Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights Part 67

And all France cried: "Send us men--men without fear of mortal danger--men of intrepid heart--men of audacity--men of fort.i.tude--men of resolution--men of unquestioning, unreasoning, undying courage--men of elan--men of morale! Send Jew or Gentile--white men, yellow men, brown men, black men--it matters not! Send us men who can halt the Hun!"

So early in May of 1918 went up to sea, partly under their own officers, 90,000 and more American Negroes, registered as of African descent, and drafted to do battle in France. It was sub-species against super-man, broad head against long head, flat nose against sharp nose, thick cranium against Hun helmet. It was this unprecedented synthetic group of black men sailing the sea of darkness on a mission concerning the vital interests of Englishmen and Americans who had misused them for centuries, and concerning beloved France, which laid the real claim for honor and recognition and equality for the American Negro.

The American Negro, as he bade his black comrades "Good-bye! Good luck!

G.o.d bless you! Take keer o' yo' self!" felt in his heart that all America ought to forget her prejudices. He felt that if she did not do so, she was indeed only fit to be characterized as narrow-minded, mean-spirited, illiberal and warped--entirely unfit for the position of leaders.h.i.+p in democratization of the world.

So taken up with this idea was the entire Negro race that an editorial appearing in the "Crisis," the leading Negro magazine, from the pen of the Negro scholar, W.E.B. Dubois, came as a dash of cold water from an upper window. This article set the whole race agog. There was nothing in it about America's forgetting her prejudices, the idea which filled the Negro heart and soul and mind. It was ent.i.tled "Close Ranks!" and read as follows:

"This is the crisis of the world. For all the long years to come men will point to the year 1918 as the great Day of Decision, the day when the world decided whether it would submit to military despotism and an endless armed peace--if peace it could be called--or whether they would put down the menace of German militarism and inaugurate the United States of the World.

"We of the colored race have no ordinary interest in the outcome.

That which the German power represents today spells death to the aspirations of Negroes and all darker races for equality, freedom and democracy. Let us not hesitate. Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow-citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy. We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills."

While many questioned his motive, all accepted his advice.

While the grievance was not forgotten, it was not allowed to jeopardize the success of the issue to weaken the black man's allegiance. Every mother's son and father's daughter remained loyal under stress and strain which would have caused the white man to curse and die.

THE FIELD OF ACTION.

Regiments of Negro stevedores, earlier in the year, had been drafted and sent overseas. These men were drawn from a specific locality, and did not represent the entire nation. They were in command of white officers.

They had been destined for the Service of Supply, a service which America performed so marvelously well that it is difficult to tell, if not here, where her chief glory lies.

Black stevedores from Alabama, and Louisiana, and Mississippi, Virginia and the Carolinas, numbering far more than the entire black forces of the 92nd Division, packed and unpacked the American Expeditionary Force in a manner never attempted since Noah loaded the Ark. Rear Admiral Wilson and General McClure cited several regiments for exceptionally efficient work. The "Leviathan," formerly the German steams.h.i.+p "Vaterland," was unloaded and coaled, in compet.i.tion with other white and black stevedore regiments, by Company A, 301st Stevedores, young American Negroes, in fifty-six hours, a world record.

What a cheer went up from the black stevedores of the far South when there landed in their midst a mighty band of black infantry, nearly 100,000 strong who, in a few short months had learned the use of powder and shot, of sword and broadsword, of bayonet and bludgeon, of trench knife and battle-ax. Cold steel or blackjack, smooth bore or sawed-off, machine gun or automatic, were all the same to them. It was a great experience for stevedore and infantryman. And the stevedore's heart leaped to his throat as he saw the black officers of the 92nd Division maneuver and march away the men under their command.

The black stevedore wondered why America had brought him so far under white officers to behold such a sight. He beheld black quartermasters, ranking and outranking captains, furnis.h.i.+ng their men with provision and supply. The handling of purveyance and cutlery on a huge scale by black commissioned officers was a revelation to the black stevedore of the far South who had never seen such a sight in all his days.

The stevedore beheld arrive Negro signal men, monitors of their troops and of a million whites behind them, death watch to the German enemy, destined to be sentinels and patrolmen of No Man's Land. He saw pa.s.s by black American scouts and spies and lookouts and pioneers headed for the frontiers of France to gain an immortal halo of glory.

The stevedore found in his midst elegantly groomed, but speechless Negroes whom, his friends whispered to him, belonged to the United States Intelligence Department. They had come, so the wide-mouthed stevedore was told, to pit their 35 ounces of brain against the German's 45 ounces, and to prove that the Hun back brain is surplus overweight and should be reduced to Negro proportions. They had come to furnish General Pers.h.i.+ng information, news, tidings and dispatch, emba.s.sy and bulletin, report and rumor. And the stevedore wondered if General Pers.h.i.+ng would expect these Negro men to report to him information with precision and correct.i.tude.

It was the Negro band, fresh from America, which gave the stevedore his greatest delight. Preceding the black troops everywhere, it produced a potpourri of full and semi-scores, melodies and plantation arias, that came as a refres.h.i.+ng novelty to weary English hearts and to the souls of jaded France.

But there were no Negro "big gun" men. The stevedore wondered if the black boys of the 92nd Division would have to get into the fight with Germany, depending upon the kind of barrage which some of the men whom he knew in America might lay down for him. True, the Negro artilleryman had been left behind in America. At Camp Taylor he was spurned and rejected. But he refused to accept rebuff. He won his way into the heart of commanding officer and subaltern, gained his training, made a superior record, witnessed the outpouring of the entire white soldiery of the camp to present arms and salute him as he went away to service, and arrived in France in breathless haste in time to lay down a perfect barrage for his black comrades as they advanced through the terrific fighting in the Argonne and the Marbache. Long will stevedore tradition recite the story of how these black "big gun men" came by.

The black stevedore represented a section of the United States. That section was thoroughly well represented. There was work done better than it ever had been done before. But, on the other hand, the 92nd Division had been drawn from every possible corner of the United States where a quota might be raised. It was the 92nd Division especially, however great might be the deeds of local regiments of guard, that would decide the great ultimate question. Regiments of Negro guard troops from New York, Chicago, Was.h.i.+ngton, Baltimore, and the State of Ohio, and Negro pioneers from the mountain regions of the Carolinas, might cover their respective localities with the surpa.s.sing glory of their achievements.

And every regiment of them did. But the real issue was wrapped up in the great 92nd Division, the Negro national army commanded in large measure by Negro officers, which stepped into the international arena on that fateful day in June, 1918.

They landed when the German had spent his third offensive and was at the gates of Paris. Almost the first news which they received after they had settled on foreign soil was that Paris, the magic city which they had come so far to see, was destined to fall into the hands of the German.

Albeit Chateau Thierry, the turning point of the decisive struggle of 1918, was only achieved when, for the war, a total of more than a million black men of four continents had been annihilated, the 92nd Division was eager for the fray--was anxious to tread the field of action for the sake of honor, and recognition and equality. It was at Chateau Thierry, on a day soon after the arrival of the 92nd Division in France, that Foch, the eminent generalissimo, but then an almost unknown quant.i.ty, again gave voice to laconicism: "The offensive shall begin and shall continue. Bring up the colonials!" America was thrown into battle holding honored position beside Gouraud's invincible Africanders. The Hun was halted in his tracks, thrown back across the second Marne, and hunted like a wolf over the Hindenburg line and into his native lair.

Soissons, Rheims, Verdun, St. Dizier and Chemin des Dames, all saw Negro troops of the United States in violent action. In the Marbache, at Belie Farm, and in the Bois de Tege d'Or, the Negro guard regiments and the Negro 92nd Division went over and at the Hun.

At Voivrette Farm and in the Bois de Frehaut, other troops of this same division smote German super-man hip and thigh. In Voivrette Woods and in the Bois de Cheminot, at Moulon Brook and Seilie Bridge and Epley the 92nd Division again victoriously contested the field of honor, against the best soldiers Prussia might afford. From July until November, their brothers of the Negro guard regiments, of Negro pioneers and Negro casuals were within earshot of the murderous rumble of contending artillery. By November 8 every command in the Negro American division, including the units of guard, had more than once or twice been at the front or over the top and at them.

Ralph W. Tyler, of Ohio, a Negro on the staff of General Pers.h.i.+ng, representing the Bureau of Public Information, says of Hill 304:

"I have learned that Hill 304, which the French so valiantly held, and which suffered such a fierce bombardment from the Germans that there is not a single foot of it but what is plowed up by sh.e.l.ls, and whose sides, even today, are literally covered with the corpses of French soldiers who still lie where they fell, was later as valiantly held by the colored soldiers from the United States, who fought with all the heroism and endurance the best tradition of the army had chronicled. The colored soldiers who held that b.l.o.o.d.y and ever historical Hill 304 had the odds against them, but like Tennyson's immortal 'Six Hundred,' they fought bravely and well, firm in the belief 'it was not theirs to reason why--it was theirs to do and die.' And like the patriots they were, they did DO, and this war's history will so record."

The Prussian, at last, sought safety in flight. Britisher, Frenchman, Italian, Portuguese, Canadian, black and white American were at his heels. Italy created a debacle in Austria. And then, wonderful news came through of what was happening in the Near East.

It had been impossible for the Negroes of America to come to France and preserve the nicely calculated adjustments which England had set up through the years. The East Indian, the Arabian, the Egyptian could not but observe, and observing, fail to understand why American Negroes could be entrusted in command of troops, if they were not given the same recognition and honor and equality. Quietly England prepared them all.

Under General Allenby and dark-skinned officers of the East, the black Caucasians and the brown Caucasians and the yellow Caucasians fell upon the Turk, until, regardless of his German master, he cried aloud for terms. The horde of dark-skinned captors of Turkey, under the British supreme command, threatened and attacked Bulgaria, who quickly succ.u.mbed. So came the Turkish armistice, and the Bulgarian armistice and the Austrian armistice.

The Prussian fled from the field of battle. He was not swift enough.

Brought to bay, he cried for mercy. All of the Negro American force was to be hurled at him in the greatest stronghold of the world, Metz. He pleaded with the American President for armistice, and was referred to Marshal Foch. It was the great war hero, with the Hohenzollern house of cards tumbled about him, who decided that for three days, until November 11, fighting must continue, and that in those last hours the Germans must feel at the hands of all the allies the severest punishment that could be meted within a limited time. Britishers, Frenchmen, men of all allied nations sought the honor. The American Negro could not be denied.

Although regiments of Negro guard and of the 92nd Division had but recently been in action for a period of from three to five weeks, they craved the honor of being out in front at the stern and bitter end. It was practically the entire Negro fighting force of America which, under its own officers, went over the top at daybreak on the final morning of the great four years' struggle, side by side with white men of various nationalities, who, like them, were ready and most fit for sacrifice or service. In the last hours, when life seemed sweeter than all creation, there thousands of black men of all regiments overseas fell in search of the coveted honor of being nearest Berlin as the thunderous crash and din ceased, to roll no more. Hours before the order came for the supreme and final sacrifice, Negro signal men had caught from the air the message which indicated what was to be their special honor. There was not a man to desert or seek asylum elsewhere. All went over the top together!

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the order came to cease firing. The 92nd Division of Negro troops stood at Thann and before Metz, in advance of the progress of troops of all America. The ground which they trod had not been occupied by other than German troops in 40 years. It was the field of honor, and recognition and equality, and must be theirs of necessity. Nature had ruthlessly perfected this type of black native-born American for the high duties of a soldier. The war was over. Allies and Americans said to him:

"As brothers we moved together--as brothers--to the dawn that advanced--to the stars that fled--rendering thanks to G.o.d in the highest, that He, having hid His face through one long night behind thick clouds of war, once again will ascend above us in the vision of perpetual peace."

The Negro felt that, as the ancient Romans were too faithful to the ideal of grandeur in themselves not to relent, after a generation or two, before the grandeur of Hannibal, so he will not ever be the mere son of a peri.

The Negro knew that he could do one thing as well as the best of men--a greater thing than Milton or Marlowe or Charlemagne ever did--he could die grandly the death. Face forward on the flats of Flanders, in Picardy and Lorraine he died grandly, to make the world safe for democracy. For we of America must remember, in all our getting on and up in the world, that, as a psychological weapon, the bristling bayonet was incomplete until a stalwart, desperate black Negro American citizen got behind it to fight, not for his gain, but for the uplift of the ma.s.ses of humanity.

The war was over. It was still a small voice within that told the Negro hosts: "As this hath been no white man's war, neither shall it be a white man's peace."

THE AFTERMATH.

But yesterday the nation tried to think of the Negro as a southern problem, the solution of which belonged to statesmans.h.i.+p of the South.

Often we have endeavored to think of him as a national problem, and have tried to persuade the national government to take in hand matters of widespread national interest wherein he was involved. But now we must of necessity think of the Negro as an international problem, ramifications of which are bound up in the roots of aspiration and kindred feeling and powerful potentiality of Frenchman and Britisher, of Asiatic and Slav, and of the great bodies of darker peoples of all the world.

As the Negro becomes an international problem, no single section of a country can be entrusted with the administration of matters pertaining to him. Such administration may be a.s.signed by international conclave to a particular country as its national problem, but the proper channels of administration of international policy will be up from sectional caucus, through national agency to the international parliament, and down from such parliament or league, through national agencies to the section involved. And, furthermore, sectional caucus, unless it would fail in policies of its advocacy, and suffer modification by the Congress or parliament of its central governmental administration, must henceforth regard the Negro not as an aggregate all in a ma.s.s, but as a synthesis, composed of gradations from lowest to superior. This is the new concept which the war of 1918 has forced upon America, in spite of the bias of 1914.

Civilization left the parting of the ways when Woodrow Wilson's rallying cry for world democratization led America into the war. It decided to seek the path of Peace not along the lines of permitted autocracy, but of firmly and thoroughly well administered democracy. In administering democratic government, Negro regiments, graded from private to superior officer, came first as an academic proposition, and, finally, as an actuality. They came four hundred thousand strong. No group of that number can longer be considered as a mere acc.u.mulation of black men. One hundred thousand Negroes of the 92nd Division and regiments of guard have been commanded on the field of action by black headmen, with white headlight. They have taken their objectives with speed and control and the management of both of these elements of transfused morale has been in the hands of colored college men or their military equals.

The hour of decision to make the world safe for democracy was the crisis of civilization. Victory on the fields of France has been the satisfactory denouement. The question naturally arises: Shall there be a happy ending of the great drama for the white American and a tragic ending for the Negro? Or, rather, as the American brotherhood gathers about the charmed circle and smokes the pipe of peace, shall the Negro report: "I see and am satisfied?"

In other words, shall the 92nd Division of Negro fighters and the greater hosts of black war workers overseas, return to America with honor in theory, but not pursued in fact to its logical finality? Shall these black bulwarks of the business of world war find the door of the business world of peace slammed in their faces? Shall these black survivors of terrific struggle for world democracy return home only to be declared unfit to vote an American ballot? Shall the black soldier hero be allowed to take his croix de guerre into a jim-crow car? Shall the black Red Cross nurse, rus.h.i.+ng to the aid of benighted humanity regardless of color, be refused accommodation at places of public proprietors.h.i.+p whither she may seek rest or refreshment? Tragedy begets tragedy. Seventeen seventy-six begot 1861, and 1861 begot 1914.

The times demand decisive action. Sociological error, committed today, will cause malformation of an important member of the American body politic. It will cause the s.h.i.+p of state to ride an uneven keel. This s.h.i.+p of state must be brought to her ancient moorings, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address of Lincoln, and the Farewell of Old John Brown on the scaffold.

The tumult has died. Revelry and shouting fill every program. Is the Negro to return unheralded to homeland, and with his eyes to the hills, undergo patting and pitying and be given a place in the corner? Or are the colored boys in khaki to announce their return by a vigorous knocking at the gate? Shall they have cause to cry to America: "A house divided against itself cannot stand!" And shall they knock and knock and knock until America sets herself to wonder what has this army Negro to do that he becomes so unceremonious? Or shall they find the gate wide open and triumphal arches erected in every section of the country in their honor to signify that defeat of German autocracy means democratization of every section of the entire world? An international conscience demands for the Negro hero a happy ending of it all.

The Negro looks to the military agencies of America to produce a genuine peace wherein he may live happy ever after. Regarded in America as the most alien of aliens before the war, he demands recognition today as the most loyal of loyalists. But yesterday Anglo-Saxon prejudice persisted in viewing him as a physical alien, a mental alien, a moral alien and a social alien. The Negro is willing to discuss no further this prejudicial conception of himself forced home by libelous propaganda and by governmental administration for hundreds of years, if the agencies of reconstruction will perfect and put in operation a vigorous Americanization policy in his behalf.

Military life has taught the Negro the advantage derived from the use of pure food and balanced ration. It has taken him from the ghetto into the pure air of the open country, and filled his lungs with deep draughts of the free breezes of France. It has removed him from the temptation to imbibe the beverage that destroys human faculties and has accustomed him in a measure to the beneficial use of purified water. It has undertaken through carefully selected work, exercise and recreation to perfect the habits of digestion, a.s.similation and elimination. The result has been indeed marvelous. No America Negro who went to fight for humanity will return to America as the same physical being. No American will dare stand before the returned Negro trooper and say: "Behold a sub-species of mankind, wooly of hair, long of head, with dilated nostrils, thick lips, thicker cranium, flat foot, prehensile great toe and larkheel.

Yea, behold him, dark of skin, whose mentality is like unto a child, and closely related to the anthropoid ape; whose weight of brain is only comparable to that of the gorilla." Where is the American who will dare stand before any Negro trooper returned from France and thus mock and deride him? Military agency has completely destroyed the physical concept which the white world had of the Negro in 1914, by placing him in the focus of Caucasian binocular vision, wherein his better attributes become visible in their synthetic relation.

In addition, military life has sharpened the mental powers of the Negro in command to meet the highest exactions of modern warfare. Colonel Charles Denton Young, Negro graduate of West Point, if we may trust the record, is capable of the same high character of mental processes as John J. Pers.h.i.+ng. Military test has proven before the world that the Negro is no mental alien, but heir to all the ages of Anglo-Saxon, Roman, Greek and Egyptian culture.

In France the American Negro has produced no notorious offenders against civil or military usage. He has arisen to the moral concept of high responsibility for the future of his race in the estimation of all mankind. There is no story of moral degeneracy which has yet come from abroad concerning him. Pitfall, temptation and opportunity for vice and crime have all been shunned in light of preparation for the higher service. The Negro has proven his power of moral restraint while guided by leaders.h.i.+p of his own color. As a social being he has sacrificed his life for the highest form of social existence, democracy. Who, then, is there to call him alien? Today he is no longer Negro, nor Afro-American, nor colored American, nor American of African descent, but he is American--simply this, and nothing more.

He has been raised to erect stature and made a man by the military branch of the United States Government, because of signal service to the American peoples. His prayer is that this military government long may live as such to train the great ma.s.s which he calls kin into a synthetic whole.

As he evolved from a student in a military training camp to military leaders.h.i.+p, so he desires the great military organization of America to continue to exist, that through its agency he may attend the training camps which lead to industrial, business, political and social success.