JF Ptak Science Books Post 2564
"The increasing number of Negroes in the United States about 15,000,000 [sic] would create for the white race in the Republic a menace of degeneracy were it not that an impassable gulf has been made between them..."--"Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops", Crisis, 1919
During WWI U.S. troops included dozens of thousands of African Americans. Unfortunately a sizable percentage of the U.S. Army's leadership perception of these fighters was that they were not dependable, and the difficulties of having Blacks fight alongside (or near) Whites was an issue too great in many cases to bear. So in order to send these troops into battle some were reassigned to the French army. And so it came to pass that regiments would be formed of U.S. soldiers wearing French helmets, carrying French weapons, using French kit, eating French rations, fighting with French soldiers under French leadership, but wearing U.S. Army uniforms. Many of these men went on to high honors, and some--like those comprising the 369th Infantry Regiment of the 93d Division (the Harlem Hellfighters) who were attached to the French 161st Division would achieve renown for never losing a man to capture, and never giving an inch of ground.
What were we thinking?
That question is now easily answered, but not so much in 1918. In 1919, however, W.E.B. DuBois published (and made "infamous"1) a 1918 memo that was intended for French military leadership on how to deal with the American Negro, a document known as "Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops". It was signed by a Colonel (Jean L.A.) Linard, who was a French liason officer at the AEF headquarters, and was a document detailing American expectations of the French in dealing with the Black soldier, and "which carried the imprimateur of Pershing's staff"2. The document was signed by Linard and had a very whispy feel of it being of French origin, but the implications were that it was the U.S. Army communicating their interests to the French rather than Linard's own initiative in translating U.S. attitudes towards Black people. DuBois himself wrote in introducing the piece that "no one for a moment supposes he [Linard] was the author of it"3,4.
The French were being instructed on American interpretations of White-Black race relations, and to remember that extensions of social freedoms to the Black soldiers was unacceptable as "intolerable pretensions of equality", and to abide by the guidelines in the corrupting document, as the French treatment of our Black soldiers was seen as being liberal and equal and so therefore divisive and dangerous.
It is a miserable exhortation--so much so that after the war, when the French National Assembly was told of the Secret Information, the matter became a scandal.5 The contents of the document and the general awareness of the U.S. military to instill a Jim Crow existence in France was not entirely as "secret" as its name implies, as it was evidently known at least to the 369th in the spring of 1918. (Richard Slotkin wrote that "Harlem got hold of it within the month"6.) No doubt that this had a very negative impact on the soldiers who were being described in it and at the same time fighting and dying for their country.
The introduction ends informing the French that their equal treatment of Black people was an "indulgence" that caused "grievous concern" and was an "affront" to U.S. national policy. It really is nothing but all shades of bad:
[Source, W.E.B. DuBois, The Crisis, volume 18, #1, overall number 103, May 1919. Full text here via Google Books: http://tinyurl.com/new4ppe]
The document continues:
"The American attitude upon the Negro question may seem a matter for discussion to many French minds. But we French are not in our province if we undertake to discuss what some call prejudice American opinion is unanimous on the color question and does not admit of any discussion."
"The increasing number of Negroes in the United States about 15,000,000 would create for the white race in the Republic a menace of degeneracy were it not that an impassable gulf has been made between them..."
The conclusion of the communique summed up the ways in which the French command should deal with the U.S. soldiers:
- We must prevent the rise of any pronounced degree of intimacy
- Cannot deal with them [Black officers] on the same plane as with the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter
- We must not eat with them must not shake hands or seek to talk or meet with them outside of the requirements of military service
- We must not commend too highly the black American troops particularly in the presence of white Americans
- It is all right to recognize their good qualities and their services but only in moderate terms strictly in keeping with the truth
- Make a point of keeping the native cantonment population from spoiling the Negroes
- White Americans become greatly incensed at any public expression of intimacy between white women with black men.
It is a short but vicious and indicting document.
Notes:
1. Adriane Danette Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I, p. 103.
2. Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality, by Richard Slotkin, 2005, p. 253. (This is a fine work by the man who brought you the very inquisitive and insightful Gunfighter Nation.) See also the excellent work by Arthur E. Barbeau and Florette Henri, The Unknown Soldiers: African-American Troops in World War I, pp 114-115.
3. ibid. Slotkin, p. 255.
4. Jennifer C. James, A Freedom Bought with Blood: African American War Literature from the Civil ... has another, more circumspect, view of Linard's involvement, writing that "pressure from the U.S. Army over the absence of strict segregationist regulations in the French Army did prompt Col. Linard..." to write the document. I guess this is all about the definition of the word "prompt".
There are other opinions on this matter suggesting that Linard had a bigger role in the construction of the document than described here. For another viewpoint see Martin S. Alexander Knowing Your Friends: Intelligence Inside Alliances and Coalitions from 1914 ..., p 26.
5. National Stereotypes in Perspective: Americans in France, Frenchmen in America, edited by William L. Chew, pp 273-4 for a discussion of the Secret Information and its reception by the French.
6. Slotkin quoted in Delia Cunningham Mellis, "The Monsters We Defy": Washington, D.C. in the Red Summer of 1919, 2008, p 76.
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