Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T11:42:39.610Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Joel Spingarn's “Constructive Programme” and the Wartime Antilynching Bill of 1918

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

Mark Ellis
Mark Ellis
Affiliation:
University of Strathclyde Scotland
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the summer of 1918, the white chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Major Joel E. Spingarn, called for urgent congressional action on mob violence. He seized the opportunity of a post in the Military Intelligence Branch (MIB) of the War Department General Staff in Washington, D.C., to put forward a “constructive programme,” the central idea of which was the passage of a bill to make lynching in wartime a federal offense. Attempting to exploit the peculiar circumstances of the national emergency and the expansion of federal powers during World War I, Spingarn also proposed a series of more modest initiatives designed to lessen discrimination and raise black morale. The official reaction to the arguments he advanced in support of his program sheds light on the reluctance of the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson to develop a policy on race relations. It also suggests some of the problems and hazards facing a would-be reformer working from within.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , April 1992 , pp. 134 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1. Kellogg, Charles Flint, NAACP: A History of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, vol. I: 1909–1920 (Baltimore, 1967), 9–30Google Scholar, 209–46; Zangrando, Robert L., The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950 (Philadelphia, 1980), 3–50Google Scholar. See, e.g., NAACP resolution on lynching, Villard, O. G. and Ovington, M. W. to G. W. Wickersham, 16 December 1911, Dept. of Justice File 158260–7, section 1, 1911–19, Record Group (RG) 60, National Archives (NA), Washington, D.C.Google Scholar

2. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, DC: US Bureau of Census, 1960), 218Google Scholar; Shapiro, Herbert, White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Amherst, 1988), 93–157Google Scholar; Wright, George C., Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865–1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings” (Baton Rouge, 1990), 185–213.Google Scholar

3. For discussions of progressivism and World War I, see Cohen, Warren I., The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago, 1967), 3–25Google Scholar; McClymer, John F., War and Welfare: Social Engineering in America, 1890–1925 (Westport, Conn., 1980), 153–84Google Scholar; Wynn, Neil A., From Progressivism to Prosperity: World War I and American Society (New York, 1986), 35–38Google Scholar; Thompson, John A., Reformers and War: American Progressive Publicists and the First World War (Cambridge, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, passim. Weiss's argument is that the NAACP “was an authentic product of the Progressive Era in which it was founded. … Racial reformers belong in the ranks of social justice progressives, and the organizations they founded are among the most important institutional legacies of the era of reform” (Weiss, Nancy J., The National Urban League, 1910–1940 [New York, 1974], 47–48)Google Scholar. See also Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, 16–17; Fishel, Leslie H., Jr., and Quarles, Benjamin, The Negro American: A Documentary History (Glenview, III., 1967), 359–62Google Scholar. Progressive sponsors and early organizers of the NAACP included Spingarn, Jane Addams, Ray Stannard Baker, Sophonisba Breckinridge, John Dewey, John Haynes Holmes, Florence Kelley, Mary White Ovington, Louis F. Post, Charles Edward Russell, Lincoln Steffens, Oswald Garrison Villard, Lillian Wald, and Stephen Wise (Kellogg, NAACP, 298–308). See, for progressive opinion, Baker, Ray Stannard, “The Negro in a Democracy,” Independent 67 (2 September 1909): 584–88Google Scholar. Thompson points out that progressivism was nevertheless broad enough to harbor a good deal of race prejudice (Reformers and War, 72–73).

4. Ross, B. Joyce, J. E. Spingarn and the Rise of the NAACP, 1911–1939 (New York, 1972), 16–80Google Scholar; Kellogg, NAACP, 61–64, 68, 128. On Joel Spingarn's scholarly reputation, see Deusen, Marshall Van, J. E. Spingarn (New York, 1971)Google Scholar. Also, Spingarn, Joel E., History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (New York, 1899)Google Scholar, New Hesperides and Other Poems (New York, 1911)Google Scholar, A Question of Academic Freedom (New York, 1911)Google Scholar, Creative Criticism: Essays on the Unity of Genius and Taste (New York, 1917)Google Scholar; Boyeson, Bayard, “Creative Criticism,” The Dial 63 (16 August 1917): 95–98.Google Scholar

5. Williamson, Joel, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York, 1984), 368.Google Scholar

6. Woodrow Wilson to Howard Allen Bridgman, 8 September 1913, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, 1978), 28:265–66.Google Scholar

7. Weiss, Nancy J., “The Negro and the New Freedom: Fighting Wilsonian Segregation,” Political Science Quarterly 84 (March 1969): 61–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sherman, Richard B., The Republican Party and Black America: From McKinley to Hoover, 1896–1933 (Charlottesville, Va., 1973), 116–17Google Scholar; Ross, J. E. Spingarn, 35–37; Williamson, Crucible of Race, 364–94.

8. Ross, J. E. Spingarn, 84, 96–97; Van Deusen, Spingarn, 62–63.

9. Kellogg, NAACP, 251; Kennedy, David M., Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, 1980), 161Google Scholar; Chase, Hal S., “Struggle for Equality: Fort Des Moines Training Camp for Colored Officers, 1917,” Phylon 39 (December 1978): 297–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Williams, Charles H., Sidelights on Negro Soldiers (Boston, 1923), 38Google Scholar; Norfolk Journal and Guide, 3 March, 5 May 1917. The project was given added publicity by W.E.B. Du Bois (Crisis 14 [June 1917]: 60–61).

10. Cleveland Gazette, 10 March 1917; New York News, 22 February 1917, reprinted in Ibid., 18 July 1918; Kellogg, NAACP, 253–55.

11. Norfolk Journal and Guide, 17 March, 14 April 1917. Young was in line for promotion to brigadier-general, but Wilson approved his removal from the active list after complaints by white officers of the 10th Cavalry were forwarded to the White House and the War Department by southern senators, including John Sharp Williams of Mississippi. Critics of the administration, including Du Bois, implied the medical reasons for Young's retirement (nephritis, high blood pressure, arteriosclerosis, and cardiac hypertrophy) were spurious, but his death in Liberia in January 1922 was caused by “acute exacerbation of a old-standing complaint”—nephritis (Williams, J. S. to Wilson, W., 22 June 1917Google Scholar, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress [LC]; Wilson, to Williams, , 27 June, 30 June 1917Google Scholar, Papers of John Sharp Williams, LC. Crisis 14 [October 1917]: 286; Ibid., 15 [February 1918]: 165; Barbeau, A. E. and Henri, F., Unknown Soldiers: Black American Troops in World War I [Philadelphia, 1974], 67–68Google Scholar; Greene, Richard Elwell, Black Defenders of America, 1775–1973 [Chicago, 1974], 158–63).Google Scholar

12. Chase, “Struggle for Equality,” 301–2; Kellogg, NAACP, 251–53; Berry, Mary Frances and Blassingame, John, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York, 1982), 316–17Google Scholar. Chase stresses the contribution of Howard University students to the creation of the camp. See also Norfolk Journal and Guide, 5 May, 19 May 1917; “Training Negroes for Officers,” Literary Digest 55 (21 July 1917): 50–51Google Scholar; Pierce, Lucy France, “Training Colored Soldiers,” Review of Reviews 56 (December 1917): 640Google Scholar; Ross, J. E. Spingarn, 84–97; Schuyler, George S., Black and Conservative (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1966), 87–91Google Scholar. On the treatment of black officers in World War I, see Proceedings of a Board of Officers, 26 February 1919, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Papers, Admin. File, LC; Capt J. E. Cutler to Director, Military Intelligence, 20 June 1919 (Military Intelligence Division) File 10218–279, RG 165, NA); Crisis 18 (May 1919): 16–21Google Scholar; Ibid., 19 (December 1919): 45–46; New York Age, 10 May 1919; Cleveland Advocate, 14 June 1919; New York Times, 8 November 1919; “Newton D. Baker, Official Statement About Negro Troops,” Southern Workman 48 (December 1919): 636–39Google Scholar. See also Hunton, Addie W. and Johnson, Katherine M., Two Colored Women with the U.S. Expeditionary Forces (New York, 1920), 57–61Google Scholar; Patton, Gerald W., War and Race: The Black Officer in the American Military, 1915–1941 (Westport, Conn., 1981), 54–68Google Scholar, 81–122.

13. Scheiber, Jane Lang and Scheiber, Harry N., “The Wilson Administration and the Wartime Mobilization of Black Americans, 1917–1918,” Labor History 10 (Summer 1969): 433–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. New York Tribune, 4 April, 5 April 1917; St. Louis Republic, 4 April 1917; New York Evening Telegram, 6 April 1917; New York Times, 7 April 1917. Similar claims were made about other minorities. See, e.g., Jensen, Joan M., Passage from India: Asian Indian Immigrants in North America (New Haven, 1988), 213–45.Google Scholar

15. Bureau of Investigation (BI) File OG 28469, passim, RG 65, NA.

16. See RG 65 (BI), RG 165 (MID), RG 38 (Naval Intelligence), RG 59 (Department of State), RG 28 (Post Office), RG 174 (Department of Labor), NA and National Records Center, Suitland, Md. These records have been edited for microfilm by Theodore Kornweibel, as Federal Surveillance of Afro-Americans (Bethsda, Md.) Government agents were concerned lest expressions of doubt like this letter to a newspaper became commonplace: “Should a black man shoulder a gun to go to war and fight for this country, a country which denies him the rights of citizenship under a flag which offers him no protection, strips him of his manhood by enacting laws which keeps [sic] him from the ballot box, disfranchised, segregated, discriminated against, lynched, burned at the stake, Jim Crowed and disarmed[?]” (McWoodson, R. K. to New York Sun, reprinted in New York Age, 15 February 1917Google Scholar, and in McDowell (West Virginia) Times, –? April 1917. See Attorney, U.S., Virginia, West, to Bielaski, A. B., 25 April 1917Google Scholar, BI File OG 3057, RG 65, NA). On wartime antiradicalism, see Preston, William, Jr., Aliens and Dissenters: Federal Suppression of Radicals, 1903–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), 88–180Google Scholar; Petersen, H. C. and Fite, Gibert C., Opponents of War, 1917–1918 (Seattle, 1968)Google Scholar, passim; May, Christopher N., In the Name of War: Judicial Review and the War Powers since 1918 (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 133–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 164–72.

17. Moton, R. R. to Deman, Col. R. Van, 12 September 1917Google Scholar; Van Deman to Felix Frankfurter, 26 September 1917, MID File 10218–15, RG 165, NA.

18. March, Peyton C., Nation At War (Garden City, N.Y., 1932), 40–41Google Scholar; Coffman, Edward M., The Hilt of the Sword: The Career of Peyton C. March (Madison, Wise., 1966), 53Google Scholar; Ferrell, Robert H., Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917–1921 (New York, 1985), 25–30Google Scholar. On the growth of MIB, see Churchill, Marlborough, “The Military Intelligence Division, General Staff,” Journal of the United States Artillery 52 (April 1920): 311Google Scholar; Johnson, Thomas M., Our Secret War: True American Spy Stories, 1917–1919 (Indianapolis, 1929), 86–95Google Scholar; Powe, Marc B., Emergence of the War Department Intelligence Agency, 1885–1918 (Manhattan, Kan., 1975), 19Google Scholar, 82–87, 90; O'Toole, G.J.A., Encyclopedia of American Intelligence and Espionage (New York, 1988), 192Google Scholar, 461–62.

19. Parsons, Herbert to Spingarn, J., 15 August 1917Google Scholar; Parsons, memo, 19 August 1917Google Scholar; Spingarn, to Parsons, , 25 August 1917Google Scholar; Deman, Van to Chief of Staff, 1 September 1917Google Scholar, MID File 10218–1, -3, -7, RG 165, NA. As manager of Charles Evans Hughes's presidential campaign, Parsons had dealings with James Weldon Johnson in 1916, shortly before Johnson became field secretary of the NAACP (Levy, Eugene, James Weldon Johnson: Black Leader, Black Voice [Chicago, 1973], 166–70).Google Scholar

20. Scott, E. J. to Bois, W.E.B. Du, 15 May 1918Google Scholar, Papers of Joel Spingarn, NYPL; Scott, to Spingarn, 26 June 1918Google Scholar, Joel E. Spingarn papers, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University (M-SRC). Scott had been Booker T. Washington's secretary from 1897 to the latter's death in 1915. He was-appointed to the War Department after a conference on racial tension between Woodrow Wilson, Newton D. Baker, and the principal of Tuskegee Institute, Robert Russa Moton (“The Problem of the Negro Soldier,” Outlook 117 [24 October 1917]: 279–80)Google Scholar. On Scott's career, see Dictionary of American Negro Biography, ed. Logan, Rayford W. and Winston, Michael R. (New York, 1982), 549–51.Google Scholar

21. Counter-Espionage Situation Summary, 18 May 1918, MID File 10641–196(51), RG 165, NA.

22. War Dept. Special Order No. 119, 21 May 1918, Papers of Joel E. Spingarn, New York Public Library (NYPL); M. Churchill to Chief of Staff, –? July 1918, MID File 10996- 36, RG 165, NA; Crisis 15 (January 1918): 112Google Scholar; Ross, J. E. Spingam, 97–98.

23. Spingarn, to Churchill, , 10 June 1918Google Scholar, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. On Loving's earlier work, see MID File 10218–33 onward, and on his career, see his obituary in Journal of Negro History 30 (1945): 244–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Official Bulletin, 4 December 1917; Baltimore Afro-American, 8 December 1917; Kellogg, NAACP, 256–57.

25. Gensch, Capt. C. D. to Chief, MIB, 10 January 1918Google Scholar, MID File 10218–76, RG 165, NA; Bruff, Capt. J. A., “Memorandum re. Officers and Directors of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” 13 July 1918Google Scholar, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. Later reports conveyed YMCA anxieties about allowing the Crisis into camps where black troops were trained (Low, William G. to Deman, Van, 2 May 1918Google Scholar, Hunt, Capt. H. T. to Low, , 6 May 1918Google Scholar, Capt. E. G. Moyer to Chief, MIB, 8 May 1918, MID File 10218–139, RG 165, NA).

26. Sherman, Republican Party and Black America, 117–18; Kellogg, NAACP, 190–93.

27. Spingarn, to Parsons, , 25 August 1917Google Scholar, MID File 10218–1, 7, RG 165, NA.

28. Churchill to Chamberlain, Maj. Gen. J. L., 19 June 1918Google Scholar, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. Baltimore Afro-American, 31 May, 12 July 1918. Waldron, J. M. and Gregory, T. M. to Wilson, Woodrow, 11 May 1918Google Scholar, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 42, ed. Link, Arthur S., (Princeton, 1983), 321–32Google Scholar. Gregory was active in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. See Locke, Alain and Gregory, , Plays of Negro Life (New York, 1927)Google Scholar; Kellner, Bruce, ed., The Harlem Renaissance (New York, 1987), 144.Google Scholar

29. Capt. R. F. Britton to Chief, MIB, 9 July 1918; Scott to Spingarn, 25 July, 1 August 1918; Spingarn to Scott, 27 July 1918, MID File 10218–60, -154, RG 165, NA. For an excellent study of black migration during this period, see Grossman, James R., Land of Hope: Chicago, Black Southerners, and the Great Migration (Chicago, 1989).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

30. Scott to Spingarn, 13 July, 25 July 1918; Capt. J. J. Gleason to Spingarn, n.d., MID File 10218–154, 196, RG 165, NA. On the controversy surrounding Birth of a Nation, see Thomas R. Cripps, “The Reaction of the Negro to the Motion Picture Birth of a Nation,” Historian 25 (1962–63): 344–62; Kellogg, NAACP, 142–45. Scott founded a film company to produce a response to Griffith. Entitled The Birth of a Race, it was released soon after the Armistice (see Hyatt, Marshall, ed., The Afro-American Cinematic Experience: An Annotated Bibliography and Filmography [Wilmington, Del., 1983], 188).Google Scholar

31. Churchill to Southeastern Dept. Intelligence Officer, 5 June 1918; Churchill to Intelligence Officer, Fort Sam Houston, 8 June 1918, MID File 10218–160, 164, RG 165, NA. Title 1, section 3, of the Espionage Act of 15 June 1917, outlawed “false statements” intended to obstruct U.S. military success or promote that of the enemy and statements or deeds intended to impede the draft or encourage military insubordination. Title XII empowered the postmaster general to bar anything he considered treasonable from the mails. It was strengthened by the Sedition Act of 16 May 1918, which made obstruction of warbond sales and the use of “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” about the American form of government, the Constitution, flag or armed forces punishable by a fine of $10,000 and twenty years imprisonment. It also outlawed the deliberate hindering of war-related production.

32. Peyton C. March to Pershing, cablegram 1523, 14 June 1918; Pershing to Adjutant General, D.C., cablegram 1335, 20 June 1918; War Department press release, 20 June 1918; Washington Post, clipping, n.d., in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. See also Official Bulletin, 22 July 1918.

33. Spingarn to Churchill, 10 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. Chicago Tribune, 15 April 1918 (headline, “Creel Lulls U.S. as Foe Within Helps Germany”); New York Independent, n.d., reprinted in Crisis 16 (May 1918): 24; Christian Science Monitor, 31 May 1918. See also Scheiber and Scheiber, “Wilson Administration,” 437–38.

34. G. Creel to Wilson, 17 June 1918; Wilson to Creel, 18 June 1918, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Series 4, Case File 152, LC. That Wilson found black lobbying an unwelcome intrusion is suggested by Robert Russa Moton's wish that he could “relieve the President of any embarrassment which might be occasioned by so many delegations of colored people calling at the White House” (Moton to Joseph Tumulty, 6 March 1918, Wilson Papers, Series 4, Case File 575, LC).

35. On Trotter's meetings with Wilson, see Lunardini, Christine A., “Standing Firm: William Monroe Trotter's Meetings with Woodrow Wilson, 1913–14,” Journal of Negro History 64 (Summer 1979): 244–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 31, ed. Link, Arthur S. (Princeton, 1979), 298–329.Google Scholar

36. Capt. Fred W. Moore to Churchill, 5 June, 19 June, 15 July 1918; Churchill to Moore, 13 June 1918, MID File 10218–153, RG 165, NA.

37. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19–21: List of Conferees,” compiled by Spingarn, n.d., MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. The two absentees were Kelly Miller, of Howard University, and former Assistant Attorney General William H. Lewis, of Boston. The most prominent editors were Du Bois (Crisis), Fred R. Moore (New York Age), Robert S. Abbott (Chicago Defender), Robert L. Vann (Pittsburgh Courier), J. H. Murphy (Baltimore Afro-American), Ed Warren (Amsterdam News), and J. Finley Wilson (Washington Eagle). The churchmen were led by John R. Hawkins (AME Church). The educators included Major Allen W. Washington (Booker T. Washington's son, from Hampton), Robert Russa Moton (Tuskegee), and George W. Cook (Howard), who was a director of the NAACP. The officeholders included George E. Haynes (director, Division of Negro Economics, Department of Labor) and Charles W. Anderson (assistant New York State commissioner for agriculture). The disproportionately large group from the capital included Hawkins, Cook, Assistant District Attorney James A. Cobb, NAACP branch president Archibald H. Grimké, Assistant Superintendent of Schools Roscoe Conkling Bruce, and former Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana P. B.S. Pinchback. As a gathering of black American leadership, the CPI event bears comparison with the Amenia, N.Y., conference of 1916, when Du Bois and Spingarn convened black leaders and interested whites at the latter's home (Kellogg, NAACP, 87–88; Ross, ]. E. Spingam, 47–48).

38. New York Times, 7 July 1918.

39. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA; Washington Bee, 13 July 1918. Arthur Spingarn sat on the NAACP board; he was interested in venereal-disease prevention. See Spingarn, A. B., Laws Relating to Sex Morality in New York City (New York, 1915); The War and Venereal Diseases Among Negroes (New York, 1918).Google Scholar

40. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19 to 21, 1918. Address to the Committee of Public Information,” in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. On Du Bois's views on the war, see Crisis 9 (November 1914): 28–30; Ibid., 14 (August 1917): 165; Ibid., 16 (June 1918): 60. See also Elliott M. Rudwick, W.E.B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest, 2d ed. (Philadelphia, 1968), 193–203; Rampersad, Arnold, The Art and Imagination of W.E.B. Du Bois (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 143Google Scholar, 161, 201.

41. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19 to 21, 1918. Address to the Committee of Public Information,” in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.

42. “Conference of Colored Editors, June 19 to 21, 1918. Bill of Particulars….,” in MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. The list included a federal antilynching law, unhindered entrance into government service, abolition of Jim Crow railroad cars, better treatment for black soldiers, and clemency for the remaining men of the 24th Infantry under sentence of death. On the questino of nurses, see Hine, Darlene Clark, “The Call that Never Came: Black Women Nurses and World War I, an Historical Note,” Indiana Military History Journal (January 1983): 23–27.Google Scholar

43. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.

44. Churchill to Chief of Staff, 2 July 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.

45. Creel to Wilson, 5 July 1918 (Creel sent Wilson a fuller account of the conference by Emmett Scott, which included excerpts from the resolutions [Scott to Wilson, 26 June 1918]. It took an approach from Newton D. Baker to secure a reply from Wilson to Scott [Baker to Wilson, 14 July 1918; Wilson to Scott, 31 July 1918]), Woodrow Wilson Papers, Case File 152, LC.

46. Scheiber and Scheiber, “The Wilson Administration,” 450. Tyler was a former auditor of the Navy. He lost his job when Wilson succeeded Taft in 1913. He peddled the War Department line while in France, where three of his sons were serving, but later he denounced the Army's treatment of black troops (Chicago Defender, 8 March 1919; Cleveland Advocate, 14 June 1919).

47. Baltimore Afro-American, 5 July 1918; Indianapolis Freeman, 6 July 1918; St Louis Argus, 5 July 1918. Capt. Britton to Chief, MIB, 9 July 1918, MID File 10218–144, RG 165, NA. By agreement, coverage of the conference was held up until Scott issued an official press release. On John E. Mitchell's editorship of the St. Louis Argus, see George E. Slavens, “Missouri,” in Henry L. Suggs, ed., The Black Press in the South, 1865–1979 (Westport, Conn., 1983), 215–44. William Monroe Trotter announced to the National Liberty Congress, “Quite a number of people tried to stop this congress from convening in Washington, but we could not be stopped by a Jew, nor by a Jim Crow Negro.” He meant Spingarn and Scott. Another speaker, also from Boston, said, “We do not want a Jew to represent our race, we have competent colored men for our leaders,” and accused Scott (“this self-styled leader”) of luring “a number of colored editors to come to Washington to be wined and dined at the Government's expense for the sole purpose of muzzling them” (Intelligence Officer, Northeastern Dept., to Churchill, 15 July 1918; Addresses at Colored Liberty Congress, 24–27 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA.).

48. H.R. 11279, H.R. 11554, 65th Cong., 2dsess.; Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, 43- 44, 54–61; Sherman, Republican Party and Black America, 179–95.

49. Newby, I. A., Jim Crow's Defense: Anti-Negro Thought in America, 1900–1930 (Baton Rouge, 1965), 138–40Google Scholar; Kellogg, NAACP, 231; Ginzburg, Ralph, 100 Years of Lynchings (New York, 1962), 94, 244; Sherman, Republican Party, 181, 184–85; McMillen, Dark Journey, 234–35.Google Scholar

50. J. R. Shillady to J. P. Tumulty, 18 February 1918, Papers ofWoodrow Wilson (1984), 46:380–81.

51. Norfolk Journal and Guide, 25 August 1917.

52. Loving to Chief, MIB, 3 December 1917, MID File 10218–63, RG 165, NA.

53. New England Baptist Missionary Convention leaflet, in Bureau of Investigation radical black press records, BI File CO 311587, RG 65, NA.

54. Zangrando, NAACP Crusade, 45.

55. “Lynching,” Outlook 119 (5 June 1918): 214. See also “Lynching: A National Disgrace,” Outlook 119 (26 June 1918): 339.

56. Capt. G. S. Hornblower to Spingarn, 31 May 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA. The Legislative Branch sent many recommendations to Congress relating to the war, including a detailed discussion of possible laws to tackle subversion, radicalism, and Bolshevism, prior to the passage of the Sedition Act. This was requested at one of the twice-weekly joint conferences of the federal intelligence agencies (Memo to Col Van Deman, “Subject: Counter-Espionage Legislation Suggested,” 17 April 1918, MID File 10996–41, RG 165, NA).

57. Moorfield Storey to Walter F. White, 11 July 1918, J. E. Spingarn Papers (M-SRC). On Storey's later decision to support the Dyer bill, see Hixson, W. B., Jr., “Moorfield Storey and the Defense of the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill,” New England Quarterly 42 (1969): 65–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar

58. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, ”To Protect Citizens Against Lynching”: Hearing on HR 11279, serial 66 (statements of Maj. J. E. Spingarn and Capt. G. S. Hornblower), 65th Cong., 2d sess., 6 June 1918, 3–4.

59. Ibid., 4, 11, 13. NAACP demands for federal investigation of the East St. Louis race riot were partly on the grounds that it had caused draft registration of black residents to become “confused and aborted” (Rudwick, Elliott, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 [New York, 1972], 262).Google Scholar

60. “To Protect Citizens Against Lynching”, 4–6, 8, 9, 12–13. Kellogg calls Hornblower's draft “the Gard bill,” after its sponsor, Warren Gard (D—Ohio). It was made obsolete by the Armistice (Kellogg, NAACP, 232).

61. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on the Judiciary, “To Protect Citizens Against Lynching,” Part 2 (brief of Capt. G. S. Hornblower), 65th Cong., 2d sess., 12 July 1918.

62. Bolton Smith to Spingarn, 3 July 1918; Spingarn to Smith, 12 July 1918; W. M. Lewis to Spingarn, 22 July 1918; Spingarn to Lewis, 23 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA. On Smith's interest in lynching and race relations, see Smith, “The Memphis Lynching,” New Republic, 11 August 1917, 51; Smith, “The Negro in Wartime,” Public 21 (31 August 1918): 1110–13. Also, Smith, A Philosophy of Race Relations (Memphis, 1919); Smith, Notes on the Negro Problem (n.p., 1918), in Bureau of Investigation (BI) File OG 374214, RG 65, NA.

63. Spingarn to Churchill, 24 June, 22 July 1918; Churchill to Chief of Staff, 27 June, 5 July 1918; Col. Clifford Jones to Chief, MIB, 28 June 1918; Churchill to Edwin Y. Webb, 12 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.

64. Moton to Spingarn, 13 July 1918, enc. copies Moton to Wilson, 15 June 1918, and Wilson to Moton, 25 June 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA. Moton confidentially sent copies of his correspondence with Wilson to other equal-rights campaigners. See, e.g., Moton to A. H. Grimké, 12 July 1918, A. H. Grimke Papers, M-SRC.

65. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.

66. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 July, 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA. For example, Spingarn quoted the declaration of the Tennessee Conference of Charities in May 1918: “The excitement connected with this stupendous war appears to have under mined the self-control of some of the American people to such an extent that lynchings seem to be occurring with increasing frequency; and [this]…strikes at the very root of our national solidarity and efficiency, by raising issues of race and of blood among our own people and will inevitably increase the length of the war and the cost in dead and wounded we will have to pay for victory and thus give aid and comfort to the enemy.” See also Outlook 119 (5 June 1918): 214–16.

67. Ibid.; Amsterdam News, 29 May 1918. The editorial, written by Cyril Briggs, later leader of the communist African Blood Brotherhood, led to this issue being deemed nonmailable and cost Briggs his job (Report of Examiner 1731, U.S. Postal Censorship, Key West, Fla., 4 June 1918; A. Bruce Bielaski to Charles DeWoody, 12 July 1918, BI File OG 38201, RG 65, NA; Haywood, Harry, Black Bobhevik [Chicago, 1978], 123).Google Scholar

68. Spingarn to Churchill, 22 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid.

71. Handel, Michael I., War, Strategy and Intelligence (London, 1989), 208–9.Google Scholar

72. Wilson to Moton, 4 December 1916, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1982), 40:218. For examples of the pressure on Wilson to speak out, see M. Storey, J. E. Spingarn, W.E.B. Du Bois, and O. G. Villard et al. to Wilson, 13 February 1918, Papers ofWoodrow (1983), 41:217–18; Petition presented by J. W. Johnson et al., 19 February 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1984), 46:383–85; J. M. Waldron and J. MacMurray to Wilson, 25 May 1918, Moton to Wilson, 15 June, 24 June 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1985), 48:155- 61, 323, 416; L. C. Dyer to Wilson, 23 July 1918, J. R. Shillady Wilson, 25 July 1918, Papers ofWoodrow Wilson (1985), 49:751–62, 88–89.

73. Creel, , Rebel at Large: Recollections of Fifty Crowded Years (New York, 1947), 199Google Scholar. On the lynching of Robert Prager, see Petersen and Fite, Opponents of War, 202–7.

74. Official Bulletin, 26 July 1918, 1–2.

75. Baker to Wilson, 1 July 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1985), 48:475–76.

76. Official Bulletin, 26 July 1918, 1–2. A month later, Wilson approved Baker's proposal that ten of the remaining sixteen death sentences on the 24th Infantry mutineers be commuted to life imprisonment (Baker to Wilson, 22 August 1918; Wilson to Baker, 24 August 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson [1985], 49:324–28, 347). Some of the prisoners were released by Warren Harding in 1921; the last was released by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 (Kellogg, NAACP, 262).

77. Moton to Wilson, 27 July 1918, Papers of Woodrow Wilson (1985), 49:113–14; Historial Statistics of the United States, 218; Shapiro, White Violence and Black Response, 148–56.

78. Churchill to MI-4, 29 July 1918, MID File 10218–154, RG 165, NA; Churchill to MI-4, 29 July 1918, MID File 10996–36, RG 165, NA.

79. Churchill to Spingarn, 30 July 1918, Joel Spingarn Papers, NYPL.

80. Thomas Jesse Jones to Churchill, 24 July 1918; Jones to F. Keppel, 27 July 1918, MID Files 10218–154, 190, RG 165, NA. Thomas Jesse Jones was a white sociologist from whom Churchill received advice about alternative “Negro Subversion” officers. He was a director of the Phelps-Stokes Fund and a specialist in black education in the Bureau of Education. See Jones, Thomas J., Negro Education: A Study of the Private and Higher Schools for Colored People in the United States [U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletins No. 38 and 39] (Washington, D.C., 1917).Google Scholar

81. Maj. H. T. Hunt to Scott, 6 August 1918, MID File 10218–60, RG 165, NA; Churchill to Scott, 8 August 1918, MID File 10218–196, RG 165, NA; Brig.-Gen. E. L. Munson, Chief, Military Morale Section, to Capt. J. J. Gleason, 21 October 1918, MID File 10218–196, RG 165, NA. Walter Loving was retained and shifted to the Morale Section. On the Morale Section, see Thomas M. Camfield, “‘Will to Win'—The U.S. Army Troop Morale Program of World War I,” Military Affairs 41 (October 1977): 125–28. By July 1919 the Military Intelligence Division had disowned Spingarn completely. When a U.S. senator from Arkansas sent Baker a clipping of Spingam's speech at the 10th Annual Conference of the NAACP, demanding an explanation of a reference to Spingam's service in intelligence, Churchill drafted “an appropriate reply” for Baker's signature. He stressed that Spingarn had been transferred to MIB when it was desperately short of staff, and that when “his service there did not prove satisfactory” he had been posted to France (Baker to W. F. Kirby, 16 July 1919, MID File 10218–343, RG 165, NA). Spingarn served with distinction with the AEF, as a corps commander, staff officer, and special intelligence gatherer for General Pershing (Ross, J. E. Spingarn, 101–2).

82. This fear dominated the “Negro Subversion” work of MIB and the Bureau of Investigation well into the 1920s, when the investigators lacked Spingam's reforming intentions and were often prejudiced. Kenneth O'Reilly argues that it survived to reemerge in the domestic surveillance operations of more recent years (O'Reilly, , ”Racial Matters”: The FBI's Secret File on Black America, 1960–1972 [New York, 1989], 9–47).Google Scholar