“The Damnable Dilemma”: African-American Accommodation and Protest during World War I

Abstract

In the summer of 1918, a controversial editorial appeared in the Crisis, the monthly journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). "Close Ranks" by W. E. B. Du Bois, the journal's editor and the nation's leading spokesman for equal rights, advised blacks to stop agitating for equality for the duration of World War I. "Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy," Du Bois wrote.' The editorial dismayed many blacks who had come to see Du Bois as the nation's leading black militant. When they learned that the army had offered him a captaincy, some believed he had, in effect, accepted a bribe. Only recently have historians challenged Du Bois's explanation that the editorial was written before he knew of the army's offer and that the two were unrelated.2 David Levering Lewis's 1993 biography asserts that Du Bois "struck a deal" with the army to write "Close Ranks" in exchange for the captaincy. This interpretation was first and most thoroughly presented by Mark Ellis, who based his conclusions on two arguments. First, using previously classified government records, Ellis showed that Du Bois probably drafted "Close Ranks" after he was offered the captaincy. Second, he asserted that the editorial "did not square" with Du Bois's "known rejection of accommodationism."3