Mr. Baker, the Secretary of War, in late summer, referring to the Des Moines Camp, said:
"The work at Des Moines is progressing remarkably well, and the reports I have from it are very good. The spirit of the men is fine, and apparently this camp is going to do a great deal of good, both to the country and to the men involved."
Colonel C.C. Ballou, of the War College, in charge of the work at Des Moines, said on August 19, in a Sunday interview:
"The colored race constitutes more than ten per cent. of our population, and has, since the Civil War, furnished more than its quota of fighting men of the regular army. At home or on foreign soil the ranks of colored regiments are always full, while the white regiments have with difficulty been maintained at peace strength. To question the valor of the colored soldier is to betray ignorance of history. This is the first opportunity in his history to prove on an adequate scale his fitness or unfitness for command and leadership. At Fort Des Moines, Iowa, on June 16, 1917, there assembled the largest body of educated Negroes ever brought together for a single purpose. The candidates who survive are men of marked intelligence and ability. Let any man who doubts the colored men's patriotism go to Fort Des Moines and see men who have given up professions, business and homes in order to learn to defend their country and merit a more considerate judgment of their race. Let any man who doubts the colored man's fidelity and loyalty come to Fort Des Moines and revise his opinions on what he will there learn of the spirit that has stood unswervingly behind the commanding officer in every decision that he has been called upon to make, even though that decision involved sore disappointment and shattering of hopes. These men have been started out on correct lines and will have no false ideas to unlearn."
Hardly any one in America, black or white, believed that 700 Negroes would be commissioned in the army of the United States to receive positions of honor not only beside her other troops, but on the field of battle with the flower of French and English between veteran soldiery. Everything possible to prevent, somehow or other, seemed to arise. The men were put through the bitterest drill in the hottest sun, under the most scorching orders the English language might devise. They represented every section of the United States. Not once did they break. The acid test came, when, already pricked by the numerous situations which arose to flout them, East St. Louis broke forth in the most savage pogrom Anglo-Saxon culture has ever revealed.
While 1200 Negroes, training for leadership, were undergoing the terrific process of forced attrition, their nerves turned raw by army usage, East St. Louis burst forth. Tidings reached Des Moines that the Illinois militia, called in to break up a race riot at East St. Louis, had joined the rioters and slaughtered the Negro population of the community. White women had joined in these attacks, dragging out of their houses colored women, girls and children, stoning and clubbing them to death. Aged Negro mammies, afraid to come out of their homes, had been burned to death by the mob which set fire to them. Black men had been thrown into Cahokia Creek and stormed with bricks each time they rose to the surface until drowned. A crowd of whites had torn a colored woman's baby from her arms, thrown it into the fire of a blazing dwelling, held the mother from its rescue until she, herself, was shot nigh unto death, and then allowed her to plunge into the fire to rescue her little one. Nor was this all.
But out there in camp, isolated from the usual social life, July 2 and 3 and 4, Independence Day, was indeed a test of nerve, already tried and sore and raw, for the young Negroes in training. Why should men train to fight for a country that permitted such barbarous atrocities against their race with impunity. In savage Memphis charred remains of Negroes burned at the stake before a gala mob of 15,000, were thrown from an automobile in the Negro quarter of that city! And the Negroes at Des Moines held on. It has not been recorded in history that there was here proposed any hostile demonstration, or that vengeance and ruthless retaliation was planned. Wise counsel prevailed, and the Negroes at Des Moines held on.
For three months they held on without audible murmur. Negroes from civilian life, from the national guard, from the regular army, destined for every branch of the military service, defied any propaganda, by whomever invented, to break their morale. For three months they held on. And then word came they would not be graduated. A number, in disgust, left the camp. But the great bulk of them, although at the last moment learning that they could be assigned to no military branch save infantry, remained in camp for another month and were finally commissioned as officers in the national army. It was the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1917 that they received their commissions forwarded from the President of the United States. The hour and day and month a year later became famous not only in their history, but in the history of the civilized world.
They were given a grade neither high nor low. The rank of captain was granted to men who were to serve in France and England. The former country proudly made the Negro a general when he merited promotion; the latter was committed to the policy of white officers for colonial troops. In assigning rank as high as the grade of captain, America took the middle ground. In view of the international situation, she could hardly be expected to do more. She had granted partial recognition, partial honor, partial equality. It was for the Negro to gain the rest.
Seven hundred American Negroes commissioned! A baker's dozen of captains, six hundred odd lieutenants, and five hundred who dropped by the way. German propaganda had taken contrary suggestion and forced the Negro to this point of moral advantage. Plunder, arson, lynching and burning at the stake were employed against him to break his morale or incite him against America. But he held on. Seven hundred of the "sub-species, dark of skin, wooly of hair, long of head, with dilated nostrils, thick lips, thicker cranium, flat feet, prehensile great toe and larkheel" had passed every physical, mental, moral and social test and were commissioned in the American army. Doubt existed in the minds of every American citizen, including the Negro officers themselves, that they would ever see service overseas.