IN THE WORLD WAR At Home

Relative to the willing sacrifices, unfaltering patriotism and loyalty of the millions of Colored people who remained at home in the United States during the World War, several books could be written but limited space herein will not permit but a few paragraphs covering their many activities.

After the white American men had enlisted or were drafted into the Army and Navy, there were left vacant thousands and thousands of responsible positions. The European foreigners who had previously immigrated here and were immediately given (even before they could understand the laws of the land or speak its language) full American opportunities and privileges, except the ballot, were now found unreliable. Great hordes of them showed their gratefulness to America for earlier throwing wide open her doors to them by refusing to come up to her test of one hundred percent Americanism. Even after all of the available mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of the departed white American soldiers were used in such places, there still remained many thousands of positions unfilled. All that time millions of Colored men and women who were loyally and willingly asking and waiting to fill such places were at first purposely ignored. Because of the lack of sufficient man power, the cog-wheels of industry all over the country began to stop. It seemed as though the American white sentiment of prejudiced feeling against the Colored people had become so bitter that the country was willing to commit industrial suicide while stopping to wallow in its mires of racial hatred.

But a certain good white sentiment (that usually turns up sooner or later, and in some cases more later (than sooner) after great sufferings have been caused) gently but firmly reminded America that there were millions of Colored people who were able and willing to fill those places. They were the people who had made and spent their money here to enrich and build up America as well as at all times and under all conditions had proved themselves most loyal and trustworthy citizens. That reminder although known to be wholly true was still laughed and sneered at by many until they were suddenly and painfully brought to realize that they must either employ Colored people in those positions or let the country go in starvation and ruin for want of sufficient and proper productions. Colored men and women were then at first reluctantly given employment in all parts of the country in almost all kinds of work. Thus for the first time since their forefathers and mothers had arrived in America nearly three hundred years before, Colored people were nationally allowed to use and enjoy many of the opportunities and privileges that had been stingingly withheld from them merely because they were Negroes and freely given to (many times forced upon) alien enemies just because they were Caucasians.

Leaving home in the morning long before dawn and returning late after twilight, Colored men faithfully dug coal in the mines of Alabama, Iowa, West Virginia and elsewhere in order that various kinds of industrial plants might continue to run in full blast and that transportation carriers might quicken their speeds to stations and sea ports. “A. J. Webster, a coal miner of Buxton, Iowa, is reported to have broken the record by earning $214.06 in 14 working days, during the last half of July, 1918. The wage was based on the amount of coal mined.”

In the shipyards along both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, where the long swift-keeled ocean grey hounds and the heavy big-bodied sea-pacing mastiffs were rapidly born into life, thousands of Colored men were busily helping to assemble the durable steel ribs into place and rivet the armorplate hides of those ferocious watch dogs that prowled back and forth sleeplessly guarding the front doors of their master and mistress—“Uncle Samuel” and “Aunt Liberty”. And among those Colored ship builders, it was Charles Knight and his crew of seven men, who on July 16, 1918, at the Bethlehem Steel Company’s Sparrow Point, Md., plant, drove 4,875 rivets in a 9 hour day. The highest previous record of 4,442 rivets for the same time had been made in Scotland. Knight and his men, therefore, were the first Americans (Colored or white) to break and bring that record to the United States. His regular services for the day earned him $102; he received a bonus of $50.00 for bringing the record to America, and twenty-five pounds sterling ($125.00) offered through the London Daily Mail by Mr. McLeod, the head of a London Shipbuilding Company, to the one who broke the record. Thus Knight received for his one day’s labor $277.00, besides having the honor of being the first American to break the European riveting record.

Many people have heard the time-worn expression “make bricks fly”, but it has been left for Alonzo Harshaw, a Colored artisan, to break a record by making bricks fly in laying them at the rate of sixty thousand paving bricks per day. It is said that Harshaw, who works for the Southern Paving & Con. Co., lays bricks with such rapidity and exactness that he has been photographed while at work by several moving picture firms.

In the rolling mills, steel and iron foundries, Colored men were there in thousands sweating away their strength and burning up their vitality before blistering metals in order that the best possible steel and iron might be made strong and durable enough to withstand the bursting shells and the snake gliding torpedoes from the submarines of the scientific Germans.

Pushing pens and pencils on top of desks, tapping keys of clicking typewriters, bending over buzzing sewing machines, plying needles over tailors’ benches, before the humming looms, by the dangerous railroad crossings, in the car-filled train yards, between the handles of loaded wheelbarrows, through the crops of farmerette fields, among the death-dealing explosives in munition and arsenal plants and in many other places, thousands of brave and willing Colored women were to be found either in yeowomen’s suits or overalls and blouses steadfastly working with cheery dispositions and hopeful smiles.

In December, 1918, two distinguished Colored Americans were sent to Europe on special missions as follows; Dr. Robert R. Moton, who was sent by the President of the United States and the Secretary of War to investigate the conditions of and talk to the Colored soldiers, and Dr. W. E. B. DuBois who went to Europe as the representative of the N. A. A. C. P. and The Crisis to collect historical data pertaining to the American Colored fighters in the World War and to call and form a Pan-African Congress.

At Home Buying Liberty Bonds

“The Biennial meeting of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs was held in Denver, Colorado in July, 1918. Among the important subjects considered at this meeting were: Temperance, Suffrage, Lynchings, Religious Work, Negro Women’s Problems, Food Conservation and what the Negro Women Were Contributing to War Work Service. It was pointed out that the Association had representation on the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense, that in the Third Liberty Loan, 7,000 Negro Women were at work and raised $5,000,000. It was also stated that, judging from the number of buttons sold through the colored women’s clubs, that about $300,000 had been contributed in Red Cross Drives.”

“David H. Rains, a wealthy Negro farmer, living near Shreveport, Louisiana, walked into the Liberty Loan Headquarters in that city and purchased $100,000 worth of the Fourth Liberty Loan Bonds and said that: ‘If they fell short of the quota he would make up the deficiency.’ (Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pages 48-49). According to an article on page 273 in the April 1921 issue of The Crisis, ‘Mr. Rains, who is reputed to be worth $1,500,000, owns 2,000 acres of land on which there are 40 producing oil wells; he pays a clerk $100 a day to check up his royalties.’”

“A report from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was that the Negro school children subscribed for $27,000 worth of Third Liberty Loan Bonds. Through a Negro bank in that city, over $400,000 worth of Bonds were bought, and it was stated that the total amount of Third Liberty Loan Bonds purchased by the Negroes of Philadelphia was more than $1,000,000.”

“At the close of the Third Liberty Loan Drive, the United States Treasury Department awarded first place among all the banks of the country to a Negro bank, the Mutual Savings, Portsmouth, Virginia. This bank was given a quota of $5,700 to raise. A total of over $100,000, almost twenty times the stipulated quota was raised. This bank was assigned $12,500 as its quota of the Fourth Liberty Loan. Its total subscription for this loan was reported to have been $115,000.”

“The Negroes of Jacksonville, Florida, were awarded the first honor flag given to Negroes for exceeding their quota in the Third Liberty Loan Drive. They were asked to raise $50,000; they raised $250,000. In the Fourth Liberty Loan Drive, they were assigned a quota of $500,000 and raised over $100,000 more than this amount. The following are additional examples of subscriptions of Negroes to the Fourth Liberty Loan: Mobile, Alabama, $250,000; Norfolk, Virginia, $250,000; Kansas City, Missouri, $500,000; Savannah, Georgia, $500,000; Memphis, Tennessee, $700,000; Chicago, Illinois, $1,000,000; Birmingham, Alabama, $1,155,000; Maryland, $2,000,000.”

“When Secretary McAdoo visited Little Rock, Arkansas, in the interest of the First Liberty Loan, he was presented with a certified check for $60,000 as the Mosaic Templars’ bit toward financing the war. This society’s subscriptions were added to for subsequent loans until a total of $135,000 was invested in Liberty Bonds.”

Not only rich Colored people gave freely of their wealth, but poor Colored people sacrificed to extents that are not imaginable in giving their last few dollars to help end that world strife, as soon as possible.

“Mary Smith, a colored cook in Memphis, Tennessee, was asked by her mistress if she would not undertake to buy a $100 Bond. Mary said: “No. I don’t want no little $100 Bond. I want a $1000 and I am going to pay cash for it.” She gave her lifetime’s savings to help the United States carry on the war.”

“The Chicago Illinois Post, in an editorial headed: “The Widow’s Mite,” among other things said: “We should like to tell the story of an old Negro woman, who, with seamed face and knotted hands, lives on the South Side and works for $7 a week. ‘Out of these meager wages,’ says the Favorite Magazine, ‘this daughter of a race that has traveled the road of trials and tribulations, has purchased three Liberty Bonds and $25 worth of War Savings Stamps. She contributes $5 a month to her church—before the war it was $10—belongs to the N. A. A. C. P. and a Court of Calanthe, subscribed to three Negro periodicals and contributes a dollar a month to the Home for the Aged. She does not knit, but she sits sometimes in the sunset, dreaming of the two stalwart sons that she has given the nation to fight its battles across the sea’.””

“Warner Brown, of Brenham, Texas, an ex-slave, seventy-five years old, had accumulated $50 by chopping wood and doing other jobs. He invested this in a Liberty Bond.” “Gilbert Denman, an eighty-seven year old Negro of Greenville, Alabama after listening to an appeal of speakers from a war relic train, tendered his entire worldly wealth, fifteen cents, to the cause of the United States Government.”

Since a large percentage of the loyalty and patriotism of American citizens was weighed on the Roosevelt standard testing machine of 100 per cent Americanism with weights of paper, silver and gold money; then surely the two hundred twenty-five million dollars and more in cash that was dumped into the American scales of Liberty Loan Campaigns, Thrift Stamps, Red Cross Drives and other War Work activities, by the Colored people in the United States, pushed high above the level the opposite scales that contained Negro one hundred per cent Americanism.

Thus did the Colored people at home give their over-flowing measure and extra weight of money toward the putting down of a threatened world autocracy and the establishment of a hopeful universal democracy. And justly may those Colored people, who stayed at home in America during the World War and so unselfishly gave of their strength and money, truthfully and consolingly repeat that beautiful, fifty-fifty and “square deal” law of King David’s found in First Samuel, thirtieth chapter, twenty-fourth verse: “But as his part is that goeth down to the battle, so shall his part be that tarrieth by the stuff; they shall part alike.”

(All quotations, facts and figures contained in this chapter titled “In The World War At Home”, unless otherwise stated herein, are extracts taken from Work’s Negro Year Book, 1918-1919 edition, pages 14-45-46-47-48-49-50.)