This paper will examine whether African Americans were able to accomplish any improvement socially or economically because of America’s involvement in the Great War. In previous readings, we know that African Americans made significant contributions to the war effort, many would join in the fight as others would take jobs in support in the war effort.
The Great War changed America much like that it changed the world. One visionary idea for change early during the Armistice was a belief that America needed to be socially reconstructed. A theme that would require all “classes and sectional interests” in America to subordinate themselves to a greater interest of the nation. American’s needed to be more concerned about the common good of
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Much of the African American leadership regarded the war as an opportunity to “increase (African Americans) stature in the eyes of the white public.” Politically the special assistant to Secretary of War Baker, Emmett Scott, an African American himself, believed that the priority at the beginning was for African Americans to fight first. They would later need to “adjust to the problems in the life of a colored man” at the conclusion of the war. The change would come in the form of job opportunities since so many Americans were in Europe fighting, America faced a labor shortage. The shortage of labor can be attributed to the trickle of European immigrants coming into to American as a result of the war. The Military Conscription Act also diminished the available labor pool in America which if left unchecked could cripple the capitalistic giant. Soon northern industries started to look to the African Americans living to the south for help. By 1930, it is estimated that nearly one-third of a million African Americans left the south for employment in the industrial North of Detroit, Chicago, and the Midwest of St.