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We Return Fighting: World War I and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity ed. by Kinshasha Holman Conwill (review)

2023; Volume: 104; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/nyh.2023.a902916

2328-8132

Andrea A. Burns,

World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact

Reviewed by: We Return Fighting: World War I and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity ed. by Kinshasha Holman Conwill Andrea A. Burns (bio) We Return Fighting: World War I and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity By Kinshasha Holman Conwill, ed. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2019. 160 pages. $19.95 hardcover. This companion book to We Return Fighting, an exhibition held in 2020 at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, D.C., offers readers rich visual and textual insights into the opportunities and obstacles faced by Black military members and civilians during the Great War. World War I's cataclysmic loss of life, its fracturing and rebuilding of countries and alliances, and the ultimate pathway it laid for World War II have been well documented; less so are the ways in which African American men and women challenged the [End Page 205] deeply segregated parameters of the military and the home front. Indeed, as Secretary of the Smithsonian Lonnie Bunch argues in the book's introduction, "The conflict reshaped black Americans' views of ourselves" (13). The NMAAHC's temporary exhibition, which closed on September 6, 2020, is still available to view online.1 Although neither the book nor the website can replicate the more tangible experience of witnessing remarkable objects like the Croix de Guerre medal, awarded by France to each member of the 369th Infantry Regiment (better known as the "Harlem Hellfighters"), the carefully selected photographs, sketches, textiles, and documents that proliferate the book's pages invite close examination and reflection upon the sacrifices and achievements of African Americans in wartime. The years spanning World War I constitute the primary focus of both the book and the exhibition, with three distinct periods receiving the most attention: Pre-War (1865–1917); During the War (1917–19); and Post-War (1919–63). Edited by NMAAHC deputy director Kinshasha Holman Conwill, the book consists of a collection of essays by various authors, including military historian and exhibit guest curator Krewasky A. Salter; Lisa Budreau, senior curator of military history for the Tennessee State Museum; and Philippe Etienne, ambassador of France to the United States, who wrote the forward. Fittingly, the NMAAHC partnered with France's First World War Centennial Mission and other French cultural institutions in their development of this exhibit. Woodrow Wilson's call for Americans to enlist and support the war effort divided Black intellectuals and activists. Socialist leaders like A. Philip Randolph, leader of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and founder of the magazine The Messenger, advocated draft resistance and vociferously critiqued the patriotism of Black leaders like NAACP founder W. E. B. DuBois. For his part, DuBois supported Black participation in the war but called out the hypocrisy of a world in which Jim Crow coexisted with the call to make the world "safe for democracy." Indeed, when Black veterans returned home, they confronted cities that convulsed in racially motivated massacres, as in East St. Louis during the summer of 1917. In his famous refrain, from which the title of the exhibition is drawn, DuBois presented a vision of a "New Negro"—one who had fought with honor and earned deep gratitude abroad, and who now returned home to challenge inequality and discrimination: "We Return. We return from fighting. We return fighting. Make Way for Democracy! We Saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America or know the reason why" (42). As Krewasky Salter documents, more than 200,000 Black soldiers fought in the war, with most being relegated to "services of supply" (SOS) units. These units, made up of engineers, dockworkers, stevedores, and—in the months after the war's end, gravediggers—kept [End Page 206] the wartime supply effort moving. The Army was the only military unit where Black men were allowed to engage in combat, with around 40,000 African Americans fighting in the infantry. The lauded Harlem Hellfighters fought for an astounding 191 consecutive days in the trenches, and according to historian John Morrow, "ended the war on the banks of the Rhine River" (123). The military valor of the 369th was coupled with...