Book Review

Canada and the United States

Mark Ellis documents in vivid detail federal policy toward African Americans during World War I. Although America had followed President Woodrow Wilson into the war in Europe to fight for lofty democratic ideals and the rule of law, officials in his government did their best to contain racial strife and assure black support of the war effort without enacting reforms that would bring about greater access to democracy and legal protection for African Americans. Some civil rights activists continued to advocate reform during the war, but others capitulated to the government's demands for loyalty and soft pedaled their demands for reform, Ellis argues. This created bitter resentments among black activists, some of whom courageously stepped up their demands for racial justice. Thus, the war led to an abandonment of democratic principles by the federal government, a loss of unity among black leaders, and a new and stronger voice for black militants.

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Ellis makes a compelling argument, supported by extensive research into numerous manuscript and archival collections, including the papers of a dozen influential leaders, but most importantly the wartime records of the many federal agencies involved in surveillance and censorship, including Military Intelligence, the Justice Department, the State Department, the Post Office, the Department of Labor, and the Secretary of War. Mining these sources, Ellis is able to tell compelling and richly detailed stories, which deepen and sharpen our understanding of federal race policy and civil rights activism during World War I. The book shows conclusively that African Americans were not passive supporters of government policy during the war, as some historians have argued, but that most of them continued to fight for equal rights throughout the period of American belligerency and in fact the war "heralded the emergence" of greater militancy within the black population (p. 227). But the government was not a willing partner in the advancement of equal rights, and Ellis shows that federal agents who were ignorant about and unsympathetic to the problems faced by African Americans resisted reforms and managed to seduce some race leaders to collaborate in trying to pacify the black population.

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