Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2011
In the summer of 1918, the white chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Major Joel E. Spingarn, called for urgent congressional action on mob violence. He seized the opportunity of a post in the Military Intelligence Branch (MIB) of the War Department General Staff in Washington, D.C., to put forward a “constructive programme,” the central idea of which was the passage of a bill to make lynching in wartime a federal offense. Attempting to exploit the peculiar circumstances of the national emergency and the expansion of federal powers during World War I, Spingarn also proposed a series of more modest initiatives designed to lessen discrimination and raise black morale. The official reaction to the arguments he advanced in support of his program sheds light on the reluctance of the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson to develop a policy on race relations. It also suggests some of the problems and hazards facing a would-be reformer working from within.
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20. Scott, E. J. to Bois, W.E.B. Du, 15 May 1918Google Scholar, Papers of Joel Spingarn, NYPL; Scott, to Spingarn, 26 June 1918Google Scholar, Joel E. Spingarn papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University (M-SRC). Scott had been Booker T. Washington's secretary from 1897 to the latter's death in 1915. He was-appointed to the War Department after a conference on racial tension between Woodrow Wilson, Newton D. Baker, and the principal of Tuskegee Institute, Robert Russa Moton (“The Problem of the Negro Soldier,” Outlook 117 [24 October 1917]: 279–80)Google Scholar. On Scott's career, see Dictionary of American Negro Biography, ed. Logan, Rayford W. and Winston, Michael R. (New York, 1982), 549–51.Google Scholar
21. Counter-Espionage Situation Summary, 18 May 1918, MID File 10641–196(51), RG 165, NA.
22. War Dept. Special Order No. 119, 21 May 1918, Papers of Joel E. Spingarn, New York Public Library (NYPL); M. Churchill to Chief of Staff, –? July 1918, MID File 10996- 36, RG 165, NA; Crisis 15 (January 1918): 112Google Scholar; Ross, J. E. Spingam, 97–98.
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24. Official Bulletin, 4 December 1917; Baltimore Afro-American, 8 December 1917; Kellogg, NAACP, 256–57.
25. Gensch, Capt. C. D. to Chief, MIB, 10 January 1918Google Scholar, MID File 10218–76, RG 165, NA; Bruff, Capt. J. A., “Memorandum re. Officers and Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” 13 July 1918Google Scholar, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. Later reports conveyed YMCA anxieties about allowing the Crisis into camps where black troops were trained (Low, William G. to Deman, Van, 2 May 1918Google Scholar, Hunt, Capt. H. T. to Low, , 6 May 1918Google Scholar, Capt. E. G. Moyer to Chief, MIB, 8 May 1918, MID File 10218–139, RG 165, NA).
26. Sherman, Republican Party and Black America, 117–18; Kellogg, NAACP, 190–93.
27. Spingarn, to Parsons, , 25 August 1917Google Scholar, MID File 10218–1, 7, RG 165, NA.
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29. Capt. R. F. Britton to Chief, MIB, 9 July 1918; Scott to Spingarn, 25 July, 1 August 1918; Spingarn to Scott, 27 July 1918, MID File 10218–60, -154, RG 165, NA. For an excellent study of black migration during this period, see Grossman, James R., Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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31. Churchill to Southeastern Dept. Intelligence Officer, 5 June 1918; Churchill to Intelligence Officer, Fort Sam Houston, 8 June 1918, MID File 10218–160, 164, RG 165, NA. Title 1, section 3, of the Espionage Act of 15 June 1917, outlawed “false statements” intended to obstruct U.S. military success or promote that of the enemy and statements or deeds intended to impede the draft or encourage military insubordination. Title XII empowered the postmaster general to bar anything he considered treasonable from the mails. It was strengthened by the Sedition Act of 16 May 1918, which made obstruction of warbond sales and the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the American form of government, the Constitution, flag or armed forces punishable by a fine of $10,000 and twenty years imprisonment. It also outlawed the deliberate hindering of war-related production.
32. Peyton C. March to Pershing, cablegram 1523, 14 June 1918; Pershing to Adjutant General, D.C., cablegram 1335, 20 June 1918; War Department press release, 20 June 1918; Washington Post, clipping, n.d., in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. See also Official Bulletin, 22 July 1918.
33. Spingarn to Churchill, 10 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. Chicago Tribune, 15 April 1918 (headline, “Creel Lulls U.S. as Foe Within Helps Germany”); New York Independent, n.d., reprinted in Crisis 16 (May 1918): 24; Christian Science Monitor, 31 May 1918. See also Scheiber and Scheiber, “Wilson Administration,” 437–38.
34. G. Creel to Wilson, 17 June 1918; Wilson to Creel, 18 June 1918, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Series 4, Case File 152, LC. That Wilson found black lobbying an unwelcome intrusion is suggested by Robert Russa Moton's wish that he could “relieve the President of any embarrassment which might be occasioned by so many delegations of colored people calling at the White House” (Moton to Joseph Tumulty, 6 March 1918, Wilson Papers, Series 4, Case File 575, LC).
35. On Trotter's meetings with Wilson, see Lunardini, Christine A., “Standing Firm: William Monroe Trotter's Meetings with Woodrow Wilson, 1913–14,” Journal of Negro History 64 (Summer 1979): 244–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 31, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, 1979), 298–329.Google Scholar
36. Capt. Fred W. Moore to Churchill, 5 June, 19 June, 15 July 1918; Churchill to Moore, 13 June 1918, MID File 10218–153, RG 165, NA.
37. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19–21: List of Conferees,” compiled by Spingarn, n.d., MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. The two absentees were Kelly Miller, of Howard University, and former Assistant Attorney General William H. Lewis, of Boston. The most prominent editors were Du Bois (Crisis), Fred R. Moore (New York Age), Robert S. Abbott (Chicago Defender), Robert L. Vann (Pittsburgh Courier), J. H. Murphy (Baltimore Afro-American), Ed Warren (Amsterdam News), and J. Finley Wilson (Washington Eagle). The churchmen were led by John R. Hawkins (AME Church). The educators included Major Allen W. Washington (Booker T. Washington's son, from Hampton), Robert Russa Moton (Tuskegee), and George W. Cook (Howard), who was a director of the NAACP. The officeholders included George E. Haynes (director, Division of Negro Economics, Department of Labor) and Charles W. Anderson (assistant New York State commissioner for agriculture). The disproportionately large group from the capital included Hawkins, Cook, Assistant District Attorney James A. Cobb, NAACP branch president Archibald H. Grimké, Assistant Superintendent of Schools Roscoe Conkling Bruce, and former Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana P. B.S. Pinchback. As a gathering of black American leadership, the CPI event bears comparison with the Amenia, N.Y., conference of 1916, when Du Bois and Spingarn convened black leaders and interested whites at the latter's home (Kellogg, NAACP, 87–88; Ross, ]. E. Spingam, 47–48).
38. New York Times, 7 July 1918.
39. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA; Washington Bee, 13 July 1918. Arthur Spingarn sat on the NAACP board; he was interested in venereal-disease prevention. See Spingarn, A. B., Laws Relating to Sex Morality in New York City (New York, 1915); The War and Venereal Diseases Among Negroes (New York, 1918).Google Scholar
40. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19 to 21, 1918. Address to the Committee of Public Information,” in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. On Du Bois's views on the war, see Crisis 9 (November 1914): 28–30; Ibid., 14 (August 1917): 165; Ibid., 16 (June 1918): 60. See also Elliott M. Rudwick, W.E.B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest, 2d ed. (Philadelphia, 1968), 193–203; Rampersad, Arnold, The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 143Google Scholar, 161, 201.
41. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19 to 21, 1918. Address to the Committee of Public Information,” in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.
42. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19 to 21, 1918. Bill of Particulars….,” in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. The list included a federal antilynching law, unhindered entrance into government service, abolition of Jim Crow railroad cars, better treatment for black soldiers, and clemency for the remaining men of the 24th Infantry under sentence of death. On the questino of nurses, see Hine, Darlene Clark, “The Call that Never Came: Black Women Nurses and World War I, an Historical Note,” Indiana Military History Journal (January 1983): 23–27.Google Scholar
43. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.
44. Churchill to Chief of Staff, 2 July 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.
45. Creel to Wilson, 5 July 1918 (Creel sent Wilson a fuller account of the conference by Emmett Scott, which included excerpts from the resolutions [Scott to Wilson, 26 June 1918]. It took an approach from Newton D. Baker to secure a reply from Wilson to Scott [Baker to Wilson, 14 July 1918; Wilson to Scott, 31 July 1918]), Woodrow Wilson Papers, Case File 152, LC.
46. Scheiber and Scheiber, “The Wilson Administration,” 450. Tyler was a former auditor of the Navy. He lost his job when Wilson succeeded Taft in 1913. He peddled the War Department line while in France, where three of his sons were serving, but later he denounced the Army's treatment of black troops (Chicago Defender, 8 March 1919; Cleveland Advocate, 14 June 1919).
47. Baltimore Afro-American, 5 July 1918; Indianapolis Freeman, 6 July 1918; St Louis Argus, 5 July 1918. Capt. Britton to Chief, MIB, 9 July 1918, MID File 10218–144, RG 165, NA. By agreement, coverage of the conference was held up until Scott issued an official press release. On John E. Mitchell's editorship of the St. Louis Argus, see George E. Slavens, “Missouri,” in Henry L. Suggs, ed., The Black Press in the South, 1865–1979 (Westport, Conn., 1983), 215–44. William Monroe Trotter announced to the National Liberty Congress, “Quite a number of people tried to stop this congress from convening in Washington, but we could not be stopped by a Jew, nor by a Jim Crow Negro.” He meant Spingarn and Scott. Another speaker, also from Boston, said, “We do not want a Jew to represent our race, we have competent colored men for our leaders,” and accused Scott (“this self-styled leader”) of luring “a number of colored editors to come to Washington to be wined and dined at the Government's expense for the sole purpose of muzzling them” (Intelligence Officer, Northeastern Dept., to Churchill, 15 July 1918; Addresses at Colored Liberty Congress, 24–27 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.).
48. H.R. 11279, H.R. 11554, 65th Cong., 2dsess.; Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, 43- 44, 54–61; Sherman, Republican Party and Black America, 179–95.
49. Newby, I. A., Jim Crow's Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900–1930 (Baton Rouge, 1965), 138–40Google Scholar; Kellogg, NAACP, 231; Ginzburg, Ralph, 100 Years of Lynchings (New York, 1962), 94, 244; Sherman, Republican Party, 181, 184–85; McMillen, Dark Journey, 234–35.Google Scholar
50. J. R. Shillady to J. P. Tumulty, 18 February 1918, Papers ofWoodrow Wilson (1984), 46:380–81.
51. Norfolk Journal and Guide, 25 August 1917.
52. Loving to Chief, MIB, 3 December 1917, MID File 10218–63, RG 165, NA.
53. New England Baptist Missionary Convention leaflet, in Bureau of Investigation radical black press records, BI File CO 311587, RG 65, NA.
54. Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, 45.
55. “Lynching,” Outlook 119 (5 June 1918): 214. See also “Lynching: A National Disgrace,” Outlook 119 (26 June 1918): 339.
56. Capt. G. S. Hornblower to Spingarn, 31 May 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA. The Legislative Branch sent many recommendations to Congress relating to the war, including a detailed discussion of possible laws to tackle subversion, radicalism, and Bolshevism, prior to the passage of the Sedition Act. This was requested at one of the twice-weekly joint conferences of the federal intelligence agencies (Memo to Col Van Deman, “Subject: Counter-Espionage Legislation Suggested,” 17 April 1918, MID File 10996–41, RG 165, NA).
57. Moorfield Storey to Walter F. White, 11 July 1918, J. E. Spingarn Papers (M-SRC). On Storey's later decision to support the Dyer bill, see Hixson, W. B., Jr., “Moorfield Storey and the Defense of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill,” New England Quarterly 42 (1969): 65–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar
58. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, ”To Protect Citizens Against Lynching”: Hearing on HR 11279, serial 66 (statements of Maj. J. E. Spingarn and Capt. G. S. Hornblower), 65th Cong., 2d sess., 6 June 1918, 3–4.
59. Ibid., 4, 11, 13. NAACP demands for federal investigation of the East St. Louis race riot were partly on the grounds that it had caused draft registration of black residents to become “confused and aborted” (Rudwick, Elliott, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 [New York, 1972], 262).Google Scholar
60. “To Protect Citizens Against Lynching”, 4–6, 8, 9, 12–13. Kellogg calls Hornblower's draft “the Gard bill,” after its sponsor, Warren Gard (D—Ohio). It was made obsolete by the Armistice (Kellogg, NAACP, 232).
61. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, “To Protect Citizens Against Lynching,” Part 2 (brief of Capt. G. S. Hornblower), 65th Cong., 2d sess., 12 July 1918.
62. Bolton Smith to Spingarn, 3 July 1918; Spingarn to Smith, 12 July 1918; W. M. Lewis to Spingarn, 22 July 1918; Spingarn to Lewis, 23 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA. On Smith's interest in lynching and race relations, see Smith, “The Memphis Lynching,” New Republic, 11 August 1917, 51; Smith, “The Negro in Wartime,” Public 21 (31 August 1918): 1110–13. Also, Smith, A Philosophy of Race Relations (Memphis, 1919); Smith, Notes on the Negro Problem (n.p., 1918), in Bureau of Investigation (BI) File OG 374214, RG 65, NA.
63. Spingarn to Churchill, 24 June, 22 July 1918; Churchill to Chief of Staff, 27 June, 5 July 1918; Col. Clifford Jones to Chief, MIB, 28 June 1918; Churchill to Edwin Y. Webb, 12 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.
64. Moton to Spingarn, 13 July 1918, enc. copies Moton to Wilson, 15 June 1918, and Wilson to Moton, 25 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. Moton confidentially sent copies of his correspondence with Wilson to other equal-rights campaigners. See, e.g., Moton to A. H. Grimké, 12 July 1918, A. H. Grimke Papers, M-SRC.
65. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.
66. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 July, 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA. For example, Spingarn quoted the declaration of the Tennessee Conference of Charities in May 1918: “The excitement connected with this stupendous war appears to have under mined the self-control of some of the American people to such an extent that lynchings seem to be occurring with increasing frequency; and [this]…strikes at the very root of our national solidarity and efficiency, by raising issues of race and of blood among our own people and will inevitably increase the length of the war and the cost in dead and wounded we will have to pay for victory and thus give aid and comfort to the enemy.” See also Outlook 119 (5 June 1918): 214–16.
67. Ibid.; Amsterdam News, 29 May 1918. The editorial, written by Cyril Briggs, later leader of the communist African Blood Brotherhood, led to this issue being deemed nonmailable and cost Briggs his job (Report of Examiner 1731, U.S. Postal Censorship, Key West, Fla., 4 June 1918; A. Bruce Bielaski to Charles DeWoody, 12 July 1918, BI File OG 38201, RG 65, NA; Haywood, Harry, Black Bobhevik [Chicago, 1978], 123).Google Scholar
68. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Handel, Michael I., War, Strategy and Intelligence (London, 1989), 208–9.Google Scholar
72. Wilson to Moton, 4 December 1916, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1982), 40:218. For examples of the pressure on Wilson to speak out, see M. Storey, J. E. Spingarn, W.E.B. Du Bois, and O. G. Villard et al. to Wilson, 13 February 1918, Papers ofWoodrow (1983), 41:217–18; Petition presented by J. W. Johnson et al., 19 February 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1984), 46:383–85; J. M. Waldron and J. MacMurray to Wilson, 25 May 1918, Moton to Wilson, 15 June, 24 June 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1985), 48:155- 61, 323, 416; L. C. Dyer to Wilson, 23 July 1918, J. R. Shillady Wilson, 25 July 1918, Papers ofWoodrow Wilson (1985), 49:751–62, 88–89.
73. Creel, , Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years (New York, 1947), 199Google Scholar. On the lynching of Robert Prager, see Petersen and Fite, Opponents of War, 202–7.
74. Official Bulletin, 26 July 1918, 1–2.
75. Baker to Wilson, 1 July 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1985), 48:475–76.
76. Official Bulletin, 26 July 1918, 1–2. A month later, Wilson approved Baker's proposal that ten of the remaining sixteen death sentences on the 24th Infantry mutineers be commuted to life imprisonment (Baker to Wilson, 22 August 1918; Wilson to Baker, 24 August 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson [1985], 49:324–28, 347). Some of the prisoners were released by Warren Harding in 1921; the last was released by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 (Kellogg, NAACP, 262).
77. Moton to Wilson, 27 July 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1985), 49:113–14; Historial Statistics of the United States, 218; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 148–56.
78. Churchill to MI-4, 29 July 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA; Churchill to MI-4, 29 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.
79. Churchill to Spingarn, 30 July 1918, Joel Spingarn Papers, NYPL.
80. Thomas Jesse Jones to Churchill, 24 July 1918; Jones to F. Keppel, 27 July 1918, MID Files 10218–154, 190, RG 165, NA. Thomas Jesse Jones was a white sociologist from whom Churchill received advice about alternative “Negro Subversion” officers. He was a director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund and a specialist in black education in the Bureau of Education. See Jones, Thomas J., Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States [U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletins No. 38 and 39] (Washington, D.C., 1917).Google Scholar
81. Maj. H. T. Hunt to Scott, 6 August 1918, MID File 10218–60, RG 165, NA; Churchill to Scott, 8 August 1918, MID File 10218–196, RG 165, NA; Brig.-Gen. E. L. Munson, Chief, Military Morale Section, to Capt. J. J. Gleason, 21 October 1918, MID File 10218–196, RG 165, NA. Walter Loving was retained and shifted to the Morale Section. On the Morale Section, see Thomas M. Camfield, “‘Will to Win'—The U.S. Army Troop Morale Program of World War I,” Military Affairs 41 (October 1977): 125–28. By July 1919 the Military Intelligence Division had disowned Spingarn completely. When a U.S. senator from Arkansas sent Baker a clipping of Spingam's speech at the 10th Annual Conference of the NAACP, demanding an explanation of a reference to Spingam's service in intelligence, Churchill drafted “an appropriate reply” for Baker's signature. He stressed that Spingarn had been transferred to MIB when it was desperately short of staff, and that when “his service there did not prove satisfactory” he had been posted to France (Baker to W. F. Kirby, 16 July 1919, MID File 10218–343, RG 165, NA). Spingarn served with distinction with the AEF, as a corps commander, staff officer, and special intelligence gatherer for General Pershing (Ross, J. E. Spingarn, 101–2).
82. This fear dominated the “Negro Subversion” work of MIB and the Bureau of Investigation well into the 1920s, when the investigators lacked Spingam's reforming intentions and were often prejudiced. Kenneth O'Reilly argues that it survived to reemerge in the domestic surveillance operations of more recent years (O'Reilly, , ”Racial Matters”: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972 [New York, 1989], 9–47).Google Scholar