Ralph W. Tyler

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Ralph Waldo Tyler, an Ohio newspaperman and political operative, was the only African-American accredited by the U.S. government as a war correspondent in World War I. As an employee of the Committee on Public Information, he also served as an observer of prejudice in the Allied Expeditionary Force for Emmett J. Scott, special assistant to the secretary of war for race relations. This article examines the scope of Tyler's war correspondence and the difficulties he faced in carrying out his dual roles as a journalist and a government employee. It concludes that he provided admirable service to the government, the soldiers he wrote about, the black press, and his readers. This research is based primarily on dispatches that Tyler sent from the front and materials in the National Archives and in the Scott papers at the Soper Library of Morgan State University.