This, then, is the first attempt at the story of the
Hell which was in the fateful years of 1914-1918. Furthermore,
what the incident meant to the Black Race, and particularly
to black Americans.
To everyone--war is, and, thank god--must be a disillution.This war has disillutioned millions of fighting white men--disillusioned them with its' frank truth of dirt, disease, cold, wet and discomfort, murder, maiming, and hatred. But the disillusion of the Black American troops was more than this, or rather, it was this and more.The frank realization that however high the ideals of an astonishing number of able men; brave and good, as well as of other sorts of men; is to hate "Blacks."
Not that this double disillusion has for a moment made
Black men doubt the wisdom of their wholehearted help of the Allies. Given the chance again, they would again do their duty for the love of the France? But these young men see today, with open and strained faces, the true and hateful visage of the Black problem in America.
SENEGALESE AND OTHERS
When the grey, grim, irresistible German host poured through Belgim out of Africa, France had called her sons. Two hundred and eighty thousand Black Senegalese came to fight for France. None of the Senegalese were drafted. All the Senegalese were volunteers. The Senegalese hurried the Boches back across the Oureq and Marne on a ghastly bridge of their own dead. It was the crisis of four long, bitter years of which the war lasted. Germany was beaten at the first battle of the Marne, and by Blacks. Beside the Belgians, there were the 30,000 black Congolese, not to mention the 20,000 Black English West Indians who fought in the east. There were thousands of Black troops who conquered German Africa.
STEVEDORES
The story of stories is about the American Negro. Here were men who bravely let there heads go where there hearts could not follow. Men, who for the first time as a Nation within a Nation did there bitter duty because it was there duty. The Black soldier knew what might be expected but scarcely forsaw the whole truth. The Stevedores were the people who load or unload vessels for the Armed Forces in France.
Black American soldiers gained the right to fight for civilization at the cost of being "Jim-Crowed"(segregated and insulted). The Black soldiers were segregated in the draft and segregated in the first Officer's training camp. They were allowed to volunteer, but-only-as servants in the Navy, and work as common laborers in the Army.
J.Linzy-1