Kathleen rooney and miles harvey talk about how they approach Historical Research for fiction and nonfiction work, at 6 00 p. M. On the civil war, scott hartwig, discussing his research on the battle of antietam. At 8 00 p. M. , Patrick Allitt discusses richard nixon, his National Security adviser henry kissinger, and their key Foreign Policy initiatives. And former u. S. Senator sam nun, watch American History tv this weekend on cspan3. Up next on American History Tv University of minnesota professor sage matthew discusses how world war i affected africanamericans. She says that the promise of a better life because of military service in the war was largely denied by the reality of jim crow america. The National World war i museum and memorial in kansas city, missouri hosted this talk. It lasts about an hour. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon, good afternoon, thank you for coming to this session. My name is chad williams. It is my great pleasure and honor to serve as chair for this Plenary Session on africanamericans and the great war. Id like to first start off by thanking the program committee, especially lionel kimable for allowing the opportunity to put this session together. I want to give a big thanks to the entire executive board, especially executive secretary sylvia cyrus, and certainly last but not least sala president evelyn brooks for her support and this conference and this Plenary Session in particular. This theme for this years conference recognizes the centennial of the end of the First World War. The war would define the 20th century and still continues to reverberate today. Modernity, in its most destructive form, the war shattered empires, fractured nations and destroyed old ideas of progress, enlightenment and civilization. Over 20 Million People died between 1914 and 1918, and millions more after 1918 as the fires lit by the war continued to burn. World war i is traditionally cast as a european affair. Frequently minimized, treated as tangential as the impact on africanamericans in particular. The great war transformed black america. An argument can be made that the First World War was the seminal event for africanamericans in the 20th century, one that set the course of black social, political and Economic Life from its aftermath to the present, whether we think about black migration, civil rights organization, pan african, and radical black internationalist movements, the new negro renaissance and of course the experiences of africanamerican soldiers and veterans. The war was a moment of profound disjuncture, trauma and possibility. And i believe that is in seeing the war as a moment, a possibility, that we can begin to truly appreciate what the war meant. For africanamericans and what it can mean for us today. President Woodrow Wilson framed americas participation in the world to make the world safe for democracy. Africanamericans seized upon this to transform the war into a battle to make democracy a reality for their everyday lives. Black people did not need the war to remind them that they were, indeed, citizens worthy of democracy. However, the war created the conditions and provided the opportunities for black people to mobilize their citizenship and democratic consciousness, and demand that america be true to its promise and potential. They faced considerable resistance as the virulence of White Supremacy stands as one of the wars most defining features. Nevertheless, in ways large and small, subtle and spectacular, africanamerican men and women determined that after the war things would never be the same. We are fortunate to have with us this afternoon a remarkable collection of historians whose work individually and collectively has advanced our knowledge of what world war i meant for africanamericans and people of african descent, specifically related to issues such as the origins of the war and its connection to africa and the african diaspora, the war and the Long Civil Rights Movement, global racial violence and the meaning of war itself and the battles over memory, commemoration and historical erasure. So it is my great pleasure to introduce our panelists for this session. Our first panelist, perhaps needs no introduction, but he is always more than worthy of one. Of course the challenge for me is to keep it succinct because we could be here for quite some time. David lewis is the University Professor and professor of history emeritus at New York University, i hope you wont mind me saying this but i consider professor lewis to one of the greatest historians this country has ever produced, thats not hyperbole. I wouldnt mind that at all, thank you. Sorry to embarrass you like that. Hes authored and edited over a dozen books covering a wide span of United States, european, african and middle eastern history, his two volume biography of w. E. B. Duoi as i received the pulitzer. He has received other numerous awards, the most noble being the National Humanities award being awarded in 2009 and he shows no signs of slowing down. His most recent book, the improbable wendell willkie, the businessman who saved the Republican Party and conceived a new world order has been published by w. W. Norton and he has plans to follow this up with a book on slavery and the making of america. Hopefully. Our next panelist, adrian lynn smith is associate professor of history at duke university, where she holds secondary appointments in african and africanamerican studies and gender sexuality and feminist studies. She specializes in modern u. S. History, africanAmerican History, and histories of the United States and the world. Her 2009 book freedom struggles, africanamericans and world war i won the honor book award from the black caucus of the American Library association, a brilliant book. She currently is at work on a new project on africanamericans and state violence during the reagan era cold war. Our next panelist, sage matthieu, associate professor in minnesota, africanAmerican History with an emphasis on immigration, war, race, globalization, social movements, and political resistance. Professor matthieu is the author of the 2010 book resistance in canada 1870 to 1955 and the forthcoming book, the glory of their deeds, a global history of black soldiers and the great war era. Professor matthieu has earned several International Awards and is a fellow at the center for american studies, and at harvards w. E. Dubois institute. Shes a faculty fellow in studies for American History. And finally we have professor jeffrey t. Sammens, professor of history at New York University where he teaches a broad range of courses in United States and race and society. Hes the coauthor of beyond the ring, excuse me, the author, the role of boxing in american society, and most recently the 2014 book harlems rattlers and the great war, the undaunted 369th regiment and the africanamerican quest for equality, which he coauthored with john morrow junior and has been rightfully declared the definitive history of the 369th regiment. Hes a former national senator, a fie bet at a kappa, hes received fellowships from the National Endowment of the humanities and schaumburg research if black culture, he has plans to write a book, and im going to hold him accountable to this, writing a book on the heroic and tragic life of Henry Johnson, black americas great war hero of the First World War. So as far as the format for this plenary, each of our panelists will speak for roughly ten minutes, or so, ill try my best to keep them on task. Then ill take advantage of my prerogative as chair to pose some questions to get the conversation going. And then we will take questions from the audience. So were going to be going a little bit out of order on the program and beginning with professor lewis. Thanks very much for that introduction, professor williams. I owe what im going to say to w. E. B. Dubois, in fact, i really am plagiarizing. Its the african roots of the war. Margaret mcmillans the war that ended peace opens with a question which there is as yet no agreed upon final answer, to wit, how could europe have done this to itself . Her splendid book insists that the answer lies with a small number of men, and they were all men, she reminds us, who could have said no. Indeed, there were some notable men and women who did say no to the war. They sally across the pages of adam hawkchiles brilliant to end all wars but as for the men whose opinions mattered, the sovereigns, cabinet ministers, generals and politicians, had they restrained their allies, prioritized diplomacy, sent no fatal ultimatums, given no final mobilization orders, sarajevo would have been yet another balcan incident, not what destroyed a world order. Imagining europes yay saying elites as nay sayers, however, is a counternarrative that determinists would insist flies in the face of the complex system of Spring Loaded adversarial alliances nearly awaiting the triggering incident for the determinists the war was ultimately inevitable. Whatever the proximate causes of the war the european elites sanctioned, the cambridge historian Richard Evans reminds us that the european elites shared, quote, a generally positive attitude wards war, and a collective epistemology based on, quote, notions of honor, expectations of swift victory, and ideas of social darwinism, quotes. The answer, as to how europeans could do such terrible violence to themselves lies to a considerable degree with answers to another question, to wit, what of the consequences to themselves of the terrible violence they perpetrated on noneuropeans . Fair to say few times in history has manifest destiny and asymmetrical power produced such transformational violence in so brief a time. A single generation sufficed for quinine, repeating rifles, and maxim guns to spread european disruption from cairo to the cape in the name of christianity, commerce and civilization. William Edward Dubois says the roots of the war appeared in the may 19th issue of atlantic monthly. His readers were meant to ponder the fateful consequences of what dubois saw as a collision of racial arrogance and geopolitics that made the socalled dark continent the cause of the world war that had repeatedly come with an ace of starting above or below the sahara. Dubois described the european presence in africa as a technologic technological assassination, rape and torture, quotes, in the name of racial superiority. In the 30year span from the berlin west african conference to the war declaration against serbia, africas real estate was partitioned, africans independence extinguished, frans humanity devalued and own values corrupted and europeans own values corrupted by the prerogatives of european of imperial domination. Dubois had in mind Great Britain ice unilateral occupation of egypt at the behest of great banking houses and a front to the french interests that effectively launched the african scramble after 1882. He had in mind the Second World War 17 years later when cecil roads attempted to steal the 75,000 soldiers and civilians dead from Great Britains greatest combat since waterloo, 26,000 of them dead in concentration camps. The institutionalized bar barity in leopolds congo was exception until ale in scale but hardly different than the draconian chad in mali mimicked the belgians, the first genocide was in german south africa when authorities sanctioned the serial extermination of the nama peoples in nmibia in 1904 and reported in the german press and achieved with a full arsenal of new tools, barbed wire and poisoned a poisoned auk with fers. Dubois tried to make macroeconomic sense out of the horror show. The african roots of the war anticipated lenins highest age of capitalism, duboiss article had economic theories to explain why a monopoly capitalism escaped the contradictions of class warfare and class conflict in overproduction. Instead, though, of channelling the highest stage of capitalism, imperialism would better have been conceived as the highest stage offette no sent rhythm. A collective psychosis in which the compensations of pigment increasingly deformed the humanitarianism of africas occupiers, the eccentric swedish scholar is convinced that the last words in that great literary masterpiece of empire, heart of darkness, exterminate all the brutes, was taken from Herbert Spencers social statics, foundation texts of darwinism. Ideology demanded cold hearted discipline, the forces which are working out the great scheme of perfect happiness, exterminates such sections of mankind to stand in their way, he cat kiezed has victorians, be he human or be he brute, the hindrance must be got rid of, as befit the proconsul of egypt the lords language in the government of subject peoples it was tonier than conrads curts, but he sniffed an englishman need not always inquire too closely. Even as the brute succeeded in making himself heard when in 1885 radical islamists eliminated in sudan and absinians disgraced the italians. They grasped almost nothing of the large political and technological implications for themselves. They missed entirely the 19th centurys most important military legacy for the impending 20th. For major douglas hague, future british expeditious nair force commander and Lieutenant General and lieutenant winston churchill, on that september morning in 1898 it was the empire 50,000 rifle and spear wielding sue suni arabs charging 5,000 troops and their maxim books, the river war described the results. Thus ended the battle, he enthused, the most signal triumph ever gained of armed of science over bar barrians. In the space of five hours the best savage army against a modern european power has been destroyed and dispersed with hardly any difficulty. 10,000 sudanese died, the british suffered 48 fatalities. Adams book to end all wars cites the endorsement of the maxim, a weapon especially adapted to terrify a semicivilized foe. By the time the article appeared maxim guns had terrified civilized foes out of their saddles, entrenched them behind 25,000 miles of barbed wire since the previous september, and killed 25 times the number of sudanese, sudanese dead at androman. The list of african flash points that could have ignited a european firestorm from 1914 were mostly unfamiliar to atlantic monthlys american subscribers, france, england, italy and turkey and tripoli, england and portugal, england, germany and the dutch in south africa, france and spain and morocco, germany and france, and the world at algasiros. Although the war didnt start . 1898, it guaranteed full fledged hostilities between europes major powers in less than a generation. When it came time to play their parts in the tragedy of august 1914, the principal players arrived with diplomatic scripts, decisively revised after frances ambidextrous foreign minister assuaged the pride of his countrys colonial lobby, and secretly sailed to st. Petersburg in summer 1899 to close the loophole in an alliance whose partner left france on the upper nile with little to show for her 5 billion gold franc investment. Binding russia to all of frances Security Issues and vice versa in a dual alliance for the duration of their adversarials adversarys triple alliance. Meanwhile the french ambassador and the British Foreign secretary quietly signed the innocuous sounding addition to the article 4 of 1898 Niger Convention which finally closed the 16year dispute over the egyptian question. By its terms the nile valley became officially british, but with a tacit understanding that the rest of north africa west of the nile was frances for the taking. It lifted enough of the albatross of ang lo phobia to return the enemy front and center to frances security occupations and simultaneously germany moved front and center to britains occupations because of colonial ambitions. Fast forward from 1899 through the series of agreements in spring of 1904, the august 1907 anglo Russian Convention ending the great game between britain and russia in afghanistan and persia to the july 1912 anglo french naval accord and you have Great Britain and the titan abdul alliance that emerged out of africa primed to meet the triple alliance of germany, austria and italy. The men who designed these confrontational alliance possessed an untroubled belief in capacity and an exalted sense of righteousness destined to bring to their own continue men the soes yo logical and tech nological went on a bit long. But thank you. Well, yall, i have the pleasure of having listened to David Levering lewiss remarks and the daunting task of having to follow them. You know, this is probably what like the other girl in Reverend Franklins Church choir after aretha did a solo. I thought i would talk just a few minutes about how one thinks about, or how i have been thinking about the Long Civil Rights Movement and world war i together as someone who wrote a book about african about the black freedom struggles set in 1917 and is now writing a book about the black freedom struggle set in 1985, i apparently have some kind of relationship to this topic that i have willfully not interrogated too hard. And so now im going to subject you to my current thoughts about them. So once long ago when i was a wee sprog, as my scottish friends would say, i wrote a dissertation called the great war for civil rights. It was about africanamerican soldiers and other africanamericans in the progressive era during the age of imperial warfare. I realized, when i circulated an early draft of that book manuscript that i had actually handed myself in the middle of a heated argument on framing a Long Civil Rights Movement versus maintaining a sense of the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement, of a short Civil Rights Movement. But not only did i not have a dog in that fight. I hadnt realized until i got my readers report that there was a fight, and so had never thought to bring a dog. You guys know the sort of ins and outs of this, of this debate, but ill sort of give you the quick reminder. And what ill say is that Jacqueline Dowd halls synthesis of where the literature was in 2005 actually does a lovely job of making a case for a Long Civil Rights Movement. She writes that histories of the movement that begin with brown and end with the Voting Rights act truncate the timeline of what was a sort of broad and imaginative freedom struggle in service to cold war liberalism, turning the fight against White Supremacy as an economic, political and psychological system, into a simple drive for color blindness in the vote, or to use her words, confining the civil rights struggle to the south, to a single housian decade and to limit noneconomic objectives takes the teeth out of what that movement was. I think that clarence langs article in the journal of africanAmerican History offers the most compelling challenge to this Long Civil Rights Movement framework. They argued in that piece that in everything is everything approach, plays fast and loose with the periodization, the conceptual differences, and the geographic distinctions that one should talk about when one talks about histories of the black freedom struggle in the 20th century, and maybe before. And so doing this approach runs the risk of painting what they call an undifferentiated social landscape of oppression and resistance, and actually teaching the Civil Rights Movement class right now where my students call everything resistance, with no more specificity than that, i am particularly th particularly sympathetic to this argument right now. They say that it is at the end of the day id say at the end of the day its a discussion that marshalls historians favorite fighting points, change versus continuity and which contexts have the most sort of analytical purchase or heft. And in this case the most liberatory potential. So sort of encountering this debate by response for a long time was just to skirt the issue. In fact, if you remember chads introduction, i responded to the readers reports by being like, no problem, well just call the book freedom struggles, nobody disagrees that thats a thing, right . And actually, and within that, my sort of investment was making sure that people understood that the First World War mattered within that longer history of the black freedom struggle, that seemed like a higher order argument to me. But in watching the debate from the sidelines i was struck by a few things. One was what i really think was just a sort of overweaning case of baby boomer nostalgia, to be honest, that i think lang offers a strong rebuttal. But i think the bad rebuttals are actually really bad. I get the argument that not every moment of protest is a movement, and i get that Mass Mobilization is a particular iteration of a struggle whose scale and efficacy in the 60s bears special notation. But far too often the creeds that i read decrying the Long Civil Rights Movement were all about the authors own investments where they mistook their political coming of age for a nations coming of age. And they werent that investments. And they learned they were not that convincing. I think above and beyond this was that this was not a debate that you took a side. It is not a question that requires a question or a no. We think about stories that we want to tell, how we tell them, and why we tell them. And even more what stories we listen to and how were able to explain to them again, my class that im teaching this semester is on the Civil Rights Movement that i begin in the 1860s and will end by assigning them the ferguson report. Precisely because i realize they have no framework to understand what was remarkable about the 1950s and the 1960s. For them the Civil Rights Movement was like like must have come from nowhere, right . And theyre glad to see it because you need a pause for a second. They see a connection to the earth below. But what the Civil Rights Movement got me thinking about, and what i ask you to think about, is what does it do to frame world war one. What does it do to make that story that i did. It orients us forward and backward. It is hard to talk about black soldiers andis activitiesiststs looking back, right . Views of citizenship, articulations, and of free in the reconstruction era. To anticipate the generation of folks that would send a movement with Forward Motion into the post world war ii years. I do this, one of them is the main take aways from my book that the generation that made the post world war ii Movement Possible came of age and came to political consciousness in world war i. The cohort fashion, as i have written, is the aspirations under the agonies and failures of their wartime experience. They apply the lessons to build a successful movement in the second. Thinking about this in the big long schiff Rights Movement are a valuable purpose. The producers of the post world war ii and post World War Two struggle. There is a way if you read my book you can imagine a more ham handed version of what i have done that looks like, you know, the end of movies where they sort of give you the name, i dont know, he grows up to a darth vader. So and so. Charles hamilton houston grows up to train the cohort to produce the industry gi to undo egg gags through litigation and gives us thorough that a simplistic version of what i do in my book is this. I whose my characters to get you to this place. You know how graduate students are. Im sure you have some that say that i havent. But what this current work now is, but the way that placing the world war i within the framework of a Long Civil Rights Movement actually pushes you towards a outcome that you know that we try as historians not to write towards but have a hard time resisting. And so as an exercise, i tried to ask myself how might i have written my book if there had never been a second reconstruction . Right . What would stand out if there had been no Mass Mobilization after world war ii. That is the thing that we can unquestionably call the Civil Rights Movement. I think what sticks out to me is that without that known end point point, the story of global encounter takes even more of a center stage, right . One of the things that came forward, there was a Long Movement on those that ended up in the world. Not because they were thinking big and hard about it, but a crazy circumstance placed them there. In that story you you find an imperial war with subjects across the world before they have even conceived of a notion of a thing called empire, right . So the histories, the stories that are embedded in that. There is those come to the floor even more. So one of the things that it does for me, that i end up thinking about, the frame might p p prov provincialize. I am already making cold war civil rights the peek of mid century. Ri moving the civil rights moment, thinking about where you assistanting wi stand, leaves you with a narrative, and it might be replacing one with another, but it is a history of struggle and decolonization. And that brings us back to the article that im more beholden to then i think i registered. Everything that i thought of as a this before i did far more eloquently. I think there is a value, not the only story to tell, and not to say there is value in the story i told, but i think there is Something Worthy and worthwhile in thinking through the war, about how we place it in our own histories right, and what we do when we place them in those histories that will keep us coming up with new and fresh ideas and not just fighting about the old ones. So thank you. Good afternoon. I spend a lot of time thinking about violence and i dont know if you would assume that if you saw me walking down the street. I would say if one would to find my purse they would wonder who the serial killer is for the stuff that is in there. I find that i cant step away from the contemplation. Im struck by how much people write about the great war and they invoke especially a shock. When vie ens lfs happening in africa and asia. And that traumatic scale of the violence and the impact is something that historians return to over and over as if it is something that they cant yet grasp. The nature of that violence, the cars on people, on the landscape, the shock to should jers and governments made real by the violence, right . The shock that we could even do smuch things to each other. Other civilized europeans. I spent my time contemplating how all of this talk of violence must have sounded to africanamericans and other people of african decent in the great war era. How did reports against belgians, ar meanians, jews. How did that change the ature for africanamericans with respect to how, then, to explain their lives steeped in violence. A life that extended during the war to haitians, do min caka m minicans. There is shock and horror experienced by men and women trapped in war zones. There is talk about the dismemberments. How people felt about seeing soldiers surviving soldiers in bits or how much they wrote about the shock of seeing their loved ones. Theyre pals in the trenches. In parts. There is a lot of terror of not knowing when the stillness and the silence in the war zones would be up ended, right . A lot of soldiers tell us that it was more frightening than when the bombs were coming down. It proved very disruptive. And yet africanamericans lived with that silence and then not knowing where the violence would pop out, right . Right around this time in particular. Whole towns and villages are emptied or levelled at the western and earn front. They are and it is permanent in france, belgium, poland. Churches were set aflame. Properties were abandoned or destroyed. All of these accounts resonated deeply with africanamericans that had, since the end of reconstruction, lived with all of this violence. Often many of the same dimensions of that violence knocking europeans back on their feet, had for africanamericans been the way that you negotiate your way to church on a sunday morning. The way that you go to the store, right . So im trying, as i walk around, bike around, sit on planes, im trying to understand the impact of, you know, hearing the martyr story about what has happened to europe because of violence. And being a person in a small village, and we can pick any number of riots. And it is interesting that that was so devastating for you and you dont understand when we try to explain living in a state of constant fear and assault. Lynching comes to mind most frequently. Whether or not that is the fear, the stories, the reality, but so, too, did arson and banishment really define africanamerican life. Arguably more so than lynching. Im truck when i look by the number of accounts, or even not like nonafricanamerican accounts, but white people pours oil on black people and lighting them on fire. This was a way of acting out that violence. If africanamericans thought about pbanishment and arson as e know did, then it would have resonated for them. How did africanamericans, as christians, and as oppressed violently oppressed minorities saw racial sized attacks in europe and elsewhere, of course, thousand they saw these moments as ffu fuful e fuful echos for r own experiences. I thought of the congo. One of the things that im arguing in my work is that, you know, in a simple way it might have been a shock for europeans to find out they could be violent toward each other, it was not a surprise to anyone on the other side of their boot. And they pointed very specifically to the impact of that european contact and violence on black bodies, right . The photographs of missing hands, especially for children, the dismemberment that is so surprising something that people all over the worlds that been dealing with, living with, and trying to survive, so the expansion of british footprint in Southern Africa are important ways i think about that violence and its impact on black people. They are spreading their tte their tentacles. They they are the armed u other side side. It arrives on a platter. Rather than colors and white signs, we get silver and gold signs to demarcate jim crowe. Silver, that is what black people were paid. I think about the violence in the philippines, right . That weighed on africanamerican minds, especially given the glee, and for africanamericans that immediated very little, if any, translation. I will end with this. I think a lot about how germans framed their wound by pointing to black soldiers that were part of the arms forces in the occupied territory. The region west of the ryan river. Even before the sold juiers arrived, even before they arrived, they marbshalled all o the language that made it clear how black bodies were a risk for violence against them. What the germans did first is talking about how black people hate their bodies, and they corrected their noses and their ears, and precisely the things that we see with bin muching. So with its use to either frame the war at the beginning, or s dismantle the peace at the end of the ware weighs on my mind every day. I think it is so important to pull these themes apart. Im not sure how to do it in a manner that frankly is not too dark for the folks that have to read it. It is a period of not just state sponsors, but carefully calibrated deployment of racialized violence. That is my departure point with my project. Thank you. How does it feel to do last . So i consider myself a scholar activist attracted to policy implications and applications. With that said please allow me to introduce my comments through the voice of contemporary observer, race akty vase, who said that world war one made clear to and that character is more fundamental than reputation. The former being opposed to without and the other intrinsic. More over, the war allowed blacks from africa and america the opportunity to make their first great record as a modern international factor. And a positive world influence. A lesson never to be lost on blacks. World war one helped to produce a self confident new negro and the change that comes later born out by chad williams. And the parade in 1919 marking the beginning of the harlem renaissance. A major figures poems dont tread on me. The o imagine to the 369th, and the rally cry to the masses make that connection clear and real. But to listen to what they called the whispering gallery, lead by general robert e. Lee bollard. And the informalized in the disgraceful Army War College report of 1925, here is what he had to say. Blacks could do nothing sorry, could do everything but fight. They were only dangerous to themselves and women. There was much, much more meligning and disparagement. And he also signed a document, bulletin number 35 that said blacks dont go where youre not wanted. No matter if you have the legal right, dont do anything to cause trouble or we will deal with you. All officers agreed that the negro lacks initiative, little or no leadership, and cannot sep responsibility. Theyre also cowards in the dark. None the less, and we would never guess this fact, that some 70 black soldiers received a distinguished Service Cross in world war i. The nations second highest military honor. And that at least eight africanamerican soldiers were nominated for the medal of honor. The highest such honor. That no black received the medal of honor during the war speaks to its importance as an collusi exclusionary marker only. Ironically the only two black medal of honor recipients from world war i, freddy stauers and Henry Johnson, nearly 100 years after the war in 2015, received no American Honors until well after the war. This denial of valor had undoubtedly immense psychic damage. Henry johnson dissipated and died ten years after the war. Roberts, a comrade in action, barely 17 years old at the time, committed suicide in 1948. Another hero, william a. Butler, one of the eighth known medal of honor nominees committed suicide in 1947. Henry johnson was a man of few words. I believe to be illiterate. But the expression by him probably dictated to the author and mediated also, really gives us a sense of what the world war i black veteran went through in post war life. He wrote to Theodore Roosevelt junior, september 7th, 1927. Im writing to say that i sincerely appreciate the article that you had published in the paper concerning me and the way i fought to help protect this country during her struggle with germany. But im very sorry to state they dont think my uncle sam is treating me just right. As my pension has been reduced to 60 per month from 100. I have a sick wife, a weakened body, and my health is gone making it utterly impossible for me to work. How am i to make it in this life . The odds are all against me. Never the less, im no slacker. This i have been demonstrated to all. I have endured the hardship of battle during the war and have fought hard and im doing the same in peace. I shall be very grateful to you, if you will only attend to this matter for me for i cannot manage to get along. Very respectfully yours, william h. Sergeant johnson. Henry johnson was dead two years later. So i mentioned that im an activist. That i like history that can be applied so in addition to my roll as a consultant to the United States world war one s centennial commission, im also on a review task force dedicated to righting the wrongs of the africanamerican soldier in world war i in terms of proper recognition. As ron armstead has said, why do we have to wait 100 years to do these kinds of things. Well, i guess the 100th anniversary of the great war brought the war and its injustices into clearer focus. So with that i end my presentation. Thank you. [ applause ] thank you, everyone for these brilliant and thought provoking presentations. I can certainly monopolize the conversation, but i did just want to throw out a couple questions at you, first, thinking about the frameworks, and how we can begin to grapple with the significance, but also the scale of the war for africanamericans and other people of decent. The frame work that we need to try to adopt to do that. And one of the things that has come out in your comments and your presentations is the empire, right . How the war, as professor lose so eloquently describes, informs the european thirst for conquest. Continuing into the 20th century, and how it brought different people into contact with one another, and the type of impeer your violence that was manufactured in the war itself. Im wondering if we could take that frame work and train it even more explicitly on the United States, right . Because were thinking about what it meant for africanamericans, thinking about the United States as an imperial nation. Wood row wilson in his war address said they were working to might it better, that were the defenders of man kind distancing the United States from the very clear and obviously imperial dimensions of the war. But they were fully committed and deeply invested in the philippines, in mexico, in certainly the caribbean, the jones act, so i wonder if but could maybe talk more about that and just what it means to think of the United States as an imperial war, and what it meant for africanamericans. That is an Excellent Way of framing what we all address in our different ways. Yes, i am trying to remember, i was reading list of papers for these three days, and im sure that im not hallucinating, but i have been reaming a number of things lately, but i think there was one panel or presentation that dealt with collaborators, africanamerican collaborators. And when, so much of the roll of africanamericans in in the philippines and in mexico, they were proactive. We were very proud of the fact that we advanced the imperial project. I suppose the logic of that was the lodge take disgraced, for a moment the man that youre going to deal with. Disappointing the board of the neacp for the most part. Defending his lifelong socialist friends, believing that he that the penance of dieing on the battlefields would come a at the recognition of itself. It was rather logical. The nations that manifest destiny, they will be compensated. The only reason why that has not happened is because of color, race, whatever. It is so embedded that the movement in this country, the narrative, it is high peeks of togetherness. Of legislation, of Supreme Court decisions, and and there is some panic of the unmeltable epics. So we have another experience. Were going through the worst experience in modern American History now in is the most about seen moment in our history. And it is so awful that it may cost all of us democracy. It may well be in 30 odd days. November 6th, the hope that the congress will be accessed by the democrats. It will not be fulfilled. And if that happens, we then are in totally unknown territory in which race and otherness and greed and all themes that are part of our great experience of exemptionali exemptionalism, will dominate everything. And so i think we must say that we dont want to be part of any more imperial projects. They will not because in fact empire is for the come nant group that is, to say, the rich, the very rich, and if anything is clear now it is the transfer of the money is not good, and well see where our imperial project goes. There is a book called one twhoorld is broadly red and the last chapter is on race. And he conceives that race in america is certainly imperialism abroad. And an insight that is quite remarkable. He was quite unusual. I want to remind everyone in the room that during the great war the u. S. Is an imperial foot race. And it is clear about that and here is what i mean. First, it uses the u. S. Uses the distran distraction of the war to say someone has to protect the caribbean. Right . Theyre just checking it out in case, you know, no one is looking and they can bounce on panama. And it is such a great threat that we need to send virtually all of our wore ships down there to check the germans that didnt have coal and they could not move the ship, which is why it was off of the coast. The u. S. Is also very aware of the fact that the french cannot spread any thinner. And the only white folks in this area are the canadians who in world war i will say to Great Britain and the United States we, too, need our own deep south. So canada will make the case for its ma dernty, its place in that imperial foot race saying that they need black people as well that they can control. That they can keep in political purgatory. So of course the u. S. Is aware that there are people already talking about some version of independence for themselves. So that lung is an important time for the United States. We cant forget im not even american so i have to stop saying we. You get fab rouse places to have indication in spring break precisely as part of that imperial foot race. Listen, denmark, you cant handle imperialism. So lets buy a couple islands, take them off of your hands, but the concern is that the danes could not keep the germans at bay in europe, and if they took denmark they would be in an easy front call from the United States. And then, the imperial race has not stopped in the pacific and that is also important for us to remember during the great war if is precisely because of that violence in europe and everyones shock about it that the u. S. Can use the pacific to hide and talk away its imperial work. Those africanamerican thats they tul us about in houston that had throughout the years leading up to the war flexed some frightening muscle if those soldier thats have the most and the most modern military experience, the ones that had seen the use of machine guns in theaters in mexico, theyre sent to idea and to the philippines to sit out of the war, so it becomes a place where the United States can talk away those standing up against its imperial aims. And they get to say what filipinos, but the war with the philippines doesnt really quiet down until 1923 into there is plenty. The imperial work of americans is very, very clear to the filipinos in the war, especially the moro. I think that bringing up black soldiers helps us train our eye on the u. S. Thinking about empire in way thats are more complex than what we credit them. They are talking about Buffalo Soldiers who are people that spent their career at war with other nations and what we now call the american west, right . If were going to talk about empire in the u. S. , what we need to understand that the u. S. Was a settler colonial society, and that africanamericans are in the center of that in way thats are not always lip rating. And they are expanding and extending a racialized regime and often extinguishing the people that are too much of a o conundrum to think about. They are building the cages to provide the structure to keep them from moving too, right . That is career soldiers, and nen you have world war one, the draftees, and those that join the interrelated progresses. And theyre all part of the larger systems and structures. Also when you were talking i was thinking that whuns you hear folks talking about it in the press, the shock of the violence is about violence out of place, right . These are racialized regimeregi. People are saying we feel like colored people right now, right . That is really the underlying it is the same thing when they shut down people who are like but dont you think the story is White Working Class suffering, and by naming that exemption, youre showing what is normal. And the resort of trying to make them safe for democracy, we ought to be making georgia safe for negros. America fought world war i on many fronts. But the wilson not allowing american soldiers to be assigned, for the most part, to european armies. He did allow some National Guard units including the 369th and the others in the 93rd provisional division, and didnt join the alliance, so america wanted to dictate the terms of the peace. But it didnt quite go wilsons way for him. But i want to say that there was also a war fought on the racial front and one of the main concerns of, you know, government officials and military officials was that they were able to maintain the status quo for race relations. And that is why we have this denigration and disparagement of officially after the war if is why blacks were removed from combat positions post war between the two wars. It is why World War Two the same thing happens again. The 92nd division is not even allowed to train because of the fact that they are making claims to the freedom that they are being denied. National guard units were disbanded after world war one. The 369th did not exist begin until 1924. So there is no question that american authorities want to make sure that blacks are clonized after world war one. Despite the accomplishments they had made. Question ask questions and certainly keep talking amongst ourselves, but there is a performance in the middle of the aisle. Feel free to step up and ask questions that you may have. Yes, thank you for your presentations. I want to ask permission to ask a question of the panel and the audience. How many of us here have an ancestor, in particular a great grandparent that served in the First World War . This many. This many . Good. Okay. How many have a great grandparent who was killed in the First World War. So there is only one. That is myself. But i want to thank, in particular, someone said that this whole issue is about who is human and who is not. And i think we over use the issue of civil rights and it is really a question of human rights. That is why i think, i know the doctor, and the last speaker, who who is the viewpoint of the soldier. And from the correspondence from my grandfather to my grandmother, his fear was not his adjournments, it was not his adjournments. His complaint was of the white officers. Of the white officers over the black troops. And whether or not you eluded to the fact that some of them served under the french, but you know, one of the the they did not consider the black soldiers were human. And they went over there and they said you got soldiers that you wont let fight, so one of the best books about the whole issue is the American Foreign legion. My grandfather served not under american command, it was french command which is a disgrace in particular. So i want to thank the commemoration of the struggles of the africanamerican soldier for recognition as a human being and especially no one mentioned sergeant edgar kaldwell. So remarks. If i could just respond to that briefly, i think one of the most exciting developments in the study of the First World War is to bring out the humanity of blax soldiers for ch of the history, even the beginning immediately after the war. They were seen has symbols. They were presented in many respects as these flat and uncomplicated figures because they were seen as so impollingly important for the importance of the race. So you had them who are deeply invested in this project of the black soldier as heros, right . And why someone like Henry Johnson is so important. But i think what our work has tried to do is complicate that and bring out other stories and other dimensions of the back war experience that are troubling, right . That the majority of black sold juries did not serve on the black line. You know, they were burying dead bodies. Those were the type of human stories that i think are really important to tell if we want a full understanding of what the war meant. I would like to Say Something about the officers. There was a trend or maybe even a policy to assign white southern officers to commend black soldiers. And they were a very Southern Institution as well. And they had all of the attitude if you look at how charles was treated at west point, for instance, and the guys that didnt make it it was a terrible institution. And as late as benjamin junior, no one spoke to him for his four years at west pointe. But he had a great retort. He said it was too bad for them because he was a great person and they missed out on all four areas to find out. Im glad you brought up the white officers because it brings us back to this point about imperiali imperialism. The spaniards sucked in theater so they were not there for long. They had been posted in the colonies and therefore knew negros best. They appointed elite officers or who spoke indigenous languages. So the success mimicking and exporting that same power model and at the same tame trying to say that it is different. One of the things that come across in the wriettings home is how exhausting it is to continue to fight with their fellow americans who are more invested in helping with jim crowe. They are worth going to the library of congress, right . Because he is yieting knowing that were going to read them at some point. So he is like take note. But one of the things that he says that i always quote is that he was fighting two wars at once. And he could not tell you which left him with more scars, right . Okay, two questions, did he ever regreat his editorial . And second to what degree did he restore his reputation . Well, there is a note that it was written in a hotel as they are about to lead, going somewhere, to his wife, amy. And he says, you know, the Board Meeting i just left the Board Meeting and it was pretty intense. But this is just between us, dear, the board is sending du bois abroad to hold a Panafrican Congress and maybe get a better reputation when he comes back. That may have been snarky. But it is true. I think du bois very quickly, the backlash from that closed ranks amongst people who were professional, who had double and triple vision was enormous. He could not believe the timing was so bad. It just gave the game away, it seemed. So he was troubled by it. And that is why he writes with the same prose that we return fighting by a great jahova. But i think that dubois was generally pretty easy with himself and his conscious. He believed that whatever he did advanced the race and one or two mistakes is just part of doing the lords work. He vept weslept well at nigh . Im not sure about that, but i was curious act the roll and the impact of james europe in that First World War and how you saw what he did as contributing, helping, not helping, in terms of how we became, how we were seen in terms of the great war. Well, if you see stormy weather, which is a movie that is supposed to be supportive, positive, respectful, a counter to the imagery of birth of a nation, it starts out with an omage. And something about the last 50 years of blacks in entertainment. It focuses on blacks an entertainers happy in their segregated world. And of course they are dont say anything about why he wasnt with us any longer. So it takes away from the combat contributions, and i think that has been repeated by lots of scholars. Im not denying he was highly influential, but in world war i the focus has to be on the combat soldier. We make sure that we discuss him but we focus on blacks as combatants. Europe and in terms of you know he is credited with introducing live jazz to europe. That is, you know, been debated. No question that it was one of the best if not the best military bands there. They were recorded so the music spread after that. I have a problem, too, because the band embraced the moniker the harlem hell fighters. They never called themes that. They were the rattlers because of the flag dont tread on me. And american press, and then the bands message through, you know, notes, through advertising, made this moniker stick. So i dont deny his musical influence. But in terms of what the war meant to blacks in terms of proving a capacity for citizenship, you dont look to the band for that. I was going to address another part of your question. The potential draw backs of a focus on james reese, they are the most well known regiments and that is part of a feti fetishization of him, of jazz, and that it is a new essential thing that is quintessentially africanamerican, right . That is why the he willl fighte got so much attention. They still have not received the credit that they deserve for for their contributions to the war and their significance to how the war has been remembered. To totality of the back military experience, especially on the battlefield. I wonder if i just might Say Something more about your voice, because i think i was a little disrespectful of my subject. But when he gets to europe, of course, the expose of the treatment of the troops and the discovery of the famous or the infamous circular that the American Army gave to the french and the french army was to distribute it, warning french women and warning french officers never to accord any kind of respect to fellow officers or to american persons of color. All of that was of Great Service and was exposed in the crisis with great density. In fact, i think that was the one time when the post office was going to invoke its censorship rule, and the magazine was held up for two or three days or Something Like that. So although perhaps he was intemporate in saying lets go die and fight and get our citizenship, and that didnt prove to be what came to pass, he also was an investigative journalist of the first order in exposing the shameful treatment of troops, the only troops who were not allowed to march down the champs he wielysises. I might sound jaded but i get accused of that once a week. I think europe actually has a legacy that it was harmful to africanamericans combatance. Im not blaming him for that, but part of the reason people are so enraptured with our band is because they have trumpets and saxes instead of guns and weapons. Ju can you imagine just the band with machine guns . That would have been very alarming. They dont think much about the americans coming. Theyre green. It doesnt matter if theyre black or white, theyre still green as soldiers. But then here theyre part of the first wave that help boost morale with their music, and its not an accident that reese is sent on a 25city tour shortly after getting there, but what happens is the british is worried, too, about all this attention, so they whip up a group of black, canadian and british jazz players and send them on a bunch of tours. These guys are going to little tiny villages in the french countryside that sometimes have bans of black people being in town when theyre on r and r, but they welcomed them for birthday parties and opening of hospitals, all of this stuff, again, creating critical distance away from the battlefield and makes them seem as though the americans are just here to we had seen them before as the fiske jubilee singers and now theyre just bringing a kumbaya to us. Thats how they write about these tours, and the germans will, too. Some of them were a rest area where no blacks were allowed, so the only blacks in town were the band. But not all of them thought they were cute. There is a white critic who talks about james reese sort of pre preening and all this kind of stuff, being pretentious, who does he think he is, so there was that action as well. Not totally the u. S. , but the canadians are so worried about this exposure to jazz that after the war they create the Health Department, and one of the first things that the Health Department considers is to ban jazz in canada because it threatens womens virginity because of the way the sounds and syncopations will awaken something in these girls. This they saw from the bands playing in europe. He wi its a good thing, but its also a very complicated thing. Yes, just two quick questions. I was wondering if the panel was familiar with the work of the late dr. Reuben westin. He passed, i think, last year. He was the author of racism and kberli imperialism. We talked about how they squashed cuba. The second part is i had an uncle named richard kidd who fought in world war i and came back, quote, unquote, shell shocked, and he spent some time in a hospital in danville, illinois, and i dont know could you speak to how black soldiers were treated upon their return to the United States . I know going to a bad Army Hospital was not the worst thing that could happen to you, but i dont know if these hospitals were segregated or theres because havingly a crazy uncle having a crazy uncle somewhere in your house is almost fiction. That crazy uncle probably also had a child with a french name, because that became the trend after the war sometimes, to name your teenage daughter after someone you shacked up with while in france. The thing is, we fail veterans, period. Then as now. A part of that is that were slow to understand the full impact of war, and then you add the layer of jim crow and also diminishing the extent to which black soldiers were even in contact with the war, right . Oh, theyre mostly in labor units, so theyre not actually fighting. Well, the bombs are still falling on them, and their bombs are exploding in their hands as theyre moving them off of ships, so i think that we certainly have a lot more to learn about the impact of the war itself but also the impact of what adrian was talking about, right, this war against themselves and other americans. So its i dont think that we have exceptional scholarship on that, and the absence of that scholarship points to the racial lens that people still bring. Theyre not interested in how black soldiers are wounded, and then if theyre crazy, they were crazy before. The newspapers were full of stories about crack cocaine, enraged, razorwielding black men. So whos to say that thats the war would be a response you might have heard. Henry johnson was in a sanitarium in johnson city, tennessee for tuberculosis, and that was segregated racially. So the same facility but segregated units. The other thing is that somebody and back to sages point, someone really needs to do a systematic study because i only have anecdotal information about whether blacks were given lower disability percentages than white soldiers. Lets take severely wounded as a baseline. I know that Henry Johnson was severely wounded, but he was considered zero percent disabled after the war. On the other hand, harris pippin, a Famous Artist who was a member of the 369th, was considered to be 70 disabled because it affected his arm. So we also have to look at what is, you know, damaged. The last thing is napoleon bo bonaparte marshall, famous lawyer, was in the johnson trial in 76, would become a legacy to haiti, but he was considered 79 disabled when 29 was the threshold for receiving disability benefits. Well, i think this question of disabilities lends to think about another framework for considering the war, and thats gender and sexuality. And how oftentimes the war is thought of in an explicitly masculine framework, right . Im writing an unfinished history of the war that he titled the black man in a wounded world, so there is this very highly masculinous world thinking about particularly manhood and masculinity, which is incredibly important. I wonder how we can expand that to think about the experiences of black women but also think about gender in the case of black men more critically as well. Very quick thought, as you know, as you do well. Chad and i wrote our dissertations around the same time and our books around the same time, and it was great knowing chad was out there doing what he was doing so i could be less responsible. Which is not quite how but, you know, there is sort of a blessing in knowing youre not responsible for making sure that somebody says you say everything or else nobody will know it. But the black woman never let herself be exposed in periodicals, letters to loved ones or service work. They were consistently inserting themselves ask sayind saying, en we talk about manhood, we are talking about a partnership where there is responsibilities on both sides and what were doing is working together to advance the race. You mentioned these postwar memoirs that hattie and johnson wrote, and what they said was, we knew if we didnt write this book, the story of black soldiers would be erased, but its also a story that they tell in which hearth and home matters, and in which their volunteer work with soldiers is central. So its not centrally about making sure the story of black soldiers is recorded, but the story of black women support of those soldiers and black soldiers commitment to black women, right . These are all moves conjuring up the world that you want to be, the social interactions that you want to be, but these were all their sort of strategies for reminding folks of what things ought to look like. Lets not forget that black women had been the backbone. Herbert hoover wrote a book about africanamerican women and i was struck how who was this . Herbert hoover. I was struck that the instructions were, work more, pick more cotton, eat less, dont spend money and dont make your men feel bad about leaving you behind. Buy more stamps. Save more money. Do with less. Which was a general message, but i was really struck that it was specifically for africanamerican women. Sia browder, who was sitting there but i think actually left, was writing for the ywca and their structural programs and black women in this moment, and their countering arguments about black womens disorderliness, and theyre pressuring white women to say, your position and your rights in this moment is actually antipatriotic. And the 15th womens auxiliary led by Susan Elizabeth frasier, who was the first black woman to teach in an integrated school in new york city, 1893, m. C. Lawton, who established the m. C. Lawton clubs, were very instrumental in the organization of the silent protest march. And they also spoke out publicly when no one from the regimen did about what happened in east st. Louis riots of that july of 1917. So thats and also what that parade meant was really important in terms of, you know, citizenship claims, et cetera. Then they actually petitioned Woodrow Wilson to do something. Its actually Teddy Roosevelt who speaks out. Wilson doesnt about that event. One last question. Yes, i want to make a couple little statements first. I want to thank you for all the information which youve given us. I think its been quite a wonderful experience. I would like to just say from my experience, i made a note to myself to ask if my grandfather was in the service. I dont even know. I never heard that mentioned before. But i do know that my mothers brothers, most all of them, went into the service. My father and his brothers, they also went into the service. I dont know if they were injured or none of that. No, they all came home alive, thank god for that. But im coming to the next generation, my brothers and my son. None of them went into the service. Maybe one cousin from my generation went into the service, the rest of them didnt go. So here we are today with the afghanistan war, all these other things, the Supreme Court justice decision which was made, and here we are in another bind. Were in a serious bind. What would you suggest that the young men and women now do in terms of the service to this country and being in the armed forces . Vote. Vote, right . Its going to be the ballot or the bullet. Yeah, the ballot or the bullet. Yeah, were in serious trouble, folks. I agree with you up and down that panel. I hope we dont become so parochial that we forget, really, were all in grievous trouble. This is really existential across race and class, i think. All of us. Every last one of us. Thank you for listening. I think thats a good place to end. Thank you very much, everyone, for attending this session. Round of applause for our panelists. [ applause ] and please enjoy the rest of the conference. Youre watching American History tv. Every weekend on cspan3, explore our nations past. Cspan3, created by American Television companies as a Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. American history tv on cspan3. Telling about people and events that tell the American History. Coming up this weekend on saturday, at 2 00 p. M. Eastern, Kathleen Rooney and miles harvey talk about Historical Research for their fiction and nonfiction work. Saturday at 6 00 p. M. On the civil war. He discusses his research on the battle of antita. And at 8 00 p. M. , Patrick Allitt, emory University Professor, talks about lectures in history. Watch American History tv this weekend on cspan3. A panel of public historians talk about the history of africanamerican Voting Rights. They explain how their Historic Sites and organizations share this history in various ways. Thf this was part of the association of africanAmerican History and rights conference. They also provided the video. I wanted to start out by sharing with you all that the partnership between the National Parks Conservation Association and the association for the study of africanamerican life and historybe