An American and Nothing Else: The Great War and the Battle for National Belonging

Conclusion

“We return. We return from fighting. We return fighting.”

So concluded a 1919 editorial penned by W.E.B. Du Bois for The Crisis, calling for African Americans to ready themselves “to fight a sterner, longer, more unbending battle” for democracy at home. A. Philip Randolph, a prominent labor and civil rights activist who had been surveilled and arrested during the war, offered a similar call-to-arms in his socialist magazine The Messenger.

 Randolph, however, summoned the vanguard language of the New Negro Movement. With the rising tide of Harlem radicalism, he advocated for armed self-defense in the struggle for greater race and class consciousness among the black masses. For Randolph, there could be “no armistice with lynch-law; no truce with Jim-Crowism and disfranchisement; no peace until the Negro receives complete social, economic, and political justice.” The New Negro, he concluded, would “[make] America safe for himself.”

The Great War galvanized the struggles for citizenship and self-determination that would define the twentieth century. These years saw high pride and embittered disappointment, progressive change and reform alongside entrenched bigotry and political deferment. African Americans entered the 1920s with hope and newfound social, political, and cultural tenacity, while the decade delivered new and legitimized forms of state and mob violence. The battles to come would contest the borders of American democracy and demand better from a nation that promised liberty but so often defaulted to domination.

Poster: “The Dawn of Hope: Equality for White and Black Men.” [1918]. B.W. Britain. Randolph Linsly Simpson African-American Collection, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.

This exhibit was made possible by the scholarship of Adriane Lentz-Smith, Richard Slotkin, David Kennedy, Christopher Capozzola, and Chad Williams. Special thanks to Kerri Sancomb, Matthew Jacobson, Michael Printy, and the staff and curators at Manuscripts and Archives and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library.