Sylvanus Henry Hart, Jr. was born on Sept. 3, 1889 in Saint Augustine, St. Johns County, Florida to Emma Louise Trowbridge and Sylvanus Henry Hart, Jacksonville's "first black banker."
His parents clearly loved their child and, unique among African-Americans in the late 19th Century South, they were in a financial position to provide him an elite education. They sent Sylvanus Jr. to the Worcester Academy, a private school in Massachusetts and one of the country's oldest boarding schools. In 1906, he graduated from the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. Both elite schools, as well as the Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, had accepted African-Americans students as far back as the Civil War.
On Christmas 1906, Emma Louise gave her son a book of poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar titled Joggin' Erlong. The poems are written in a cringe-inducing black dialect that would generally be considered racist today ("De da'kest hour, they allus say, is des' befo' de dawn," etc.), and the book is illustrated with photographs by Leigh Richmond Miner depicting the lives of plantation slaves I know this because the book was handed down by Junior to his son, my Dad, and I have the book now. A hand-written inscription on the first page reads "Gift of Mama, Xmas, 1906." Sylvanus Jr. was an inveterate scrap-booker his whole life, and the books of his that I own today are full of odd little mementos from his life. For example, inside of a three-volume Webster's Encyclopedia, I found an undated postcard inviting him to a Class of '06 Exeter reunion.
After graduating from Exeter, Junior entered Atlanta University (now Clark-Atlanta U.). Among other classes, he took Economics from the distinguished faculty member teaching there, Dr. W.E.B. DuBois. Ultimately, he maintained a long friendship with Dr. DuBois.
By 1911, he transferred to the University of Michigan, taking classes in the Department of Law. Details are few, but while there he apparently met Mary E. Grayson of Canada and on September 19, 1913, two weeks after his 24th birthday, they married in Detroit.
It's unlikely that the marriage was part of anyone's long-term life plan, coming as it did while Junior was still in school, and the marriage appears to have lasted no more than about three years. They had a son, Sylvanus Henry Hart III, born on February 12, 1914, five months after the wedding. But despite the distractions of a marriage and fatherhood, Junior managed to graduate from the Detroit College of Law (now Michigan State University), Class of 1914.
Of course, on June 28, 1914, Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb, assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, initiating the First World War. The United States initially remained neutral, but on April 6, 1917, the U.S. declared war on Germany. American troops ultimately reached some two million men.
Many African Americans saw enlistment in the Army as an opportunity to win the respect of their white countrymen and to prove their loyalty, patriotism, and worthiness for equal treatment in the United States. America was still a segregated society at the time and blacks were turned away from military service. However, War Department planners quickly realized that the standing Army of 126,000 men would not be enough to ensure victory overseas. The standard volunteer system proved to be inadequate in raising an Army, so on May 18, 1917, Congress passed the Selective Service Act requiring all male citizens between the ages of 21 and 31 to register for the draft.
The draft boards, however, were composed entirely of white men. It was a fairly common practice for southern postal workers to deliberately withhold the registration cards of eligible black men and then have them arrested for being draft dodgers. Although there were no specific segregation provisions outlined in the draft legislation, blacks were told to tear off one corner of their registration cards so they could easily be identified and inducted separately. Here's Junior's 1917 Draft Registration Card:
Note the lower left corner, with the letter "c" for "colored."
It appears that despite the enthusiasm among some other African Americans to join the war effort, Junior had other plans for his life. A 1912 Polk City Directory for Florida includes a Jacksonville listing for "Hart S H Son & Co (S H and S H Hart jr), bankers," so it appears that the banker, Sylvanus Sr., was trying to get his son into the family business even before Junior had graduated from Detroit Law. Perhaps formation of the business was an attempt by his parents to get Junior to leave Michigan and the company of Mary Grayson and return to Jacksonville. But on the 1917 Draft Registration Form, Junior listed his occupation not as "banking" but as "farming" (men who owned their own farms and had families were considered a lower priority for the draft). I've not seen any evidence that Sylvanus, father or son, ever got dirt beneath their fingernails since Senior had left the brick-laying trade.
Junior lies about his age on the form, listing his year of birth as 1887, two years earlier than his actual birth in 1889.
On lines 9 and 10, Junior claims to be single and the sole provider for his son (Sylvanus III). At this time, I don't know what ultimately happened to his marriage to Mary Grayson, whether it ended in divorce or if he became a widower, but apparently by 1917 the marriage had ended (unless that was another draft-dodging lie as well).
It was a nice try, but it failed, Junior got inducted into the U.S. Army on April 20, 1918, initially assigned to the 151st Depot Brigade. The role of depot brigades during the First World War was to receive and organize recruits, provide them with uniforms, equipment and initial military training, and then send them to France to fight on the front lines. The 151st Depot Brigade was located on Camp Devens in Ayers, Massachusetts.
Junior left Fort Devens on May 16, 1918 for Officers' Training School at Camp Meade, Maryland, and then to Commissioned Officer Training School (COTS) with the 22nd Training Battery, Field Artillery, at Camp Taylor, Kentucky on June 27, 1918.
Private Hart was honorably discharged from COTS to accept a commission as a 2nd Lieutenant. He was assigned to the 167th Field Artillery Brigade, 350th Field Artillery Regiment, of the 92nd Infantry Division. The 92nd was a segregated division of the Army organized in October 1917. In 1918, before leaving for France, the troops selected the American buffalo for their insignia due to the "Buffalo Soldier" nickname given to African American cavalrymen by Native Americans in the 19th century. In between the pages of a copy of Karl Marx' Das Kapital, another one of Junior's books handed down to my father and then to me, I found this cloth patch, the insignia for the Buffalo Soldiers:
The 92nd Division saw combat in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive during November 1918. Junior served overseas from September 22, 1918 until February 24, 1919. Following his return to the states, Junior was honorably discharged on April 9, 1919.
The April 9, 1919 Honorable Discharge Form included the erroneous birth year of 1887 - correcting the date would have been tantamount to admitting he lied to avoid the draft. But Junior may have received an unexpected benefit for serving overseas with the segregated 92nd Division. The August 30, 1918 Discharge Form from COTS identified him as "colored." On his April 9, 1919 Honorable Discharge Form, he was listed as "white."
Six months of overseas fighting apparently transformed him from a black soldier to a white civilian.
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