WWI cut off traffic of European immigrants to America at the same time it excited U. S. industry’s demand for labor. Three years would pass before we entered the war, but there was money to be made right away supplying the combatants. The longstanding gradual migration of Americans from farms and small towns to the cities accelerated with growing opportunities brought on by the war boom.
Groups, which had previously been shunned from work in the industrial north suddenly found their labor in demand. The Scots-Irish from Appalachia came down from the hills and made for the north to work. Fifty thousand of them would migrate from West Virginia to Akron, Ohio to work in the rubber plants. Over the course of the war 400,000 blacks would exodus the south for jobs up north.
Industrial cities of the North experienced an explosion of black population, while the South lamented, even prevented the loss of its workers and sharecroppers. Between 1916 and 1920, 40,000 blacks left the northern counties of Florida. Some moved south to Tampa and Miami, but most went to New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. Jacksonville, with a population of 35,000 blacks, saw 6,000 depart.
Black business communities had developed in southern cities along lines envisioned by Booker T. Washington. He had declared in favor of a separate economy for blacks, a microcosm of the dominant white system. Black bankers would control the finances of black folks. When Jacksonville blacks withdrew their saving from black banks on their way to the north, their bankers aligned with concerned white businessmen and politicians to negotiate better conditions. In a column titled “Words of Advice” the leadership of the Jacksonville Negro Board of Trade wrote, “Wrongs cannot be corrected by running away.” In Jacksonville this talk of a new arrangement slowed things down for a while. But in the interior of the state, the hemorrhaging was severe. Places around Apalachicola Bay, Gainesville and Ocala lost a quarter of their black population. The entire black communities of Live Oak and Dunnellon packed up and followed their ministers to a better place.
When America finally joined the war, this Great Migration surged. Four million men leaving jobs for military service needed to be replaced.
Black leaders saw beyond the opportunity for gainful employment to something greater, the chance to demonstrate the patriotic loyalty of black citizens. Military service would, in their view, add weight to their demand for civil rights. The Wilson Administration was asked to draft blacks in proportion to their percentage within the general population.
The War Department initially opposed the idea, pointing out the dangerous logistical problems of placing black units alongside white forces. Ultimately, it decided to create two so-called “colored” Divisions, the 92nd and the 93rd. The 92nd had been used after the Civil War in the ethnic cleansing campaigns against Native Americans. It was the Indians who named them “buffalo soldiers”. The 93rd Division was newly formed from National Guard regiments in Chicago and Harlem.
When American and British commanders refused to line up with black units on the front, the French accepted the 93rd Division into its line. The French honored the 93rd Division for its valor at the Second Battle of the Marne and expressed their appreciation by presenting the men of the Division with blue helmets. From then on it was known as the Blue Division.
The technology of killing developed over the course of the war. From the introduction of barbed wire and machine guns there followed advancements such as the flame-thrower, poisoned gas, tracer bullets, depth charges, and the interrupted gun, which was timed to fire between the blades of airplane propellers.
The most effective new invention was the tank with fully armored revolving turret introduced by the French at the Second Battle of the Marne in the summer of 1918. The victories of the Blue Division against the German Army that summer stood in stark contrast to the domestic slaughter of blacks in East St. Louis the summer prior.
Directly across the Mississippi River from St. Louis, East St. Louis was an industrial boomtown drawing blacks and whites to work in aluminum plants, steel mills, and train yards. Race competition for jobs and depressed wages fueled hatred. Booker T. Washington had secured the likelihood of this kind of conflict in 1895 at the Atlanta Cotton States Convention when he asked white men to hire blacks “who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, built your railroads and cities”.
Industrialists and politicians advertised and recruited blacks to the city. In the winter of 1916, for example, special trains brought 1,500 blacks up from Tuscaloosa, Alabama. By the spring of 1917 blacks were pouring in to East St. Louis at an average of 2,000 per month. In April of 1917, the Aluminum Ore Company hired 470 blacks to cross the picket lines of white strikers and take their jobs.
What finally erupted that summer was the largest labor related riot in 20th century America. Estimates vary, but approximately 40 black and nine white bodies were identified and 6,000 blacks were burnt out of their homes.
The important role black people played in support of industry and national defense would not immediately achieve the political results their leadership anticipated. In many ways migration north and military service overseas antagonized race relations across the land. It would take another World War to set the stage for political equality in America.