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W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) was a leading civil rights activist, scholar, and editor of The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In June 1917 Du Bois declared that “absolute loyalty in arms and in civil duties need not for a moment lead us to abate our just complaints and just demands.” Over the next year, mounting disaffection within the Black community over racial discrimination and violence threatened to hinder the nation’s economic and military mobilization.
In response, George Creel, the head of the Committee on Public Information, convened a conference of Black newspaper editors to enlist their help in raising African Americans’ morale. Attendees compiled a list of fourteen demands (a nod to Wilson’s Fourteen Points) but also pledged their loyalty. Their demands included a statement from the administration on lynching; more Black men and women appointed to skilled, combatant, and leadership positions in the military; press releases detailing Black soldiers’ heroism; and an end to segregation on trains (the government controlled the railroads during the war). A few weeks later, Du Bois published his “Close Ranks” editorial, shocking many readers with its conciliatory tone. News that Du Bois had applied for an Army captaincy (which he never received) made some wonder if he had struck a side bargain at the conference.
This is the crisis of the world. For all the long years to come men will point to the year 1918 as the great Day of Decision, the day when the world decided whether it would submit to military despotism and an endless armed peace—if peace it could be called—or whether they would put down the menace of German militarism and inaugurate the United States of the World.
We of the colored1 race have no ordinary interest in the outcome. That which the German power represents today spells death to the aspirations of Negroes and all darker races for equality, freedom, and democracy. Let us not hesitate. Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy. We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills.
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