IMPACT OF WORLD WAR I

MILITARY SERVICE

It should be noted that African Americans served in WWI just like everybody else. There were 20,000 African American men in the regular army and national guard. An additional 367,000 were drafted, and served in segregated units (Franklin, 325-326). Most African Americans were used to load and unload ships, dig trenches and ditches, cook, or work in transport and sanitation (p. 328). The most distinguished group of African American soldiers were the 369th US Infantry. They arrived in France in 1918, and the Germans called them the "Hellfighters." They were awarded the Croix de Guerre (War Cross) BY the French for their action at Maison-en Champagne. They were welcomed with open arms by the French, who were not as prejudiced as Americans, much to the embarrassment of white supremacists. Many Americana did not appreciate the sacrifices of black soldiers at all.

DOMESTIC IMPACT OF THE WAR

World War I had an enormous impact on the US. The war began in Europe in 1914. The US did not actually enter the war until the spring of 1917. However the war had an economic impact immediately. Historically, before World War I, the North did not want or need African Americans. Traditionally, in the North, black labor was not needed because the North had an alternative labor supply. This labor supply consisted of immigrants from Europe. Between 1820 and 1860 some 5 million immigrants had come to the US, mostly from Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia (Norway and Sweden). Between 1860 and 1900, an additional 13.5 million immigrants arrived, mostly from Europe. After 1885 most of the immigrants were coming from Southern Europe (Italy) and Eastern Europe (Czechs, Slovaks, Hungarians, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, eastern European Jews). From 1900 to 1930, another 19 million immigrants came to the US. In fact, in 1905, 1906, 1907, 1910, 1913 and 1914, one million immigrants came to the US each year.

However, when the war started in Europe, countries such as France, Germany, Austria and Russia (which included most of Poland) shut off immigration. The European countries wanted to draft young men into their armies, not allow them to leave for America. As a result, the number of immigrants plunged from 1 million in 1914 to only 300,000 in 1915. Northern industry suffered a severe labor shortage. This economic situation would lead to the First Great Migration of African Americans out of the South, in World War I.

RESPONSE TO THE LABOR SHORTAGE: FIRST GREAT MIGRATION

Northern industrialists were desperate to get any worker they could. They needed workers for the railroads, steel mills, coal mines, assembly lines, slaughterhouses, docks. Northern industrialists sent labor recruiters into the South to distribute leaflets advertising the availability of jobs in the North. The PA Railroad, and Illinois Railroad, offered reduced rate fares for workers who would come North. The Illinois Railroad gave out 12,000 free passes and pre-paid tickets (Tuttle, Race Riot, p. 188). Between 1916 and 1918, 450,000 African Americans left the South and came to the North, as Northern industrialists asked them to do. It must be emphasized that these people came to the North because they were asked to come. Wages were higher in the North, and the only thing for blacks in the South was sharecropping and the Klan. In addition, between 1918 and 1925 an additional 150,000 African Americans left the South. They were responding to job opportunities in the industrial North. But while EMPLOYERS sought African American labor, the Caucasian EMPLOYEES did not.

CITY         BLACK POP.             BLACK POP.
                    1910                            1920

Chicago     65,355                     109,458

Pittsburgh     9,190                     20,300

NY             60,758                     152,000

Phila             25,000                     69,000

It was in World War I that the black population of Detroit, Pittsburgh, Phila, NY, Newark and other Northern cities swelled. Meanwhile, Caucasian Southerners fretted that they would not have enough people to work as sharecroppers on their plantations or have maids to do their laundry and clean their houses. Florida responded by slapping on a license for labor recruiters. They had to pay a fee of $1000 (Franklin, p. 340).

OVERCROWDING AND GHETTOIZATION

However the North did not build 450,000 units of new housing. Therefore homes were subdivided into apartments, and people were piled on top of one another. When blacks tried to move into previously "white neighborhoods," there was conflict. Some realtors began "block busting." They would buy a house from a Caucasian family at a premium (high, inflated price), and sell it to an African American family. The Caucasians on the block would panic, and sell and flee ("white flight"). In their haste to get away, they would sell "low," fearing that if they waited longer the values would drop even further. And the realtors could then sell "high" to new black families. A block could go from white to black in a few weeks. The overcrowding in the cities produced new black ghettos and slums, as African Americans and Caucasians competed for housing. But many Caucasians "fought back" rather than flee before the "black invasion." In Chicago, between March 1918 and July 1919, there were 25 instances of the homes of African Americans, who had moved into Caucasian neighborhoods, being firebombed. In some instances properties purchased by African American realtors but not yet sold were bombed, and in a few cases properties owned by Caucasian realtors who had sold homes to African Americans, and the real estate offices themselves, were firebombed (Tuttle, Race Riot, p. 175). Following the Chicago riot in the summer of 1919, there were 18 more such firebombings of the homes of African Americans (Tuttle, p. 250).

In Nov. 1918 the armistice was signed and in 1919 the war ended. The Government canceled orders and contracts. Factories began to lay off workers. The economy plunged into recession. The recession lasted from 1919-1921. Unemployment reached 20 percent. Some 5.7 million people were unemployed and 20,000 businesses went bankrupt. In this climate of economic competition the companies cut wages, and the white workers went on strike or employers locked them out. The employers hired blacks as strikebreakers. Caucasian WORKERS  felt that African Americans were unwelcome competition, especially when there were not enough jobs to go around. Caucasians felt that African Americans were moving into "their" neighborhoods and invading "their" parks and beaches and schools, and taking "their" jobs. Caucasian workers perceived the African Americans as a THREAT to "their" jobs. NOW, with the war over, Caucasian workers wanted the African Americans to go back to the South, now that the war was over. Many Caucasian Northerners had "tolerated" the influx of the Southern Afro-Americans as a temporary necessity, an emergency measure, during the war. But now that the war was over, they felt that the Southern Afro-Americans ought to go back "home." Northern Caucasians felt that the Southern blacks were no longer "needed." The problem was, however, that no one had told the African Americans in 1916, when they began migrating to the North, that their stay in the North was only intended to be "temporary."

As World War I came to an end, and the recession set in, racial violence erupted in the North in a series of race riots.

In July 1917 a race riot erupted in East St. Louis, in Illinois. This was EVEN BEFORE World War I ended. Whites were angered that African Americans were being employed at a defense factory, and the whites wanted for only whites to work there. Whites attacked blacks and sought to burn down the black neighborhood. 39 blacks and 9 whites were killed (Franklin, p. 344).

THE RED SUMMER OF 1919

1917 was a foreshadowing of the recession year of 1919. In 1919 there were 25 race riots in the US, most in the North. James Weldon Johnson called it the "Red Summer" (red as in bloody). On July 27 a riot began in Chicago. By custom, the beaches in Chicago were segregated (de facto, not required by law). Eugene Williams, an African American youngster swimming in Lake Michigan, and some of his friends, on a raft, drifted over into the waters on the "white" side of the beach. Some Caucasians began to throw stones at them, and Eugene was hit in the head, and went under, and drowned. African Americans said he had been murdered. A caucasian police officer refused to arrest a Caucasian man whom the surviving swimmers said had been throwing rocks. Rumors swirled. The next day there was violence between Caucasians and African Americans. Some blacks killed two whites in one part of Chicago, and whites retaliated by attacking blacks in other places. This pattern escalated into a riot that lasted for 13 days, in which 15 whites and 23 blacks were killed, and 178 whites and 342 blacks were injured. White mobs attacked and burned the homes of blacks, and 1,000 blacks were left homeless (Franklin, p. 350-351, p. 387 in 8th edition).

In July there was a riot in Washington, DC, which lasted for 5 days. The Capitol dome was obscured by the smoke of burning buildings. In Longview, Texas and Chester PA and Elaine, Arkansas and Omaha, Nebraska there were other riots (Franklin, 351).

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, rumors spread that a white woman had been assaulted by a black man. A mob gathered and looted and burned down the entire black section of the city. That section of the city was called Greenwood, and because of the many black-owned homes and businesses it was referred
to as the "Black Wall Street." Nine whites and 21 blacks were killed. The authorities rounded up and arrested 6,000 blacks and held them in a detention camp, and some witnesses alleged that authorities dropped a bomb on the black neighborhood from an airplane. Thousands of Afro-Americans lost their homes and businesses, and were left homeless.

In 1923 Caucasians in the vicinity of Rosewood, an African American hamlet in Florida, went on a rampage and killed as many African Americans as they could catch and burned down the entire town. This happened after doubtful allegations that a Caucasian woman had been beaten by an African American man. This then escalated into a rumor of sexual assault. Too late, it was realized that the woman might have been cheating on her husband with a Caucasian lover, and he was the person who had hit her--by then it was too late: Rosewood had been destroyed. The poor Caucasians who attacked Rosewood were actually jealous of the success and prosperity of this town, and the fact that the African Americans were landowners. After a year had passed,  the land of the African Americans previously resident in Rosewood was sold for failure to pay taxes, and the Caucasians bought it up at "fire sale" prices (dirt cheap).

RACIAL PRIVILEGE FOR WHITES IN EMPLOYMENT

During World War I, temporarily, there were jobs for African Americans in the North. But when the war ended the economy went into a slump and immigration from Europe resumed (but would be capped at 350,000 a year in 1921). Caucasian workers sought to monopolize access to jobs and exclude African Americans. Many unions excluded African Americans, and hiring came to be based on a racial preference for Caucasians. For Caucasians, this exclusion of African Americans, Puerto Ricans and Latinos was "job protection." If there aren’t enough jobs to go around, how does one preserve access for one’s racial group? White skin privilege preserved access to jobs for Caucasians, while excluding African Americans. Basically, there was preferential access to jobs for Caucasians. Secondarily, it meant that African Americans would receive jobs after all of the Caucasians who wanted a job had a job, and then African Americans could get whatever was left over. To put it bluntly, African Americans got what was left over, or what Caucasians didn't want. African Americans got the economic crumbs that fell from the white man's table. Not until 1964 did the Civil Rights Act ban discrimination in unions and in employment on the basis or race and sex.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND THE GHETTO

For African Americans, the problems of the North became the problem of chronic unemployment. And the ghetto became a kind of reservation or holding cell or holding pen where African Americans were warehoused until jobs became available. In other words, African Americans became the spare tire, that was used only when needed. African Americans were kept on a reservation called the ghetto, and let out to work when they were needed (when there was a labor shortage), and then sent back at the end of the day. The essential point, here, is that the ghetto functions as the place where our society stores or warehouses or keeps the surplus supply or "excess" supply of African American or Latino labor. For Mexicans, it is called the barrio.

The great problem is that economically it is difficult for men to support families if they have no (legal) job. African Americans became marginalized. Marginal people are those persons whom a society will not use, cannot use, or refuses to use. They are thrown away, as "expendable." This was the problem of African Americans in the North following World War I.  The European immigrant was permitted the privilege of having a job or being chosen by the employer. African Americans SOUGHT work, but were not CHOSEN to receive jobs, and did not have the privilege of having one. It is not enough to be willing to work. The employer also has to choose you. But how can one be a "man," and a breadwinner and a provider in a capitalist society if one does not have a job? Economic marginality undermines and sabotages the male gender role.

White Northerners perceived African Americans as "newcomers," the "latest arrival." Because African Americans had been in the South (90% until 1900), by the time that African Americans came to the North in large numbers the British Americans (English, Scots, Welsh) were already here; the Irish were already here; the Germans were already here; the Scandinavians were already here; the Poles, Russians, Italians, Czechs, Slovaks, Greeks, Ukrainians were already here: the Jews were already here. In America, the tendency is that whoever has just "arrived" has to go to the back of the line and start working their way up. Because most African Americans did not arrive in the North until 1916, African Americans found themselves at the end of the line and the bottom of the ladder. The 300 years spent waiting in line in the South didn’t "count" in the North. Consequently, African Americans lagged behind just about everyone else in the "pecking order," and were one of the last groups to enter the urban, industrial economy. Previously most blacks had been farm laborers in the South. In the South black labor had been indispensable to white plantation owners. In the North black labor was considered "redundant," un-necessary, un-needed, and an unwelcome rival, competitor and threat to the jobs of white men. A large part of the antagonism, then, is ECONOMIC.

After World War I many Caucasians were determined, (the power structure was determined) to maintain white supremacy and black subordination. In the South there was segregation required by state and local law. In the North, segregation was by custom or tradition. It was informal. There was no law that required it, but individual employers and owners of private businesses, such as hotels, inns, theaters, restaurants, diners, movie houses, could segregate if they wanted to. It was left to the individual owner. They could refuse service to African Americans if they wished to do so. Many Caucasians were determined to keep African Americans out of their places of work, their unions, their neighborhoods, their voting booths. White supremacy asserted itself with an iron fist. Basically, the Caucasian power structure was determined that African Americans would be treated exactly the same way that they had been treated BEFORE the war.
 

RESURGENCE OF LYNCHING

There was also a resurgence of lynching toward the end of WWI.

1917    48 blacks lynched

1918    63 blacks lynched

1919    78 blacks lynch

Of the 78 blacks lynched in 1919, 10 were black veterans returning from the War. Some were even lynched in their uniforms. These men were not willing to be submissive to white racism, and their assertiveness in defending their humanity led to them being murdered. Violence was the last resort in trying to maintain black subordination.

There was also a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan after 1917. The Klan expanded into the North. The Klan was hostile to Catholics, Jews and African Americans, and by 1925 it is estimated that the Klan had 5 million members. By 1924 5 US Senators and 4 governors were Klansmen.
 

SIGNIFICANT FIGURES IN 19TEENS, 1920’S

In 1906 John Hope had become the first black president of a major liberal arts college (Morehouse). In 1926 Mordecai Johnson became the first black president of Howard University. In 1915 Carter G. Woodson founded the Assoc. for the Study of Negro Life and History, and in 1926 began Black History Week.

In 1925 Asa Philip Randolph organized a union of African American railroad workers. The railroads back then were as important as trucking and the airlines are today. The union was called the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. These were not distinguished positions, but it was a stable job with reliable pay. The Brotherhood was the largest AA union in the country, at a time when most unions in the AF of L excluded AAs or herded them into segregated locals. Randolph was a Socialist, and founded a magazine called The Messenger. Randolph was one of the most important voices in the 1920s on behalf of the interests of the masses of black working people, as opposed to the doctors and lawyers and morticians, the black bourgeoisie, or the Talented Tenth of college educated professionals or want-to-be professionals.

The legislation of the New Deal gave a federal guarantee of the right of workers to form unions and engage in collective bargaining. In 1937 the Pullman Company was compelled to accept the Brotherhood, and signed a contract. In 1939 WWII erupted in Europe. Japan intensified its attacks on China. By 1941 Hitler had overrun all of Western Europe except for neutral Spain and Portugal and Sweden, and Britain was fighting off the blitz. The US geared up for war. Randolph feared that as war production expanded, African Americans, as usual, would be excluded from jobs and "left out." Therefore in 1941 he began to organize a march on Washington, to protest discrimination against African Amerians in government employment. Critics said that Randolph was disloyal to the country, and his march would embarrass the US and provide propaganda for Hitler and Tojo. FDR urged Randolph not to hold the march, but Randolph insisted that he would proceed unless FDR took some action to end discrimination. In June 1941 FDR issued Executive Order 8802. In essence it banned discrimination on the basis of race in any company that received federal contracts for defense production. Randolph then called off the "threatened" march. During WWII, more than 1 million African Americans were employed in the defense industry.

Randolp understood that in order to bring about change one must complain. One must draw attention to an issue or an injustice or a grievance. One must APPLY PRESSURE and EXERT LEVERAGE. Power concedes nothing without a demand. In the absence of pressure, the status quo just continues as before (business as usual). Change requires AGITATION.

In 1947 Randolph was aggrieved that the military was still segregated. He formed the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training. When he was called before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he indicatd that he would launch a mass campaign to urge African Americans not to serve in the military and not to cooperate with the draft. He staged pickets outside the White House.

1948 was a presidential election year. Harry Truman sought election in his own right (he had succeeded FDR when FDR died in April 1945). Henry Wallace ran as a Progressive. The Democrats adopted a position urging civil rights for African Americans, and Strom Thurmond led a wlakout by 35 delegates from MS and AL. Thurmond ran for president as the candidate of  the States Right Party.

The Republicans nominated Thomas Dewey, and the election was believed to be very close.

Truman's advisors warned him that he could not win without support from African Americans in the North and Midwest and California, and the support of liberal Caucasians. Truman knew he would suffer some loss in the south, but he hoped that he could offset this with support from liberals. In fact, Thurmond carried South Carolina (8 electoral votes), AL (11), MS (9), Louisiana (10) and one electoral vote from Tenn (for 39 in all, and 1,189,000 votes).

As a symbolic gesture to AAs and liberal Caucasians, Truman issued Exec. Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. The effect was to phase out the segregation of the armed forces. This process was completed by 1952. The exact language of the Exec. Order was "there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed froces, without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin."

Randolph then suspended his campaign of urging civil disobedience. Randolph had used the leverage of adverse publicity, in an election year, to win concessions. His critics on the right said that he was disloyal to the country. Randlph felt that loyalty is a two-way street. If my country wants me to be loyal to it, then it should also be loyal to me. Racism is not loyalty. His critics said that he was engaging in blackmail tactics to extort concessions. His critics on the left said that he didn't go far enough, or ask for enough, and that he was just bluffing. Randolph felt that he settled for the slice of bread that he could get at that time.

in Nov. 1948 Truman won, with 24.1 million popular votes against 21.9 million popular votes for Dewey. Truman won 303 electoral votes, to 189 for Dewey.

Most of the South voted for Truman, the Democrat (VA, WV, NC, GA, FL, TX, ARK, most of TN). Dewey carried almost all of New England (except Mass), NY, NJ, Del, MD. Michigan and Indiana went for Dewey. But ILLinois, Ohio, Wis, Minn, Iowa, Missouri, California and all of the Rocky Mt. west voted for Truman. With the vote very close in CA (25 electoral voters), IL (28) and OH (25), the African American vote put Truman over the top in those three states. These three states, with 78 electoral votes, more than offset the loss of 39 electoral votes to Thurmond.

John Kennedy was paying attention. And in the election of 1960, he would face the problem of how to balance the need of a Democratic candidate to placate both the segregationist South and the restless African American and liberal Caucasians in the Northern wing of the Dem. Party.

OSCAR DE PRIEST

In 1928 Oscar De Priest, a Republican, became the first African American elected to the House of Representatives in the 20th century. The last African American in Congress before this had been George White, elected in 1898. De Priest was elected from a mostly black district in Chicago. De Priest was the first black Congressman EVER elected in the NORTH.

ARTHUR MITCHELL

In 1930 another black politician, Arthur Mitchell, arose. He switched from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party. In 1934 he ran against Oscar De Priest and defeated him. This symbolized the defection of the black vote from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This was a political re-alignment. In 1932 about 60% of the black vote in the North had gone to Herbert Hoover, the Republican. However black newspapers began to urge blacks to turn the picture of Lincoln to face the wall. In 1936, 76% of African American voters in the North (as a whole) voted for Roosevelt. In Harlem, Roosevelt received 81% of the black vote. By 1928, the black vote in the North was becoming important in certain cities.