In the Massacre at Carrizal
Another backyard quarrel and fight occured 1916 between the United States and Mexico. The famous 10th Colored Cavalry, 24th and 25th Colored Infantries were sent with Chicago National Guards to help watch the American border. On the morning of June 21, 1916, two divisions of the 10th Cavalry, Companies C and K, wished to pass through Carrizal to reach Villa Alunado. They were invited to come nearer for a friendly parley with the Mexicans. As the American soldiers drew closer to the place many of the Mexicans slyly, slowly and seemingly unconcerned quietly fell back, spread out and in Indian style rapidly formed a circle around the little band of unsuspecting Americans before they had really noticed what had been done. At an unseen given signal the Colored troops were suddenly attacked. They were outnumbered eight to one and in the engagement lost fifteen killed, had nine wounded and twenty-three captured, who received much inhuman treatment from the hands of their captors. Among the many brave acts of heroism during the day’s fighting was the one of Peter Bagstaff, a trooper of the 10th Cavalry, who in the very face of the Mexicans’ hailing shots staid by the side of his mortally wounded Lieut. H. F. Adair, giving that officer physical aid until death ended his sufferings.
IN THE WORLD WAR
(1914-1918)
James Reese Europe
All sing the praise of Europe’s Band
That took such cheer to “No Man’s Land”
His were the tunes that led in line
The Colored bands of famed jazz time.
When life got “blue” to soldier lads,
And thots of home made hearts so sad,
Clownish slurs on “Jim’s” freak slides (trombones)
Made big loud smiles in camps abide.
To kings and queens of “Over There”,
He always played his jazziest air;
And generals often sent for him
To come and please their music whim.
From depths to heights he upward grew:
Then sudden death shut out of view
That Negro Sousa’s hidden chords
A world has lost from Bandrom boards.
—Harrison.
REGARDLESS of their two hundred and ninety-eight years of unstained and unquestioned loyalty and patriotism in America, Colored people at the time the United States was about to enter the World War, were made to feel that they were not needed nor wanted in the conflict. And on many occasions they were even told that the World War was not their affair but was a “white man’s war.” Here is again shown where an inherited African instinct—that of usually being able to sense some big future happening—enabled the American Colored people to see far enough into the distance to fully realize that white people who made such remarks were sadly mistaken. Colored people then knew as all other people later found out that they were as much concerned and needed in that world conflict as any and all other races of people who took part in it.
But not until America was fearfully startled and sensibly awakened by the rapid and persistent progress of the Germans into France did this country reluctantly consent to give the Colored soldiers a half-fair chance and part in the war. And even then their acceptances had more the resemblances of the probationary trials of total strangers rather than the glad welcomings of life-long and never-failing friends. In other words, figuratively speaking, it was in the highly tempered crucibles of the World War’s whitehot furnaces of universal conflict that Negro Americanism was put through a retesting process, in order to determine the actual purity of its material and abstract composition. As to the outcome of that unnecessary and unjust retesting process, let the reader (like a minutely trained chemist) sum up in accurate notations the final results, but only after carefully weighing and reweighing the following analysis in the ever-balanced scales of impartiality.
Henry Johnson, Albany, N. Y. and Needham Roberts, of Trenton, N. J. were the first two Americans soldiers, Colored or white, who were honored by the French Government with the much coveted Croix de Guerre. These men were privates in the 369th Infantry, formerly the distinguished Fifteenth New York National Guard Regiment, that had been brigaded with French troops. It was during the loneliest and latest hours of a night in May, 1918 while Johnson and Roberts were on guard duty at an outpost on the Front near the German lines that they were suddenly surrounded and attacked by a raiding party of a score of German soldiers. Although the two colored boys used their firearms with quickness and deadly aim to keep the enemy off, the superior number of Germans, wounding Johnson three times and Roberts twice, closed in on them in a hand-to-hand death struggle. They soon had Roberts on the ground helpless, one German at his head and another at his feet. Johnson noticing the sad plight of his loyal friend, leaped forward like a wild cat at bay and with one mighty downward blow of his bolo knife split wide open the head of the enemy who was strangling Roberts. Then with a crouching pantherlike spring Johnson made a terrific sweep with his trusty knife that completely opened the stomach of the German at Roberts’ feet. Although on the ground covered with blood and gore, Roberts upon thus being released immediately began to hurl hand grenades among the enemy with telling effect. As the foe, with whose stomach Johnson’s bolo knife had made such a deep and lasting acquaintance, was the leader of the raiding party, the then thoroughly frightened Germans suddenly lost their nerve, dropped their weapons, picked up their helpless ones and made a hasty retreat. Some of the Germans had been killed and many of the party received such wounds and indelible marks that throughout their future lives they will always be reminded that American Colored is a guaranteed fast dye (slow die) that does not run.