W. E. B. Du Bois and the Formation of Black Opinion in World War I: A Commentary on "The Damnable Dilemma"

Abstract

Where WilliamJordan detects prudent accommodationism and principled submission to pressure, I observe utilitarianism and fatal miscalculation. Our differing explanations for the wording and timing of the editorial Close Ranks in the July 1918 Crisis rest on those different perspectives. Jordan's broader difference with me in his well-researched and wide-ranging article concerns the extent to which Close Ranks encapsulated the views of African Americans on the war and on the best method of accelerating both an Allied victory and black progress. I have argued that Close Ranks did not faithfully represent the views of either its author or his race., The apparent docility of the black population during the war, especially in the South, disguised strongly held views. Although most of the fifty thousand black southerners who avoided military service did so as a result of failures of the draft, rather than actual desertion, the wartime northward migration of one hundred thousand people represented a refusal to support the economic and social systems of the South. Moreover, Bureau of Investigation agents and Military Intelligence Branch (MIB) officers encountered instances of southern black antipathy toward war service, ranging from vigorous abstention to aggression.2 In April 1917, for example, the following circular was picked up at Friars Point, Mississippi: