meetings were called to demand the resignation of the division's commander.
"At no time during his incumbency as the head of the Division was General
Ballou [Maj. Gen. Charles C. Ballou] able to regain the confidence
- [10]
- of the colored masses, with whom he
had been immensely popular prior to this episode," wrote Emmett J. Scott,
assistant to Secretary of War Baker.19
-
- In May 1919, DuBois published a series
of war documents, including letters requesting the removal of Negro officers
before they had been tested in battle, orders giving evidence of discriminatory
treatment, and a copy of a letter written by the 92d Division's chief of staff
to a United States senator proposing that never again should a division with
Negro officers be organized .20
The publication of these documents renewed again the fears of the Negro public.
After the Post Office Department banned from the mails the issue of The Crisis
in which the documents were printed, Negroes were certain that they were genuine
and that the full facts of the war, as seen by Army officers, were destined
to be hidden from the public. They were certain that if the facts were revealed
they would show that: (1) Negro soldiers and officers performed well when
given a chance to do so; (2) if they did not perform well it was because of
faulty white leaders too preoccupied with their own prejudices to perform
their military jobs well; and (3) Negro soldiers and officers, especially
the latter, performed jobs better than they were credited with doing. Credit
had to be withheld, for otherwise there could be no justification for denying
full rights and privileges as citizens to Negroes who had won their position
as Americans and as capable leaders on the field of battle.
-
- Shortly before DuBois' publication
of the war documents, a service magazine expressed its opinion that perhaps
mulattoes might make capable officers, able to lead Negro troops, but that
it was not satisfied that pure-blooded Negroes had developed sufficient capacity
for education and mental discipline for leadership21
Colonel Young, in response, asked if this "surprising generalization
of lack of leadership and the capacity of the Negro officer was derived by
consultation of the records of the War Department, the press, both white and
Negro, and the reports of impartial officers. The black officer feels,"
he continued, "that there was a prejudgment against him at the outset,
and that nearly every move that has been made was for the purpose of bolstering
up this prejudgment and discrediting him in the eyes of the world and the
men whom he was to lead and will lead in the future." Young proceeded
to list French and American decorations won by Negro officers in World War
I and to cite examples of pure-blooded Negro officers of the past, such as
the Civil War's Maj. Martin Delany and Haiti's Toussaint L'Ouverture.22
-
- Testimonials to the efficiency and
good conduct of Negro troops were collected from other American and French
officers and from the mayors of French towns. Court-martial figures were cited
to disprove charges of misconduct to-
- [11]
-
- LIEUTENANT ALEXANDER AND FELLOW
OFFICERS OF THE 9TH CAVALRY.
- (Lieutenant Alexander is
second from the left, top row.)
-
- ward the French civilian population
.23
The loyalty of Negro troops in the face of German propaganda focused upon
the racial disadvantages of the Negro in America was described with approval
.24
Counterexplanations of the performance of the 92d Division were advanced by
Negro junior officers of the division. "The Ninety-Second Division was
a tragic failure," two officers wrote. "It was a failure in organization.
It was a failure in morale. It was a failure in accomplishment . . . . the
Negro division was the object of special victimization, superimposed upon
its sacrifice," they bitterly continued.
-
- The evidence advanced by the two officers
for their interpretation of the division's "special victimization"
was voluminous. The division trained in sections and was never assembled in
one place until the last days of the war. It was given "the most ignorant
and physically disqualified Negroes in the United States . . . ," with
40 percent of its men
- [12]
- illiterate. Its white officers were
unsympathetic to the Negro men and hostile to the Negro officers. They were
all Southern "in accordance with, tradition," some even introducing
themselves to Negro troops with the announcement that they "had once
suckled black mammies' breasts." The model officer held up to the Negroes
by the commanding general was 2d Lt. John H. Alexander, who "knew how
to stay in his place." 25
The Houston riot of 1917 and the implied threats thereafter demoralized the
officer trainees at Des Moines, Iowa. The white instructors at Des Moines,
from the Regular units, expected the officer trainees to conduct themselves
like the old Regular enlisted men. Commissions were not awarded on the basis
of merit, but "they went to those regulars who had given satisfaction
as privates and `noncoms.' Very few of those men had even a fair education
. . . . They did their best as they saw it. But the unalloyed truth is that
commissions were often awarded to those who were more likely to fail than
succeed. [One man] won a commission by singing plantation songs." Officers
were assigned without regard to training; infantry officers were "indiscriminately"
assigned to artillery, machine gun, and other units for which they had no
special training. A graduate of the Sheffield Scientific School was sent to
the infantry while a senator's butler, "commissioned by graft,"
went to the heavy artillery.
-
- Training difficulties, the officers'
account went on, were slight when compared
with the lowering of the division's morale in France. Among other things,
it was charged that the men were kept out of schools; leaves were prohibited;
rather than training, the men spent their time at police duties; staff officers
were changed constantly; white officers were transferred into the division
and out again as soon as they had obtained desired promotions; Negro officers
were "terrorized" by wholesale arrests and transfers; officers,
untrained in the duties of those arms, were assigned to artillery and the
engineers, then blamed for having failed; the division went into its sectors
without the proper equipment and into the short Argonne engagement without
proper briefing, artillery support, rifle grenades, wire cutters, or horses.
The enthusiasm of the whole division was dampened by the restrictions placed
upon the contacts of the men with French civilians. "The sole charge
of the division staff was to make the life of the Negro soldier unendurable."
The old Regular Army enlisted men, now officers, assisted in breaking the
morale of the division in an effort to "curry favor." There were
a few officers whom the men respected; as for the rest, "the division
had no trust in them."
-
- The two officers concluded that while
the division was distinctly a failure as an organization it could not be considered
a combat failure, for it "never had its mettle tried. It cannot be said
that it either failed or succeeded in battle. The 368th Infantry was sent
'over the top' for the avowed purpose of demonstrating a failure. For their
failure General Ballou should be court-martialed." The division was "crippled"
in training; no corps command wanted
- [13]
- it. Yet it cost the United States
four million dollars a month, they observed.26
-
- Most writings on World War I by Negro
authors had a more moderate approach. That the Negro troops were not given
proper equipment or clear orders, that a failure of command and the inexperience
of troops were responsible for their showing, that even so the Negro officers
and men performed well enough to receive numerous medals and awards these
constituted the standard Negro version of World War I. That there was general,
though varying, discrimination and unfairness toward Negro troops was an accompanying
theme. 27
-
- During the twenties and thirties Negroes
became more and more convinced that, if left alone, the Army would contrive
in any future war to limit the use of Negroes to labor units and to avoid,
if possible, the use of Negro
- officers altogether. Some believed
that many of their most promising young men in World War I had been assigned
to pioneer infantry and stevedore regiments rather than to combat units. They
felt that with a little more care and watchfulness the Army might have seen
to it that combat units received a larger share of these men, with profit
both to the men and to the units. They feared that in another war, instead
of demonstrating progress over World War I, the employment of Negro troops
might be on a more restricted basis than what they considered it to have been
in World War I. They therefore placed more than ordinary emphasis on the importance
of combat service and of service under their own officers. In this view they
were aided by the normal and natural tendency to consider warfare as the clash
of armed divisions on the field of honor rather than as a gigantic economic
and logistical struggle in which combat units are but a small part of the
total war endeavor. Without heroes in the combat arms, without leaders of
their own race, war from the Negro point of view would remain but an extension
of the everyday chores which they were accustomed to perform anyway.
-
- The Negro public could not know the
extent and nature of reports on Negro officers and troops contained in War
Department files, but as memoirs of military leaders appeared after the war
this public became convinced that more than a little had gone wrong in the
use of Negro troops in World War I. With the accounts of senior officers added
to, if not exactly agreeing with, those of their own troops, the picture of
Negro participation in World War I became a clouded one.
- [14]
- In 1925, when Maj. Gen. Robert L.
Bollard, commander of the American Second Army, published his memoirs, the
controversy about Negro participation in the war reopened once again.28
From his wartime diary, General Bollard quoted: "Poor Negroes! They are
hopelessly inferior. I've been talking with them individually about their
division's success. That success is not troubling them. With everyone feeling
and saying that they are worthless as soldiers, they are going on quite unconcernedly."
And, of the final attack: "The poor 92d Negroes Diary, November 11th]
wasted time and dawdled where they did attack, and at some places where they
should have attacked, never budged at all." 29
As fighting troops, General Bollard concluded, Negroes were simply failures.
He declared: "If you need combat soldiers, and especially if you need
them in a hurry, don't put your time upon Negroes. The task of making soldiers
of them and fighting with them, if there are any white people near, will be
swamped in the race question. If racial uplift or racial equality is your
purpose, that is another matter." 30
-
- As successive memoirs appeared in
later years, uncertainty and recriminatory doubts about the entire career
of Negro soldiers in World War I gained ascendancy over the optimistic reception
of the first news from the front.31
- Negroes believed that an impartial
account would reverse these reports. They suspected that all the unfavorable
narratives about Negro participation in World War I were the result of a planned
attack aimed at discrediting their courage. This idea took root in the Negro
mind and flowered there. Negroes had volunteered their best college trained
youths for officer training. They refused to believe that the generation to
whom they looked for the future could have been responsible for the problems
of Negro combat units. Hostile forces within the Army were to blame. "Nothing
would have been more fatal to their plans than a successful Negro regiment
officered by Negroes," DuBois wrote in 1925. "The Negro haters entrenched
in the Army at Washington began, therefore, a concerted campaign [of slander].
Bollard voices the re-vamped lie which was plotted in 1918." 32
This notion, firmly believed in many Negro circles, conditioned the attitudes
of young Negroes toward the Army for a full generation, for it was not allowed
to die by Negroes nor was it killed off by any word of revision from the Army.
-
-
- The Army's judgment on the future
of Negroes as a part of America's man-
- [15]
- power available for military use in
time of war proceeded from quite different premises. Soon after World War
I, Army organization and personnel agencies determined that a definite policy
on the employment of Negroes was needed if the best use was to be made of
all available manpower in time of war. Such a policy was nonexistent in 1917.
With little access to the more technical products of social research, Army
planners generally relied upon the testimony of World War I commanders and
traditional public attitudes in judging the capabilities of Negroes and in
determining possibilities for the use of Negro manpower in time of war. Of
the sources available to the Army, World War I testimony was perhaps the most
important, though traditional attitudes played their part.
-
- Most of the testimony from World War
I was contained in personal documents submitted to the War Department and
the Army War College by commanders of the 92d Division and, to a lesser extent,
by commanders of the separate regiments of the 93d Division. These documents,
remaining in typescript, were seldom available to more than a few officers.
Through frequent repetition in successive studies and conferences, however,
specific excerpts became relatively familiar. Other types of testimony appeared
in commercially published memoirs and reminiscences. A third class, of increasing
importance through the years, was the oral account -the personal reminiscence
or anecdote -passed on in officers clubs, schools, and at social gatherings.
Only the first group is pertinent here, since it was upon this testimony,
gathered within a short time after the close of the war, that both initial
and subsequent attitudes affecting planning were primarily based.
- Most of the testimony came from regimental
and higher commanders of units of the 92d Division, the only full sized Negro
combat division with the American Expeditionary Forces. This testimony was
almost uniformly condemnatory so far as the performance of Negro combat troops,
and particularly of Negro officers, was concerned. Infantry commanders were
especially convinced that the training and performance of their troops had
been a failure. Commanders of supporting units, such as engineers and field
artillery, reported relatively greater success, but they too felt that combat
duties, especially under Negro officers, should not be assigned to Negro troops.
Commanders of regiments of the 93d Division, whose experience was with combat
troops organized in separate regiments fighting with French divisions, made
similar comments on the inadvisability of employing Negroes as combat troops,
especially under Negro officers, although their reports showed that their
own organizations were relatively more successful than those of the 92d Division.
No formal comments were received from the officers of the four Regular Negro
regiments, for these units were not sent to France. The testimony was therefore
confined to units of volunteers, draftees, and National Guardsmen.33
-
- The commanding officer of the 368th
Infantry, 92d Division, for example, felt that Negro soldiers were "absolutely
dependent" upon the leadership of white officers. Since, he said, combat
units may expect heavy officer casualties, "I
- [16]
- consider the Negro should not be used
as a combat soldier." The commanders of the 371st and 372d Infantry,
93d Division,34
agreed, saying that in a future war Negroes should be used principally in
labor organizations. The 372d's commander added that if they had to be used
in combat organizations, "then combatant officers should be all white
also the non-commissioned officers." The commander of the 365th Infantry,
92d Division, along with others, added a further provision, "a period
of training at least twice as long as is necessary in the training of white
troops otherwise they should be used as pioneer or labor troops." Frequently,
comments included a statement such as that of the commander of the 367th Infantry,
92d Division: "As fighting troops, the negro must be rated as second
class material, this due primarily to his inferior intelligence and lack of
mental and moral qualities." Others, like the commanding general of the
92d Division, recommended that no Negro units larger than a regiment be formed
in the future,35
and some, including the division's chief of staff, felt that a separate extra
Negro regiment might be added to every division, "actually making it
a service regiment."
- The emphasis on the necessity for
white leadership arose from the conviction, almost universally held, that,
with
- few exceptions, the Negro officer
was a failure in World War I. The commanding general of the 92d Division's
183d Brigade, for one, said, "Negro officers did not take proper care
of their men. They not only lacked initiative but lacked standing with their
own men." In the judgment of the commander of the 184th Brigade, "The
Negro as an officer is a failure, and this applies to all classes of Negro
officers, whether from the Regular Army or from the Officers' Training Camp."
The division's chief of staff did not remember "in thirteen months service
a single report coming from a Negro officer that ever gave sufficient information
to base any plan thereon and practically every report had to be checked up
by some white officer."
-
- The reported experience of those units
which replaced their Negro officers with white officers apparently proved
the point fully. "After the Negro lieutenants of the regiment were replaced
by white the improvement was such that its efficiency was but little less
than that of the average white engineer regiment," the commander of the
317th Engineers, 92d Division, reported. The commander of the 372d concluded
that: "The replacement of the combatant colored officers of the 372d
Infantry by white officers had, for its effect, a better state of morale and
discipline throughout the regiment; better instruction and better tactical
control . . . . Its work in sector warfare there under white officers was
far more satisfactory than it had been two months previous under colored officers."
Commanders of other regiments in which white officers replaced Negroes expressed
similar opinions.
- [17]
- It was clear that most commanders
of Negro combat troops in World War I had little to recommend for the employment
of Negro troops in a future war except labor duties under white supervision.
Yet many admitted mitigating circumstances in judging the performance of the
combat units and some indicated that the bare recorded facts of combat did
not tell the whole story. General Ballou, the commander of the 92d Division,
wrote:
-
- The Secretary of War gave personal
attention to the selection of the white officers of the higher grades, and
evidently intended to give the Division the advantage of good white officers.
This policy was not continued by the War Department . . . the 92d . . . was
made the dumping ground for discards, both white and black. Some of the latter
were officers who had been eliminated as inefficient, from the so-called 93d
Division . . . .
-
- In the last battle of the war the
Division did some very aggressive work, so far as the companies were concerned,
and the same could have been done in the Argonne had there not been too much
eagerness to get the negroes out while their credit was bad, as many preferred
it should remain.
-
- The Colonel of one regiment came to
me, at the request of his officers, to beg me to send them to the front, and
pledging me to a man that they would go to the rear only by my order, or on
a stretcher. Those men would have been dangerous at that time, and ought not
to have been humiliated by being sent to the rear.
-
- To officer a Division in which the
best possible leadership was required, only one half as many students were
summoned to the training camp as were summoned from which to select the officers
of a white Division. [College degrees were required for admission to the white
camp but] only high school educations were required for . . . the colored
. . . and in many cases these high school educations would have been a disgrace
to any grammar school.
-
- For the parts of a machine requiring
the finest steel, pot metal was provided.36
Field grade officers commented on training and personnel problems:
-
- It was my experience at Camp Meade
that there was a tendency to use the Negro for special fatigue in road building
or other improvements. Where a single Negro unit is placed in a white divisional
camp these things have to be guarded against . . . . While I was promoted
out of the 92d Division a few days after its arrival in France,
- it was my opinion that its being scattered
in different camps in the U.S. had materially effected the training and formation
of the Divisional Staff. The division could not expect to have the same team
play as one which had trained together at one camp.37
-
- . . . in my opinion the negro race
did not take advantage of the opportunity offered them and send their leaders
into the war as officers. Many of the negro officers had been barbers, waiters
and had earned a living in similar capacities before the war. There were negroes
with whom I came into contact, civilians, who were men of ability but the
occasions were rare.38
-
- No matter what mitigating circumstances
were advanced, the general conclusion was that Negro troops could not be employed
satisfactorily in combat units unless such careful selection, intensified
training, and superior leadership as had not been forthcoming in World War
I could be provided. Since such selection and such leadership, whether white
or Negro, would be limited, the
- [18]
- bulk of Negro troops should be used
in service units. Of combat units, those of supporting types could best use
Negroes, though a proportion would have to be placed in front-line organizations.
These should be confined to small units if a satisfactory method of employing
them in conjunction with larger white units could be achieved.
-
- The full testimony and experiences
of World War I commanders nevertheless left considerable room for doubt as
to the complete validity of any but the most general conclusions, for even
those commanders who reported least success indicated that in any given unit
careful planning and execution of a different order from what had been common
in World War I might have produced different results. Reports from the more
successful units suggested that the picture was not universally bleak. Officers
of certain of the infantry units, while recommending changes in organization
and employment, did not always agree with the general conclusion that there
were inherent difficulties barring the way to the formation of successful
Negro combat units. The white commander of the only one of the eight Negro
infantry regiments in France to continue with all Negro officers, except himself,
wrote, "I found the men of the 370th Infantry generally amenable to discipline,
exceedingly uncomplaining under hardship, and the majority willing and ready
to follow an officer anywhere and at any time . . . . Of course there was
a large amount of illiteracy, which complicated the non-commissioned officer
problem." Some of the Negro officers, he reported, were good, but the
majority showed a "lack of sense of responsibility and of initiative."
That the regiment functioned as well as it did, he added, was "largely
due to the influence of a few good men, [officers who] were loyal, hardworking
and reliable men . . . ." 39
-
- He felt that a large error had been
made in training Negro officers in separate classes:
-
- . . . men of the two races should
be compared and if the Negro suffers from the comparison, he should not be
commissioned. As I understand the question, what the progressive Negro desires
today is the removal of discrimination against him; that this can be accomplished
in a military sense I believe to be largely possible, but not if men of the
two races are segregated.
-
- In saying the foregoing, I appreciate
the tremendous force of the prejudice against association between Negroes
and whites, but my experience has made me believe that the better element
among the Negroes desires the removal of the restriction rather than the association
itself.40
-
- The commanding officer of the 371st
Infantry, the only all-draft Negro regiment staffed completely with white
officers from the beginning, felt that with white leadership "a small
number" of Negro infantry divisions could be adequately trained and used
by the army "as shock divisions . . . to equalize the losses among the
races." He would not deny commissions to Negroes, for he believed that
incentives to enlisted men were essential, but he would confine the use of
Negro officers to noncombat units and would insist on "absolute equality
of requirements between Negroes and white candidates for promotion."
Initiative, he declared, while rarer among Negroes than among whites, was
"not wholly lacking," and he then cited ex-
- [19]
- amples from his regiment to prove
his point. The examples included a company clerk who went forward to the battlefield
from the rear echelon when he learned that his company had lost all its officers,
and a linesman who, after being seriously wounded, worked several more hours
to keep the telephone lines open, until he dropped from exertion and loss
of blood .41
-
- The conviction that the Army, instead
of limiting the use of Negro combat troops, should attempt to increase their
efficiency was strongly expressed in some of the reports. To heighten their
self identification as a vital part of the Army team some observers recommended
that smaller Negro units be attached to or integrated into larger white units.
One commander wrote:
-
- Personally I think it is a waste of
time to consider whether we shall have colored troops and colored officers.
It is quite possible that in the future as in the past circumstances will
arise to compel us to have both.
-
- I think our past policy of massing
them by themselves has not been wise. I believe under conditions as they are
this policy should be modified by doing away with the colored regiments and
putting a colored unit in every regiment, said unit not to be smaller than
a company and not larger than a battalion. I believe in having colored officers
for these colored units to the extent that suitable colored personnel is available
under the conditions for qualifying for the position of an Army officer.42
-
- Although other commentators had similar
reactions, the adverse testimony of most officers of the 92d and 93d Divisions
was so preponderant that it was difficult for Army General Staff officers
to come to any conclusion other than the one widely held among them in the
period between wars: Negro combat troops in World War I failed to come up
to Army standards. If such a failure was to be prevented in a future war,
plans that took into account the testimony of World War I commanders and avoided
the organizational errors of World War I had to be laid to determine the best
and most efficient means of employing Negro troops in a time of national emergency.
- [20]