Of the Lunging Outer Space, 54th Day of Autumn, 526 M.E. (Deneb): On Christmas, 1906, the former Emma Trowbridge gave her son, Silas, Jr., my grandfather, a book of poetry by Paul Laurence Dunbar titled, Joggin' Erlong. I now have his copy of that book, handed down from father to son across three generations.
Dunbar’s poem, The Colored Soldiers, which does not appear in Joggin' Erlong, was posthumously published in 1913. It's closing lines read,
Their deeds shall find a record in the registry of Fame;
For their blood has cleansed completely every blot of Slavery's shame.
So all honor and all glory to those noble sons of Ham,
The gallant colored soldiers who fought for Uncle Sam.
Coincidentally, those lines are recited at the end of Ode to P.L.D., a track on the album, Calling Antonin, by jazz trumpeter James Lewis Brandon and his all-star ensemble, Red Lily (Lewis, tenor saxophone; Kirk Knuffke, cornet; Melanie Dyer, viola; Tomeka Reid, cello; Joshua Abrams, bass; and Chad Taylor, drums). The album was just released yesterday, and I heard the ode to Dunbar for the first time today. Which was fitting, appropriate if you will, a portent or an omen, as I was planning to write today about Grandfather's adventures in the First World War.
At the time the U.S. declared war on Germany and entered what was then known as the Great War, the initial standing army was only 126,000 men. Realizing that voluntary enrolment would not be enough to ensure victory overseas, Congress passed the Selective Service Act on May 18, 1917, requiring all male citizens between the ages of 21 and 31 to register for the draft. American troops ultimately reached two million men.
However, America was still a segregated society at the time and Black men were turned away from military service. Further, approximately 90 percent of all African Americans still lived in the South, where they were deprived of the security and enjoyment of full American citizenship and faced threats of death or injury at the whim of a white person. As a result, African Americans were divided about whether to support the war effort.
For many Black Americans, terrorized and denied their constitutional rights, the rhetoric declaring that America was joining the war to make the world safe for democracy rang hollow. The influential activist and labor organizer A. Philip Randolph was not optimistic that participating in the war would improve the lives of black people. He opposed U.S. participation in the war on principal and urged African Americans to resist being drafted. African Americans had sacrificed their lives in every American war since the Revolution, he reasoned, and had yet to receive the benefits of full citizenship.
In contrast, W.E.B. DuBois, my grandfather's former economics professor at Atlanta University (among other accomplishments), saw Black enlistment in the Army as an opportunity to win the respect of White countrymen and to prove their loyalty, patriotism, and worthiness for equal treatment in the United States. DuBois advised the black community that “while the war lasts, [African Americans should] forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our white fellow citizens and allied nations that are fighting for democracy.”
Meanwhile, in Jacksonville, Florida, my grandfather, Silas Jr., and his young son, Silas III, were living in relative luxury in the home of the successful banker, Silas Sr., my great-grandfather. Junior was involved in the family banking business and had a law practice of the side, and his life plans apparently did not include serving in the Armed Forces.
I don’t know where Junior stood on the whole Randolph-vs-DuBois, should-we-or-shouldn’t-we debate, but it is apparent that he tried his hand at draft dodging. Although he was a banker and a lawyer, he listed his occupation as "farming" on his Draft Registration Form (men who owned their own farms and had families were considered a lower priority for the draft). While there might or might not have been a vegetable garden somewhere in the backyard, I sincerely doubt that the prep-school son of wealth and privilege ever got dirt beneath his fingernails even once in his life.
Unsurprisingly, the draft boards were composed entirely of White men. It was a fairly common practice for southern postal workers to deliberately withhold the Registration Form of eligible Black men and then have them arrested for being draft dodgers. Although there were no specific segregation provisions outlined in the Selective Service Act, Blacks were told to tear off one corner of their registration cards so they could easily be identified and inducted separately. I’ve found an image of Junior’s Registration Card online (ancestry.com), and the lower left corner is folded back, with the letter "c," for "colored," written next to it.
His attempt to dodge the draft failed, and on April 20, 1918, Junior was inducted into the U.S. Army. He left Silas III in the care of his parents and was shipped off to the segregated, African-American 92nd Division of the U.S. Army in Camp Devens, Massachusetts.
The 92nd and 93rd Divisions were the only African-American divisions in the U.S. Army to see combat during World War I. Junior was initially assigned to the 151st Depot Brigade of the 92nd. Depot Brigades received and organized draftees and recruits, provided them with uniforms, equipment, and initial military training, and then shipped them off to France to fight on the front lines.
Due to prejudice and racism, the Armed Forces were generally opposed to placing Black soldiers in combat positions. Of the 380,000 African Americans in the Armed Forces, approximately half (200,000) were sent to Europe and of those, only about 42,000 actually saw battle. The majority of Black soldiers were assigned to labor battalions that built bridges and roads or dug trenches behind the front lines. This work was essential to the war effort, but White officials’ conscious efforts to confine them to a lesser status within the military frustrated Black servicemen.
Despite the systemic racism in the Armed Forces, some progressive powers in Washington nonetheless strove for equality and inclusivity. The Secretary of War gave orders that qualified African American men be enrolled in the Officers' Training Schools. Junior, a practicing attorney and law-school graduate with a prep-school education, was selected for the Training School at Camp Meade, Maryland and left Fort Devens on May 16, 1918.
In the exhaustive Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War (1919), Emmett J. Scott notes that producing efficient and dependable artillery brigades was a particular challenge for the segregated Black divisions. Artillery required educated men who understood decimals and fractions, and could read scales, deflections, and other technical details. Due to lack of educational opportunities in the South, the draft had not furnished enough Black soldiers qualified along these lines to comprise artillery units. It therefore became necessary to undertake a search, within both the Armed Forces and the general population, to find qualified Black men to serve overseas in artillery units. The Tuskegee Institute provided one group of qualified students, and Baltimore, Pittsburgh and other cities contributed recruits from the high schools and other institutions.
During this search, someone, somewhere became aware of the educated and erudite Junior in the Officers’ Training School at Fort Meade. An African-American graduate of the elite Philips Exeter Academy with a degree from the Detroit College of Law must have been seen as quite the qualified candidate to the searchers, and Junior was transferred to the 22nd Training Battery, Field Artillery, at Camp Taylor, Kentucky on June 27, 1918.
After training through the summer of 1918, Junior was assigned to the 92nd Division’s 167th Field Artillery Brigade, the first artillery brigade composed entirely of African Americans ever organized in the world. The brigade had already begun its overseas mission in Montmarrillon, and Junior arrived in France on September 22, 1918. Five months after induction, Junior was now in The Shit.
Before leaving for France, the troops of the 92nd had selected the American buffalo for their insignia after the "Buffalo Soldier" nickname given to African-American cavalrymen by Native Americans in the 19th century. The troops wore the insignia on cloth patches sewn to their uniforms and after the war, Junior saved his patch between the pages of his books. Many years later, I found it, appropriately enough, in his copy of Karl Marx' Das Kapital. I still have both his book and the patch to this day.
The 92nd Division was under the command of Brigadier General Charles C. Ballou. There was apparently personal animosity between Ballou and General Robert Bullard, the commander of the American Second Army. Bullard was not only a staunch racist, but also had a personal rivalry with Ballou. In order to make both Ballou and the Black soldiers appear incompetent, Bullard spread misinformation about the successes and failures of the 92nd. Even Ballou’s own chief of staff, Colonel Allen J. Greer, was in on the plan to sabotage the reputation of his African-American unit and helped put a negative spin on stories from the front lines. Regardless of how well the 92nd Division actually did on the battlefield, it was virtually impossible to overcome the slander from prejudiced officers.
In contrast, Black soldiers in the 93rd Division had a very different experience. While the 92nd was attached to the racist General Bullard’s Second Army, which tolerated and even encouraged hostility toward Black troops and vehemently opposed placing them in combat, the 93rd actively fought alongside French troops. The 369th Infantry Regiment of the 93rd, a group of black National Guardsmen from Harlem, became the best-known regiment of Black soldiers to fight during the war. As famous for their military band as their tenacity on the battlefield, the “Harlem Hellfighters” and are celebrated to this day.
On September 20, 1918, two days before Junior arrived in France, the 92nd was ordered to proceed to the Argonne Forest in preparation for the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The Division reached the front lines just before the first assault and was ordered to fill a gap between American and French forces. However, despite some initial successes in Lorraine in mid-August, the infantry regiment was not successful in their assignment due to lack of training with the French, shortages of equipment, and unfamiliarity with the terrain. Their failure to accomplish the crucial mission blemished the 92nd’s combat record and was often used by military authorities for more than thirty years as evidence of the supposed inadequacy of African-American soldiers in combat.
After the disaster in the Argonne, morale was low when Junior joined up with the 92nd in France. The entire Division, including Junior and the artillery, was dispatched to Marbache, a relatively quiet area on the front. The mission, however, was a dangerous one: to harass the enemy with frequent patrols. Junior and the 167th Artillery Regiment soon distinguished themselves by their effective support of the 92nd’s infantry.
By late 1918, the German Army was in full retreat. On November 9, Kaiser Wilhelm abdicated the throne and the crown prince, his eldest son, Friedrick Wilhelm, renounced the title. The next day, both Wilhelm and his son fled to Holland to escape widespread revolution throughout Germany.
The Allied Commander in Chief, Field Marshal Ferdinand Foch, wanted to apply heavy pressure for a decisive breakthrough and final victory. On November 10, 1918, the 92nd launched an assault on the heights east of Champey in the French Alps. Although only lasting one day, the attack was fierce and bloody, costing the Division over 500 casualties.
Junior’s Artillery Regiment supported the offensive with a rolling barrage that preceded the advancing troops. Brigadier General Malvern Hill Barnum of the 183rd Brigade praised the artillery, stating the barrages “were very well laid and proved effective. It also rendered valuable work in placing heavy concentration fire on enemy strong points and machine gun nests. Its counter-battery work was excellent.”
At 7:18 am on November 11, 1918, the day after the Champey offensive, a telephone call to the front informed the commanders that an Armistice had been signed, effective 11:00 a.m., at which time all hostilities must cease. The World War was over.
Following the signing of the Armistice, the various units of the 92nd Division were gradually withdrawn from the front lines to back areas for rest and renovation. Junior arrived with his Division at Mayenne in northwestern France on the morning of Christmas Eve, 1918 and landed in Hoboken on February 24, 1919, over three months after Armistice Day.
Junior was honorably discharged from the Army on April 9, 1919. Interestingly, when he was a Private being transferred from officer training at Camp Taylor to overseas action, his discharge form identified him as “colored.” However, his final discharge form, as a 2nd Lieutenant, identified him as “White.” In the backwards, racist minds of the segregated Armed Forces, promotion from Private to 2nd Lieutenant was probably considered less significant than his “promotion” from “colored” to “White.”
As mentioned in previous posts, Junior had a light enough complexion that census workers variably classified him as “Negro,” “mulatto,” and “White,” and his education at Philips-Exeter and law school probably gave him the ability to talk and act “White.” In short, he was a code switcher.
And now, back in the United States as a World War I veteran, he had the paperwork saying he was White. He had become, quite literally, a card-carrying White man.
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
