p. 362-381 in From Freedom To Slavery: A History of African Americas

• blacks were barred from the army, the NAACP advocated separate camps for blacks and whites, then the blacks would have a chance @ promotion.
• Booker T. Washington's secretary Emmett Scott was selected as an advisor for race relations by Newton D. Baker, secretary of war.
• Miller of Howard University was pleased about Emmett's appointment
• blacks were barred from the marines and could only do menial jobs in the navy.
• Committee On The Welfare of Negro Troops was founded
• blacks were barred from theaters, General Ballou filed legal charges against the theater.
• the Fifteenth Regiment that was discriminated against was sent overseas
• black troops arrived in France in June, 1917.
• blacks worked 24 hour shifts and did in 9.5 hrs what would take days
• The Red Hand Division, blacks fought in Germany
• The 350th Artillery Band visited black troops
• the US government refused to send black nurses even though there was a shortage of nurses overseas
• Secret Information Concerning Black Troops, Americans told the French that all blacks were rapists
• the French were very kind to blacks
• Robert Moton, Washington's successor at Tuskegee University
• Moton visited France. 2 rapes in 1,200 men.
• peace conference @ Versailles: England, France, Belgium, and the Union of South Africa were independent of German control
• Du Bois called for a Pan-African Congress to meet in Paris, held in the Grand Hotel in February 1919. Blacks cared about democratic treatment!
• blacks purchased $250 million worth of war bonds and stamps
• The North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company purchased $300,000 worth of war bonds.
• Hoover appointed Ernest Atwell, Tuskeegee as a field worker for Alabama
• Hundreds of thousands of blacks left the South during WWI
• the labor depression in the South sent wages down 75 cents a day
• the damage of the boll weevil to cotton crops in 1915 and 1916 discouraged many who were dependent on cotton
• floods in the summer of 1915 left many blacks homeless and destitute
• labor shortage in the North was attractive to blacks

Reasons

1. injustice in Southern courts

2. lack of privileges

3. disenfranchisement

4. segregation

5. lynching

• 1918, 1 million blacks had left the South
• a Division of Negro Economics was created by The Department of Labor
• Edmund Haynes led the division of Negro Economics

Goals:

1. to improve conditions of black workers

2. to secure full cooperation with white workers and employers for maximum production

The National Urban League

• active in the adjustment of African Americans who had recently moved into the industrial centers of the North. 
• conference on migration in New York
• African Americans were suspicious of organized labor

The Associated Colored Employees Of America

• 1917, the AFL believed ALL workers should unite
• Moton of Tuskegee, Emmett Scott of the War Department, Eugene Kinkle Jones of the National Urban League, and Fred Moore of the New York Age met.
• African Americans produced ammunition, iron, steel, packed meat, automobiles, trucks, electrical products.
• Charles Knight, Bethlehem Steel broke the world's record for building steel ships.
• 38 lynchings in 1917 (lynching parties!)
• 40 blacks killed in St. Louis, Illinois
• Emmett Scott denounced mob violence but supported the war
• Ralph Tyler was a war correspondant