World War I

BLACK AMERICANS, their horizons structured by the tremendous problems facing them in the United States, cared little about what was going on in the rest of the world as the second decade of the twentieth century began. While there was a stirring of interest in Africa, brought on mainly by the activities and writings of such men as Henry McNeal Turner and W. E. B. Du Bois and the preaching of Marcus Garvey, who started his back-to-Africa movement in the West Indies in 1914, the masses of blacks thought in terms of "up North" and "down South."

Schools for blacks in the South were few and poorly staffed and those in the North were not much better. It is little wonder that blacks had little concern for the power struggle which had been brewing in Europe and which was soon to explode into World War I, a conflict that was to involve them more than any previous war.

Woodrow Wilson, a Southerner and a Democrat, was elected president in 1912, and while he had the reputation of being a liberal, black Americans soon found out that his "liberality" had nothing to do with the rights of minorities. In fact, during his first Congress more than twenty bills attempting to restrict the rights of blacks were introduced. Luckily most of them were defeated. Wilson himself, through an executive order, Jim-Crowed the federal civil service by setting up separate lunchrooms and washrooms.