By Hasan Kwame Jeffries, The Ohio State University
The United States officially entered World War I in April 1917. One year later, with the draft in full swing, scholar activist W. E. B. Du Bois, the editor of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Crisis magazine, penned a piece urging African Americans to support the nation’s war effort. Why?
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Appeal
Du Bois wrote: “That which the German power represents, spells death to the aspirations of Negroes and all darker races for equality, freedom and democracy.” So grave a threat was the German menace that Du Bois implored African Americans to make defeating the Central Powers their singular focus: “Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy.”
Du Bois concluded his patriotic call to arms by underscoring that because Black people have to contend with racism, they “make no ordinary sacrifice” for America. “But,” he said, “we make it gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills.”
Du Bois had good reason to believe that African Americans would heed the call to rally around the American flag as the country went to war. From the bloody battle of Bunker Hill at the start of the American Revolution, to the decisive battle of San Juan Hill during the Spanish-American War, African Americans had fought for this country with honor and distinction.
An Opportunity to Secure Citizenship Rights
Patriotism motivated some. But a great many more viewed military service less as a moral obligation to the nation and more as an opportunity to secure citizenship rights through displays of courage and valor. In the parlance of the early 20th century, military service was a way for Black men to prove their manhood, which people considered to be the prerequisite for equal treatment.
But many whites viewed Black men in uniform as an existential threat to white supremacy. White Southerners especially feared Black soldiers, convinced that they would take the fighting spirit that military service imbued and direct that energy toward dismantling Jim Crow.
After more than a century of military service and sacrifice, Black men were no closer to having their manhood recognized than they had been when the first Black patriot shouldered a musket in the name of the new nation. Thus, on the eve of America’s entry into the “war to end all wars”, the pressing concern among African Americans was: Would their military service result in anything different? Would it advance the struggle for African American freedom and equality?
This article comes directly from content in the video series African American History: From Emancipation through Jim Crow. Watch it now, on Wondrium.
The Houston Assignment
The same month that the Crisis magazine ran Du Bois’s ‘Close Ranks’ editorial, the US War Department sent the all-Black 3rd Battalion of the 24th Infantry Regiment to Houston, Texas. On paper, the assignment was simple. The army was building a new training base in the Houston area, and the War Department wanted the detachment to guard the construction site.
But nothing involving African Americans in the South was ever simple. Indeed, the placement of several hundred Black troops deep in the heart of Texas rankled local whites. Houston police were especially uneasy. They worried that independent-minded Black soldiers, who they considered rude and disrespectful, would turn African American residents against them.
A Color Line
To prevent this from happening, local authorities vigorously enforced the color line, insisting that Black soldiers abide by Jim Crow laws and customs under penalty of arrest, beating, or worse. But Black service members refused to be cowed. The escalating tension proved deadly.
On August 23, 1917, a rumor rippled through the barracks of the 3rd Battalion that one of their own, Corporal Charles Baltimore, had been killed by Houston police. His crime: trying to protect a Black woman from police harassment. Fed up, as many as 150 members of the regiment defied a command from superiors to stand down and marched into town, weapons at the ready, seeking justice. As it turned out, their fellow soldier had survived the police beating. But that didn’t matter. Given the intensity of police harassment, the soldiers knew that if the rumor of the police killing was not true this time, it would be true next time.
The Houston Mutiny
When the soldiers reached downtown, a posse of armed whites was waiting. Words were exchanged. At one point, a soldier shouted, “To hell with going to France. Get to work right here.” Shots were fired and a shootout ensued. Hours passed before the bullets stopped flying, and by time they did, more than a dozen local whites, including five policemen, had been killed. Four Black infantrymen lost their lives as well.
The soldiers viewed their actions as an expression of collective self-defense. The military saw the clash much differently and charged 63 soldiers with disobeying orders, mutiny, murder, and aggravated assault. The so-called Houston mutiny saw the largest court-martial in US history, 13 soldiers were sentenced to death; they all swung from gallows constructed specifically for the hanging on December 10, 1917.
The Army tried another 55 soldiers over the next few months, sentencing 16 to die. Six of these soldiers were executed, while 10 had their sentences commuted to life in prison by President Woodrow Wilson, who finally yielded to public pressure and intervened. The men whose lives had been spared joined dozens of others who had been sentenced to life in prison.
Common Questions about Black Soldiers and the 1917 Houston Mutiny
A great many more viewed military service less as a moral obligation to the nation and more as an opportunity to secure citizenship rights through displays of courage and valor. In the parlance of the early 20th century, military service was a way for Black men to prove their manhood.
Houston police were worried that independent-minded Black soldiers, who they considered rude and disrespectful, would turn African American residents against them.
The Houston mutiny saw the largest court-martial in US history, 13 soldiers were sentenced to death; they all swung from gallows on December 10, 1917. The Army tried another 55 soldiers over the next few months, sentencing 16 to die.
