0.2 The great war (part i)  (Page 13/14)

None of these actions or personalities curtailed Jim Crow. For example, African-American troops from California and Wyoming had been sent a training camp in Houston, Texas. White and Hispanic Houstonians were not terribly happy to see the influx of black people. Houston, like most southern cities, supported a system of codified racism to include preventing blacks from riding trolleys, eating at certain restaurants, and gathering in most public places.

One hot, sticky August day a young African-American recruit tried to stop a Houston cop from beating an Africa-American woman. The cop, Lee Sparks, turned his club against the recruit, who was quickly dragged to jail. A non-commissioned officer named Charles Baltimore investigated the incident and for his troubles he too was arrested. While both troops were eventually released, an armed group of black troops launched an attack on the police station. In the ensuring melee, fifteen people died including five policemen and six blacks (four of whom were in the Army).

Sixty-three African-American troops will be arrested and charged with mutiny. At the first of several courts martial, thirteen African-American soldiers were found guilty and sentenced to death, including Corporal Baltimore. Seven more troops will be executed in the second trial, and dozens will be confined to jail raging from 24 months to life at the final court martial proceedings. Race riots were not limited to war-time America (New Orleans 1900, Atlanta 1902 and 1906, Springfield, IL 1908) yet their numbers and intensity increased between 1916 and 1923, especially evident when those tens of thousands of African-American troops started coming home from the war.

Sometimes Jim Crow was successfully challenged, even for the brief length of the US involvement in the war. For example, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina a white floor manager in a textile factory was accused by his black female workers of verbally abusing the women and so they walked off their jobs in protest. According to the Norfolk Journal and Guide , “[w]hen the superintendent learned of the trouble later in the day he immediately began to visit the homes of the operatives asking them to return to work. The offending white manager was discharged and the girls returned to their work with no loss of time.”

Finally, the war resulted in a major wave of African-American migration from the South. Blacks were certainly living in northern towns before World War I, however the sheer number of factories in support of the war effort was a powerful pull factor. For example, Gary, Indiana and Detroit, Michigan experienced an increase in black populations between 1910 and 1920 - nearly 1300% and 611% respectively. New York City, which already had a well-established black population of over 90,000 in 1910, witnessed its black population increase by 66% by 1920.

“Sammee! Sammee! Vive Sammee!”

In 1918, a Yankee of Irish roots named George M. Cohan penned a patriotic ditty that played all over this broad land when young men were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to drop their plow shears, leave their factory jobs, and enter the ranks of the US military to prevent Germany from running roughshod over Europe. Cohan grew up entertaining Americans. His family consisted of vaudeville performs during the Gilded Age but settled down in the early twentieth century, which allowed George to focus his energies on writing songs for his adopted town of New York, specifically for Broadway. On the eve of the US entry into World War II, Congress presented Cohan with a Congressional Medal of Honor in large measure for both his body of patriot work as well as the unofficial US anthem during the Great War, Over There that included the famous chorus: