History of the American Negro in the Great World War / His Splendid Record in the Battle Zones of Europe; Including a Resume of His Past Services to his Country in the Wars of the Revolution, of 1812, the War of Rebellion, the Indian Wars on the Frontier, the Spanish-American War, and the Late Imbroglio With Mexico

by William Allison Sweeney

Old feelings of race prejudice and intolerance, appearing mainly in the South, confronted the Negro at the beginning of the war. The splendid attitude of the Negro shamed and overcame this feeling in other sections of the country, and was beginning to have its effect even in the South. It is true that men of the race were not accepted for voluntary enlistment in numbers of consequence in any section, but had the voluntary system continued in vogue, the willingness and desire of the race to serve, coupled with the very necessities of the case, would have altered the condition.

No new Negro volunteer units were authorized, but the demand for men would soon have made it imperative. It would have been combatted by a certain element in the South, but the friends of the few volunteer units which did exist in that section were firm in their championship and were winning adherents to their view that the number should be increased. The selective draft with its firm dictum that all men within certain ages should be called and the fit ones chosen, put an end to all contention. The act was not passed without bitter opposition which developed in its greatest intensity among the Southern senators and representatives; feelings that were inspired entirely by opposition to the Negro.

It would have been a bad thing for the country and would have prolonged the war, and possibly might have lost it, if the selective draft had been delayed. But it would have been interesting to see how far the country, especially the South, would have progressed in the matter of raising a volunteer army without accepting Negroes. Undoubtedly they soon would have been glad to recruit them, even in the South.

Unfortunately for the Negro, the draft was not able to prevent their being kept out of the Navy. It is a very desirable branch of the service vitiated and clouded, however, with many disgusting and aristocratic traditions. When the Navy was young and the service more arduous; when its vessels were merely armed merchantmen, many of them simply tubs and death traps and not the floating castles of today, the services of Negroes were not disdained; but times and national ideals had changed, and, the shame of it, not to the credit of a Commonwealth, for whose birth a Negro had shed the first blood, and a Washington had faced the rigors of a Valley Forge, a Lincoln the bullet of an assassin.

The annual report of the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, rendered to the Secretary of the Navy and covering the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918, showed that in the United States Navy, the United States Naval Reserve Force and the National Naval Volunteers, there was a total of 435,398 men. Of that great number only 5,328 were Negroes, a trifle over one percent. Between June and November 1918, the Navy was recruited to a total force somewhat in excess of 500,000 men. Carrying out the same percentage, it is apparent that the aggregate number of Negroes serving, in the Navy at the close of the war, could not have been much in excess of 6,000.

Some extra enlistments of Negroes were contemplated, as the Navy had in process of establishment just prior to the armistice, a new service for Negro recruits. It was to be somewhat similar to the Pioneer units of the army, partaking in some degree of the character of Marines, just as the Pioneers partake of the character of infantry, but in general respects resembling more the engineer and stevedore units. About 600 men had been selected for this service when the project was abandoned on account of the ending of the war.

With the exception of a very limited number who have been permitted to attain the rank of petty officer, Negroes in the Navy were confined to menial occupations. They were attached to the firing forces as coal passers, while others served as cooks assistants, mess attendants and in similar duties. Quite a number were full rated cooks. A few were water tenders, electricians and gunners' mates, each of which occupations entitled them to the aforesaid rank of petty officer. Among the petty officers some had by sheer merit attained the rank of chief petty officer, which is about equal to the rank of sergeant in the army.

The idea of separate ships for the Negro might to some degree ameliorate the sting incident to race prohibition in that arm of government service. The query is advanced that if we can have black colonels, majors, captains and lieutenants in the army, why cannot we have black commanders, lieutenants, ensigns and such in the Navy?

Negroes have often and in divers ways displayed their intelligence and efficiency in the Navy. Take, for instance, the case of John Jordan, a Negro of Virginia, who was chief gunner's mate on Admiral Dewey's flagship the "Olympia" during the Spanish-American war, and was the man who fired the first shot at the enemy at Manila Bay. A Negro chief electrician, Salisbury Brooks, was the originator of inventions which were adopted without reservation by the Navy designers and changed the construction of modern battle ships.

One of the principal instructors on the U.S.S. Essex, the government training ship at Norfolk, is Matthew Anderson, a Negro. He has trained thousands of men, many of them now officers, in the art and duties of seamanship. Scores of Negroes; men of the type of these in the Navy, would furnish the nucleus for officers and crews of separate Negro ships.