“Close Ranks”

In July 1918, when America’s military was in need of soldiers for World War 1, W.E.B DuBois wrote an article called “Close Ranks” for the Crisis, a journal distributed by the N.A.A.C.P at that time.  In “Close Ranks”, Dubois urged African Americans to join America’s war efforts against Germany, despite subjugation to the Jim Crow Laws, legal slavery under the guise of sharecropping, and domestic terrorism from the K.K.K. In the article Dubois states, “Let us not hesitate. Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder without our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy. We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly without eyes lifted to the hills.” (“Close Ranks” 1918) 

This article, among many other variables, inspired African Americans all over the country to join the military. Through fighting and sacrificing their lives, African Americans believed they would have earned their right to true equality in America. However, during and after the war, the progress they sought never showed any signs of fruition. During the war, the African American troops were treated as second-class citizens by their white counter parts and were essentially locked out of the war. After the war, African Americans faced social regression because white Americans felt threatened by the respect African American veterans demanded once they returned home, which is evident by race riots of the Red Summer of 1919 and the targeting of black WWI veterans. Therefore, one can argue African Americans participation in WWI had the opposite effect of what it was intended, which was to take steps forward toward social and racial harmony. Instead, what African Americans received was civil unrest and terrorism by white nationalist for years following the war.