Hello! There are two of us participating in today’s forum, Rebecca Jo Plant (University of California, San Diego) and Frances M. Clarke (University of Sydney). Our shared interests in the social and cultural ramifications of war led us to collaborate on an article that has just been published in the Journal of American History called “‘The Crowning Insult’: Federal Segregation and the Gold Star Mother and Widow Pilgrimages of the Early 1930s.” (A podcast about the article is available at: http://www.processhistory.org/?p=1036.) Between 1930 and 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, the federal government conducted a remarkable program that allowed nearly 6,700 mothers and widows of deceased World War I servicemen to visit the American cemeteries in Europe where their loves were interred. Yet while these expensive and quite lavish pilgrimages were designed to honor and console the bereaved women, the program insulted eligible African American women by requiring them to travel separately. Moreover, whereas the larger white parties stayed in first-class hotels and sailed on luxury liners, the black pilgrims stayed in facilities like the Harlem YWCA in New York and traveled on second-tier passenger ships. Our paper describes how the NAACP and the Chicago Defender, then the nation’s most widely circulated black newspaper, vehemently protested the government’s decision and ultimately called for a boycott program. While some 25 mothers and widows cancelled their trips and never rescheduled, 279 African American women elected to make the journey in the end, traveling in separate groups overseen during their Atlantic crossing by Lt. Colonel Benjamin O. Davis, then the highest-ranking African American in the U.S. Army. We discuss the responses and experiences of these women, who were forced to weigh calls for racial solidarity against deeply felt personal desires.
During the two weeks the pilgrims spent in Europe, they went on numerous sightseeing expeditions, dined at elegant restaurants, were honored in official ceremonies, and enjoyed variety shows staged just for them by famous African American expatriates like Brick Top (Ada Smith) and Noble Sissle. Upon returning to the U.S., many disputed negative coverage of the pilgrimages in the black newspapers; a few even actively campaigned to persuade other women to accept the government’s invitation. Yet their testimony did little to counter a rumor that began to spread within black communities alleging the women had been forced to cross the Atlantic on cattle boats. Pushed by Democratic political operatives who sought to lure black voters away from the Republican Party, by 1932 the cattle boat rumor had gained widespread currency within black communities. It contributed to African Americans’ rapidly growing alienation from the Republican Party and would ultimately help to shape the collective memory of the pilgrimages, overriding the testimony of the women themselves.
We are happy to take any questions about the gold star mother and widow pilgrimage program. We would also be glad to discuss issues related to racial discrimination, World War I and how the war came to be memorialized and commemorated in the 1920s and 1930s. Finally, we are can respond to questions concerning how differences in regard to class, gender, geographical location shaped African Americans’ views of the gold star mother pilgrimages in particular, and interwar black politics more broadly.
Historically, the US armed forces were de-segregated / integrated only after WW2.
Were there serious efforts to have done this following WW1? How effective were these efforts?
If it could not have been done until after WW2, what changed between WW1 and WW2 that made it possible?
Thank you for doing this ama! This is a wonderfully interesting topic and I have a few questions.
How many African-American mothers made the voyage overall?
Did the cattle boat rumor begin in the African American press or the white press?
Did this contribute in some small way to the Great Migration? As many of the African Americans that served in World War One would have been from the south. Did their mothers and extended families make these pilgrimages north to the boats, and then stay up north?
I assume the army was segregated in ww1, but how many black soldiers served? What was the racism like in the armed forces back then? Was the government blatantly racist?
World War II is seen as an important step in the march towards Civil Rights, with (among other things) Executive Order #8802, a major growth in activism for "Double Victory" within the black community, and also setting the stage for desegregation of the armed forces beginning in 1948 and influenced in no small part by the stellar performance of segregated units such as the Tuskegee Airmen. As such, WWII looks like a turning point, and it has an important legacy in the development of the Civil Rights movement. I know very little about the racial situation within the US military during WWI though, the most notable highlight being the Harlem Hellfighters, who famously were seconded to the French to command due to their race.
So anyways, after this long preamble, my question is essentially, did the First World War have any similar impact to race relations in the US, helping to seriously advance the cause of equality in the same way that the Second did? And, of course depending very much on what that answer is I would think, during the 1920s, how different was the memorializing of the war within the African-American community as compared to the country at large?
Who made the decision to provide segregated and inferior accommodations, what was the thought process, and how did that decision navigate the way from government office to reality?
I work for the government currently, which means I've seen the modern decision making process up close. I'm curious both about the specific influence of racism in the federal government and also how bureaucratic decision making has changes since then.
Thanks for doing this, professors Clarke and Plant! I'm curious about how you found this story and tracked it down. Professor Clarke, you're in Australia ─ what's driven your interest in it?
I had a few other questions as well:
Given that the pilgrimages took place during the Depression, how were they able to be funded?
I'm also curious about contemporary media coverage of the pilgrimages. Was the black experience restricted to newspapers like the Chicago Defender? Did "mainstream" newspapers like the Chicago Tribune and New York Times focus predominantly on the white pilgrimages?
You mention the way the "cattle boat" rumor affected politics. Do those effects show up in voting patterns?
And finally, was there any thought as to why the segregated accommodations were second class? Was it an unconscious decision, was it deliberate, was it a cost-cutting move?