CHAPTER 26

TRAINING CAMPS AND RACE TROUBLES

First Employment of Negro Troops-Negro Selectmen in the Training CampsRace Troubles in Texas, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Elsewhere

W

HEN the United States entered the World War there were about 20,000 trained Negro soldiers ready for service. About half of this number were in the four colored regiments of the Regular Army, and the other half belonged to various companies of the National Guard.

The first service of Negro troops during the World War was performed by the 1st Battalion of Infantry of the National Guard, District of Columbia, which was called out to protect public property in and about the capital, such as the water system, the power plants, etc. The battalion was under command of Major James E. Walker, a colored officer.

In the first draft for service in the war, the percentage of Negroes certified for service was higher than that of the whites; the respective figures being thirty-five per hundred for the Negroes and twenty-five for the whites.1

The Negro selectmen were trained by white officers at special cantonments located in various states.

There were several camps for training white selectmen for officers, but none for the Negroes, because it was not supposed that there were enough educated Negroes to justify a special camp for making officers of Negro selectmen. However, upon assurances that a sufficient number of Negroes of college grade could be assembled, Secretary of War Newton D. Baker consented to establish an officers' training camp for colored men at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, and here, by October 14, 1917, commissions were issued for 106 captains, 329 first lieutenants, and 204 second lieutenants. On November 1, these officers were distributed to the various Negro training camps.

In August, 1917, at the suggestion of Dr. Robert R. Moton, principal of Tuskegee Institute, that Secretary Baker call in a colored man as 'Scott, The American Negro in the Great War, p. 67.

his adviser in matters affecting the interests of Negro troops and Negro supporters of the war, Emmett J. Scott, former secretary to Booker T. Washington, was appointed as special assistant to the secretary of war.

In and about the various Negro training camps there was much friction between the white officers and the colored privates, between the white and colored officers, and between white civilians and Negro soldiers. Among both the white and the Negro soldiers there were ignorant and "bully" types of men who were ever ready to go out of their way to express their racial animosities, and to provoke resentments and breaches of the peace.

A serious riot occurred at Houston, Texas, where a Negro training camp was located. Some Negro soldiers belonging to the United States Regular Army, who wished to express their contempt for the jim-crow street cars of Houston, entered a car reserved for whites. They were promptly ejected. Later an indignant band of Negro soldiers returned to the city, and, in a street fight with the police, several of the combatants were killed. Thirteen of the Negro soldiers were tried by court-martial for precipitating the riot, convicted, and executed.

A less serious, but similar, trouble occurred at a Negro camp at Spartanburg, South Carolina, to which had been sent several Negro units of the New York National Guard. One Sunday evening when a Negro soldier, Noble Sissle of New York "stepped into a white hotel to buy a New York newspaper, the proprietor walked up to him, it is stated, and with an oath demanded to know why he did not remove his hat. Sissle, holding the newspaper in one hand and his change in the other, did not respond quickly enough to the demand and his hat was knocked from his head. When he reached down to pick it up and arose he was all but felled by a blow, and as he retreated towards the door was kicked by the white proprietor. On the sidewalk, awaiting Sissle's return, was Lieutenant James R. Europe, a colored officer, bandmaster of the 15th New York Regiment. A group of colored and white militiamen 'rushed' the hotel, but were 'called to attention' by Lieutenant Europe, who demanded that the crowd disperse. The New York militiamen expressed themselves as being violently opposed to the treatment which had been visited upon Sissle; and so the next night a group of these soldiers banded together and began marching to Spartanburg, several miles away, to 'shoot it up' as the soldiers at Houston had 'shot up' that town after the clash with the Houston police in the August preceding." The white people of South Carolina pro"Scott, p. 80.

tested against the retention of the New York militiamen in the camp, and, as a way out of the trouble, the War Department ordered the men

overseas.

A colored lieutenant by the name of Tribbett, from Connecticut, had been ordered to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and, in traveling through the state of Oklahoma, he occupied a car reserved for white people. When the train stopped at a station near Chickasha, the sheriff entered the car, forcibly ejected Tribbett, and lodged him in the county jail. The next day he was fined for violating the law. The case was called to the attention of the War Department, the contention being made that an officer traveling under army orders was not subject to the jurisdiction of the state authorities. The War Department took no action in the

matter.

Much aao in the public prints grew out of the effort of a Negro sergeant to enter a theater patronized only by white people at Manhattan, Kansas. The proprietor of the theater refused to admit the Negro, and this was the signal for a volley of protests and criticisms from the Negro soldiers and the Negro press. General C. C. Ballou, commander of the Negro troops encamped near Manhattan, had the proprietor of the theater prosecuted and fined, but, at the same time, issued an order to the Negro troops counseling them against acts which might tend to provoke racial conflicts. He said:

"It should be well known to all colored officers and men that no useful purpose is served by such acts as will cause the 'color question' to be raised. It is not a question of legal rights, but a question of policy, and any policy that tends to bring about a conflict of races, with its resulting animosities, is prejudicial to the military interest of the 92nd Division and therefore prejudicial to an important interest of the colored people.

"To avoid such conflicts the Division Commander has repeatedly urged that all colored members of his command, and especially the officers and non-commissioned officers, should refrain from going where their presence will be resented. In spite of this injunction, one of the sergeants of the Medical Department has recently precipitated the precise trouble that should be avoided, and then called on the Division Commander to take sides in a row that should never have occurred had the sergeant placed the general good above his personal pleasure and convenience. This sergeant entered a theatre, as he undoubtedly had a legal right to do, and precipitated trouble by making it possible to allege race discrimination in the seat he was given. He is strictly within

his legal rights in this matter, and the theatre manager is legally wrong. Nevertheless the sergeant is guilty of the greater wrong in doing anything, no matter how legally correct, that will provoke race animosity." "

This order was bitterly denounced by a section of the Negro press. "Many newspapers pronounced the order an insult to the Negro race. At various gatherings of colored people General Ballou's resignation as commander of the 92nd Division was demanded, and at no time during his incumbency as the head of the Division was General Ballou able to regain the confidence of the colored masses, with whom he had been immensely popular prior to this episode, in recognition of his valued and sympathetic services as supervisor of the officers' training camp at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, from which came 639 colored men, graduating with commissions as captains and first and second lieutenants."

When the Negroes who had been commissioned as officers were sent to the Negro training camps, where white officers were in command, much friction grew out of the contact of the Negro and white officers. Many white officers refused, or were reluctant, to salute the colored officers.

The colored people were very sensitive to their rights, and they sent to the War Department from all sections of the country a great variety of complaints of discriminations on account of color. "Colored soldiers," says Scott, "complained that they were kept more closely confined to the camps than were white soldiers; that they had the greatest difficulty in obtaining passes to go to town or to visit relatives, and that they were punished more severely than were white soldiers for trivial offenses. The 'bad blood' between the Military Police and the colored soldiers frequently led to free fights, near 'race riots,' and the 'rushing' of the guards in an attempt to leave camp regardless of the possession of passes.

"Attempts at segregation were charged against the Quartermaster's Depots at Chicago and St. Louis, where color discrimination was alleged in the matter of appointments, promotions, and working conditions, and where unfairness was said to exist in the withholding from the colored employees of the use of toilet facilities, as well as restrictions in the service of the depot restaurants, cafeterias and the like."

CHAPTER 27

SERVICE OF AMERICAN TROOPS AS A WHOLE

Service of the American Troops in Stopping the German Drive in 1918, and in Forcing the Germans Back-The St. Mihiel Offensive and the MeuseArgonne Offensive

IN

N order to understand the part which the American Negro troops played in the World War it will be necessary to fix in our minds the main stages in the course of that war, and the part which the American troops as a whole played in the Allied victory.

The initial stage of the war was the drive of the Germans through Belgium and into northern France, in 1914, terminating in the counterattack of the French, and the retreat of the Germans back to the Marne. The opposing forces now entrenched themselves, forming an irregular battle line from the North Sea to Switzerland. The trenches offered such an impregnable defense that neither army seemed to be able to advance more than a few yards at a dash, and the opinion came to be widespread that the armies were deadlocked and that the war could not end by a military decision.

In the course of a year, however, the invention of the tank, the employment of the barrage, and other offensive expedients made it possible for either side to gain considerable territory, but only at a ruinous sacrifice of men.

Up to the time that the United States government entered the war in the spring of 1917, the opposing forces in France had been seesawing, like football players, back and forth, a few yards at a time, with no decided gains for either side, and there had been no decisive fighting on either the Russian or the Italian front.

In July, 1917, a small contingent of American troops had arrived in France, and were able to take part in the British attack at Cambrai.

In order to prevent the Germans from concentrating their forces against Russia and Italy, the Allies sought to maintain a series of offensive movements on the western front. In spite of this effort, however, the Germans withdrew their main divisions and launched a drive against the Russians which culminated on September 3 in the capture of Riga,