WWI Museum calls on Black families to donate artifacts from war

21st February 2022   ·   0 Comments

By Ryan Whirty
Contributing Writer

In a 1980 oral history interview, African-American Army veteran Robert L. Sweeney related his experiences during World War I while serving in France as a supply clerk with the 317th Sanitation Train of the 92nd Army Division.

Sweeney recalled that, unlike white American citizens in the United States, the French treated him and his fellow Black soldiers equally, a situation symbolized by the ability of the servicemen’s ability to mix with white women in France.

Sweeney said such equitable, open-minded treatment gave Black soldiers a sense of dignity that was denied them back home.

“When the French people welcomed us with open arms, that is the only time that I ever realized what a real American soldier was,” Sweeney said in the interview. “The French people had no prejudice what[so]ever. Negro soldiers fraternized with the French girls just like the white soldiers did.…we had some trouble with those white boys from the South…But that was the only time we had any trouble with the white soldiers.”

Sweeney’s narrative is one of thousands of interviews, documents, personal diaries and letters, photos, uniform items and other artifacts archived at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, which has launched an ongoing project to diversify its collections by calling on family members or other people related to Black World War I soldiers to donate their loved ones’ treasured items from the war. The armed conflict ran from 1914-1918, the last year or so of which included American troops of all ethnicities serving overseas.

Museum representatives hope that by collecting such materials, the institution can further document, chronicle and tell the stories of soldiers of color on the front lines and behind the scenes, as well as the millions of African Americans stateside who contributed to the war effort through work in industries, fundraising activities and volunteer services.

The museum’s initiative is also soliciting and archiving materials from World War I belonging to Indigenous Americans and women.

“The museum has always been very committed to collecting objects and archival material of African Americans, both in service and on the homefront, from all nations involved in the war,” said Doran Cart, the senior curator for the museum. “It’s one of the areas of interest in making sure we’re always enhancing our collection.”

Cart said the collection initiative began before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic when museum board members took the lead and cultivated contacts and sources of materials in the local area and across the country.

Since then, museum representatives have been successful in collecting archival materials of people of color, especially from folks who are stuck at home because of the pandemic and have had the opportunity to uncover artifacts while exploring their attics and storage spaces.

Cart said that about 370,000 Black men were called to service through the draft and volunteering, with about 150,000 of them going overseas for the war effort. In addition, millions of people of color contributed at home, including by filling industry jobs that had been previously unavailable to them because of racist hiring policies.

“African Americans were well represented, both on the battlefield and the homefront,” Cart said.

He said that although every aspect of U.S. military service remained segregated at the time, Black and white soldiers worked shoulder to shoulder at times, most significantly with French troops in the trenches.

“[The white forces] needed the combat men and soldiers to fight alongside them,” Cart said. “African Americans contributed greatly to the defense of the frontlines.”

Cart said one of the museum’s goals with the project is “showing how that history affects us today. It’s their objects, their statements and their letters. We need to have that to tell the story.”

In addition to the work of the museum, the chronicling of the Black experience during World War I has continued to be pursued over the years by scholars and other researchers, who have emphasized the way the efforts of African Americans during the war, both stateside and in service across the globe impacted Black awareness and people of color’s second-class status at home.

“African Americans learned important political lessons from the First World War that shaped the direction and tenor of demands for civil rights in the context of World War II,” wrote Chad Louis Williams in a 2004 doctoral dissertation at Princeton University. “The unfulfilled hopes of the First World War caused Black social leaders to accompany support for the war with explicit demands for African American civil rights. …

“African-American soldiers shaped the history of the First World War and its aftermath,” Williams added. “The war marked a turning point in the relationship between Black people and the nation. … As individuals, veterans struggled to come to terms with the personal and political meanings of their service, just as other African Americans attempted to make sense of the war’s impact on their lives and futures.”

Black Americans at the time, including journalists, remained keenly aware of such situations and fought against it by speaking out when they saw injustice and disrespect in the service ranks. They also stressed the importance of presenting to foreign troops a picture of America that truly believed in democracy and equality.

“Not only must this country show to its colored citizens that it believes in fairplay to all,” asserted the Sept. 8, 1917, issue of the Baltimore Afro-American, “but it must give no excuse for disloyalty by overt acts of discriminations against a class of people who are with it in fighting for world democracy, especially when that spirit obtains within their country.

“The United States cannot afford to have Europeans believe that its protestations in favor of world-wide democracy is not its policy at home,” the paper added, “and is evidenced by its prejudicial treatment of 10,000,000 loyal citizens who happen to be of African descent.”

Cart noted the incongruity between the spoken messages Black soldiers were sent when it came to mobilizing the warriors for battle, and the unspoken edicts laced with bigotry and segregational thinking, both during active service and after.

“It was not good,” he said of the situation Black ex-soldiers faced while fighting and after their service. “Here are these men fighting for what they were told was freedom, but were not given the same opportunities.”

Cart said the museum’s continuing initiative will hopefully help to rectify that historical dissonance.

“Sometimes history takes a long time to catch up,” he said, adding that “there’s no deadline to history.”

Cart said anyone interested in donating archival materials can contact the museum via its website, www.theworldwar.org, or through the institution’s social media.

“They can look at some of our online exhibitions on the website, and maybe something like that will spark their memories,” he said. “Anything like that that we can do to inspire people is really why we’re here.”

He noted that the museum also offers an educational initiative designed to impart the experiences and legacies of soldiers of color to younger generations by providing instructional and learning materials to teachers and students.

In his oral history for the museum, Sweeney said he remained keenly aware of the injustices and bigotry soldiers faced, both within the Army and when they returned home to a flawed, unfair democracy.

“After Negro soldiers had been discharged out of the Army, some people didn’t want them to wear that American uniform,” he said. “…[T]he American white man did everything to play you down and degrade you and not let you think you had been over there to fight to make the world safe for democracy. They wanted to put you in your place. … [a]nd that condition probably prevails somewhat today.”

However, despite the indignities, shoddy treatment and prejudice, Sweeney said he didn’t regret his service during the Great War. Using formal unit reviews as examples, he said he remained proud of the contributions he and his fellow African-American soldiers played, even if some American citizens disrespected them.

“That’s one of the most beautiful sights to see the American flag unfurled and see those soldiers at that time,” Sweeney said. “That’s one of the most impressive things that I remember, and it makes you proud that you are an American citizen. It makes you proud that you serve – not­withstanding the fact of all the injustices. … but still America is a great country. I felt even at that time, after the war was over, if the war was ever to happen again I would go back and fight again.”

This article originally published in the February 21, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.