Somewhere in the throng of the parade to Harlem that February morning was one of the boldest proponents of Abbott’s vision of “real democracy”: William Monroe Trotter. Two days before, on February 15, Trotter, the controversial African-American editor of the Boston weekly newspaper The Guardian, had left his hometown of Boston and his newspaper. Taking an indefinite leave of absence, he was now spending his days roaming the piers of New York in search of a berth on any vessel bound for Europe. His quest was to personally meet with and persuade the delegates at the Paris Peace Conference to address the issue of racial equality worldwide and thus to bring the attention of the world to the oppression of all people of African descent.
Why would Trotter suddenly drop everything in his life in Boston and move to a boarding house on the New York waterfront to accomplish such a feat? The answer was indeed as intriguing as his flight: the State Department had denied passports to African-Americans planning to travel to Paris, except for those who had already gone in early December, such as W. E. B. Du Bois. But Trotter was determined to go, any way that he could.
In a move that may have been the State Department’s first official interference in African-American politics, none of the requests for passports submitted by African-Americans intending to go to France to promote racial equality was granted. This pile of denials included the eleven delegates selected in early December at Trotter’s National Race Congress to represent the National Equal Rights League and the five individuals Du Bois had chosen to attend his Pan-African Congress in Paris. Among those on the list, besides Trotter, were Madam Walker; Ida B. Wells-Barnett; Perry Howard, the editor of the only black daily newspaper in America, the Baltimore Herald; and black ministers from Boston, Atlanta, Seattle, St. Louis, Kansas, and Mississippi.
They had applied for passports to represent their race at the peace conference, to walk proudly into the Hotel Crillon in Paris, where all the delegates stayed and worked, and where, as Du Bois astutely wrote in an editorial in The Crisis, “the destinies of mankind for a hundred years will be settled.” There they would stress the importance of ending racial injustice worldwide and of liberating African and Caribbean colonies from European rule. Du Bois’s plan, as he had revealed in another column of The Crisis—written after he had arrived in Paris—was to use his congress, ostensibly called to discuss the disposition of the former German colonies in Africa, as a way “to focus the attention of the peace delegates and the civilized world on the just claims of the Negro everywhere.” With great expectation, people came from all over the world to plead the cause of peace, justice, and equality in their own nations. It was imperative that African-American leaders have a presence. The New York Times, echoing both Du Bois’s call for the congress and Trotter’s drive for black representation at the peace conference, wrote that the time had come “for the interests and welfare of the negro to become articulate instead of relying upon philanthropic efforts and that there can be no stable League of Nations unless the negro’s interests are safeguarded.”
The reasons they were denied the passports were at first less apparent. The State Department, when confronted, insisted that there was in fact no official policy to block African-Americans from traveling abroad. And African-Americans were not the only ones whose requests had been denied. Two suffragists, Miss Mildred Morris of Denver, Colorado, and Miss Clara Wold of Portland, Oregon, had had their passports canceled on February 1 because the State Department learned that they had participated in the demonstration on the White House lawn on New Year’s Day. What if they were to wave banners and demonstrate for women’s suffrage in Paris? The State Department did not want to risk that.
Most of the African-Americans on the list of denials had been MID targets in recent months, such as Madam Walker and Trotter and Wells-Barnett, and thus shadowed by one or more government agents. Any black man or woman who was eager to go to France to fight for race equality would likely have been outspoken enough during the previous months to have appeared suspicious to the government. In the government’s lexicon for African-Americans, the words “outspoken” and “suspicious” were synonymous.
Du Bois, for example, who was under the watchful eye of at least one secret agent, was regarded by the MID as a suspicious American—a “rock the boat” type who “may attempt to introduce socialist tendencies at the Peace Conference,” said MID reports. However, he was the only one who had obtained a passport—as a writer for The Crisis—out of the six who applied for them in November to attend his Pan-African Congress. “When I was suddenly informed of a chance to go to France as a newspaper correspondent, I did not talk—I went,” he later said, “because I knew perfectly well that any movement to bring the attention of the world to the Negro problem would be stopped the moment the Great Powers heard of it.”
Although in all probability his cooperation with the MID helped, Du Bois was no puppet for the Wilson administration. His grand plan was to use his congress as a platform from which to shine an immense spotlight on the issue of race oppression. Some government officials must have figured out that denying the passports might not only diminish the power of the congress, but also shut it down. The State Department told the media that the French government did not “consider this a favorable time” for black people to be holding such a conference. At exactly the same time, Du Bois sent out a press release stating that “Clemenceau permits Pan African Conference February 12, 13, 14. North, South America, West Indies, Africa, represented.” When challenged, the State Department stuck with its earlier statement that the French government had told the United States that no such conference would be held. The passport applications would remain in the “denied” bin.
On February 20, the day after the Pan-African Congress opened, the State Department asked the French government whether it had granted permission for such a conference and if so, could the date be postponed so that a “limited number of Negro delegates from this [U.S.] government” could attend. Obviously, it was too late. Knowing that the Wilson administration had falsely claimed the French government’s objection to the conference, James Weldon Johnson wrote in his New York Age column, “the colored people of the U.S. will wait with great interest for the details of the Congress and ‘puzzled officials’ of the State Department will continue to wonder how they ever got into such a hole.”
So the congress went on. At least fifty-seven delegates attended, representing fifteen countries and colonies and 157 million black men and women worldwide in, among others, the British West Indies, Haiti, Portugal, and France. After three days of meeting, they produced resolutions about educational opportunity, land ownership, accessible health care, and decolonization, all to be submitted to the peace conference. Over a thousand copies of the resolutions were distributed. It was Du Bois’s hope that he could personally address the delegates at the Paris Peace Conference. Instead he was told he would be talking about the resolutions to Wilson’s trusted adviser Colonel Edward House, the courteous and cultured Texan who had been working with Wilson in an unofficial capacity since Wilson was governor of New Jersey. Du Bois had to be content to trust that House would present his race resolutions to the peace conference.
Back in the United States, Trotter knew little, if anything, about Du Bois’s activities in Paris. So distrustful, though, of white men’s promises, he would not have dropped his mission, even if he had known that Du Bois had spoken with Colonel House about the Pan-African Congress resolutions. Trotter, a steadfast advocate of the fundamental principles of freedom for all peoples, was single-minded in his belief that the peace conference was and must be about race, perhaps more than anything else. Never before had there been such an opportunity to reach so many leaders at one time in one place. To Trotter, racial inequality was the issue the world must face—now—if peaceful coexistence among different races and nationalities was ever to be achieved. Therefore, it was only logical that Trotter should meet with President Wilson himself. Not Colonel House. Not anyone but the president. And much like Wilson, he would face a multitude of challenges to realize his dream—a fact that would be abundantly evident as he embarked on his epic journey to get to Paris. His plan now was to find a job on a ship headed for France; for this he did not need a passport, but rather a more easily obtainable seaman’s permit.
For Trotter, facing Wilson was hardly a dream—more like Act III of a Shakespearean drama. It had happened twice before, first in 1913, shortly after Wilson’s first presidential election victory. Trotter had worked hard for Wilson, a candidate who had pledged his allegiance to the cause of racial justice. Before the election, in a letter seeking support from Trotter’s onetime friend Bishop Alexander Walters in New Jersey, Wilson had said “The colored people of the U.S. have made extraordinary progress towards self-support and usefulness, and ought to be encouraged in every possible and proper way. My sympathy with them is of long standing and I want to assure you that should I become President of the United States they may count on me for absolute fair dealing of everything by which I could assist in advancing the interests of their race in the U.S.”
Trotter believed in Wilson. He wrote supportive editorials and talked him up in Boston’s black community, where Trotter had lived and worked for many years and was well known. A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University—third in his class—Trotter was Harvard’s first black member of Phi Beta Kappa. After Harvard, he worked as an insurance and mortgage broker in Boston and married a black woman from Boston, whom Du Bois had dated. In 1901 Trotter started The Guardian, a weekly newspaper known first for its disparaging critiques of Booker T. Washington and later for its bold protests against discrimination, segregation, and lynchings. Always serving as a watchdog for his race, Trotter, in his nonviolent campaigns, tried to awaken white Americans to their shameful injustices against African-Americans—all white Americans, including and especially Woodrow Wilson.
After the election, in his congratulatory note to Wilson, Trotter wrote, “as your inauguration approaches, the clouds are lowering and a feeling of foreboding is creeping over the colored people.” Trotter was concerned that the House had passed a bill making interracial marriages a felony in the District of Columbia. It was a dangerous piece of legislation, promoted by the Democratic Party, Wilson’s party. In his post-election letter to Wilson, Trotter noted this and placed the responsibility on Wilson’s doorstep. But Wilson didn’t respond. Trotter wrote him another letter, urging him to steer clear of appointing a white Southerner to be postmaster general. Wilson was considering Albert Burleson, a Texan, for the post. In this letter Trotter reminded Wilson of his support for him and his continued belief that Wilson could be “the inaugurator of a new era of equal rights for Colored Americans.” But Wilson did appoint Burleson and four other white Southerners to cabinet posts. Trotter did not himself hope for an appointment in the Wilson administration but he wanted Wilson to seek his counsel on race policy, which could not have been further from Wilson’s plans. In fact when the new postmaster general and two other appointees suggested that their offices in Washington should be segregated, Wilson approved. He even appointed a white man to the typically black appointment of U.S. minister to Haiti.
Disappointed, offended, and humiliated, the NAACP urged Trotter to do something about it. Thus Trotter collected twenty thousand signatures on a petition objecting to the segregation policies and, accompanied by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, delivered the petition and a statement of protest in person to Wilson, who, he informed the readers of The Guardian, “listened attentively, responded courteously and gave them thirty-five minutes of his time.” Wilson promised Trotter that he would investigate the segregation issue. Six days later Trotter sent Wilson another letter and three weeks after that another, reminding him of his promise to explore the issue, all without response from Wilson. A year later, in 1914, after no changes in White House policy, Trotter pushed for another interview, at a time when Wilson was in mourning over his wife’s recent death and under pressure regarding the war in Europe. Neither Wilson nor Trotter would forget their second meeting, which took place on November 12, 1914.
The segregation in government offices, Wilson explained to Trotter, was necessary because of friction between white and black workers. Segregation was not humiliating, Wilson told his critic. Rather it was “a benefit.” Trotter listened and then responded in a way Wilson did not expect, especially perhaps from a black man: he argued. At one point, Wilson interrupted him saying, “Your manner offends me.”
“In what way?” Trotter asked.
“Your tone, with its background of passion,” Wilson said.
Trotter continued and Wilson broke in again. Trotter continued again: “Two years ago, you were regarded as a second Abraham Lincoln.” Then he went on to tell Wilson that black leaders who had so strongly supported Wilson during the presidential election were viewed now as traitors. Wilson accused him of blackmail for saying such a thing. Then Wilson spoke of his burdens as president, which he described as “more than the human spirit could carry.”
The two men wrangled, politely, for forty-five minutes or so, until Wilson called an end to the interview. Upon leaving, Trotter told reporters that the meeting was “entirely disappointing,” and he quoted the president as saying things that showed the public for the first time that Wilson was aware of the segregation problem and approved of it. Wilson’s chief of staff told Trotter that he had “violated every courtesy of the White House by quoting the President to the press.” The New York Times carried the story on the front page, which evoked a flurry of letters to editors, to Wilson, and to Trotter, who was now instantly famous. Wilson was criticized for his attitude and Trotter was condemned for having the arrogance to dispute the president. Trotter was no longer a fan of Wilson. And Wilson had no interest in Trotter. In fact, he humiliated Trotter by “forgetting” his name. In the future when Trotter would again draw the president’s attention, Wilson would refer to him as “Tucker.”
The battle only intensified with time. When D. W. Griffith’s ambitious film The Birth of a Nation came out in 1915, Wilson not only agreed to have a private showing at the White House but afterward expressed how fascinated he was by it. Trotter was appalled. The film even attributed three quotes to Wilson—for example, “The White men were roused by a mere instinct of self-preservation…until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South to protect the Southern country.” Trotter organized protests against the film. Wilson was advised to change his stand on the film and told his chief aide that he would like to “if there were some way in which I could do it without seeming to be trying to meet the agitation…stirred up by that unspeakable fellow Tucker.” That Trotter now believed he could yet again meet with Wilson—this time in Paris—was bold.
In an era when most black Americans still feared the consequences of speaking their minds, Trotter’s persistent, outspoken style was often viewed as militant, extreme, even frightening. In fact, according to some individuals, such as Madam Walker’s personal advisers, Trotter alone provoked the passport fiasco. After all, Madam Walker, and others who were on the list of those denied, had associated with Trotter on a number of occasions. But Trotter, Du Bois, and Walker were more certain that the underlying cause was the government’s fear not just of Trotter but of any African-American traveling to Paris. What if they revealed to the world the truth about race relations in the United States?
They didn’t know how right they were. Major Loving, the black informer who had attended the organizational meeting of the National Race Congress in December 1918, wrote in his report to the MID that if passports were granted to Walker and others on his list, the records regarding the activities of each of them would have to be locked up to avoid embarrassment for having issued the passports. These people were “more or less agitators.” After reading Loving’s report, the acting head of the Bureau of Investigation then advised the State Department to deny the passports in order to stop African-Americans from bringing up “the negro question at the Peace Conference.”
“I think your inclination not to grant passports is a wise one,” Secretary of State Robert Lansing had written to the State Department, after the decision was made. Racial questions, he said, “ought not to be a subject to come before the Conference.”
At the heart of it all was indeed fear—fear that people who cared so much about the rights of their race would speak the truth about conditions in America, about the lynchings, about biased media, about hateful policies of segregation, about sheer oppression in the land of the free. It was a fear that was powerful enough to distort reality, turning heroes into traitors. What an embarrassment this would be for Wilson, a leader who was crusading for self-determination of all peoples in all nations. How could Wilson hope to make progress on issues of world peace, if such hypocrisies in his own nation were unveiled?
From the day the Armistice was signed to the day of the parade to Harlem there had already been at least a dozen reported lynchings of black Americans. One was burned to death after hanging for many hours without dying. Another, a uniformed soldier, was killed in Georgia during the last weeks of December by a mob of fifty or more unmasked white men, who had dragged the man from a train, carried him to the woods, shot him to death, and then sliced his body into dozens of pieces. And as the soldiers marched up Fifth Avenue to Harlem, some spectators must have recalled that exactly one year before, in one of the most sadistic lynchings on record, a black man in Tennessee accused of killing two white men was tortured with a red-hot crowbar and then burned to death in front of a crowd of approximately two thousand men, women, and children, all inhaling the rancid smell of burning flesh and listening to his screams for mercy.
In the coming months, black soldiers would be popular targets for white mobs largely because of grandiose fears about their experiences under arms in France. Would the returning black soldiers focus their battlefield valor on challenging the world of segregation? Would African-Americans now be uppity and demanding? Had the fighting in France made them believe they were smarter than white people? Worst of all, would they now be shamelessly unabashed about conversing with and even possibly marrying white women? Was it true that black soldiers in France had been sleeping with white women? Such speculation led to numerous incidents in which black men in uniform were beaten by mobs with baseball bats and even assaulted for simply talking about their wartime service. In Kentucky, a discharged black soldier wearing his army uniform resisted arrest on charges of robbery, fled, and was captured by a mob of seventy-five men, who hanged him from the branch of a sycamore tree. In Georgia, a black soldier stepping off the train in his hometown was greeted by a small yet deadly white mob that demanded he take off his uniform, walk home in his underwear, and never again wear his decorated military attire. Proud of his service, the soldier, a few days later, appeared in town in his uniform. A mob executed him later that day.
Lynching was a powerful weapon of oppression that used the ammunition of fear to hold down an entire race. The South had been wielding it for decades. And now, as more soldiers, black and white, returned from Europe, what the NAACP called “the shame of America” would only worsen. The solution, Du Bois and James Weldon Johnson had both said, was federal legislation condemning lynching as a federal crime. And, as the government suspected, those African-Americans planning to travel to Paris intended to expose it all to the world as a way to force the government to act.
In a poem published in the Chicago Defender black writer Edna Perry Booth wrote:
Now the war’s over, Uncle, what will you do?
For the brave Colored laddies who fought hard for you?
Will they still be abused as they used to be?
Ere they joined in the fighting for Liberty?
Will you soon be forgetting the lives they gave?
That the Stars and Stripes might proudly wave?
What will you do down in Dixie, pray,
With the Jim-Crow cars and the pauper’s pay.
With the no-account schools and the no-vote towns,
Where poverty reigns and misery frowns;
What will you do with the lynching tree,
That hellish thing that shames Dixie?
Whether Trotter would make it to France or Du Bois’s resolutions would be presented via Colonel House at the peace conference was not yet certain. With or without their successes, though, the world would soon know of the hypocrisies in America. Denying the passports and thus preventing African-American attendance in Paris could not suppress the passions of the people who had applied for them. In the days ahead Trotter would cable a petition to the peace conference urging the delegates once again to pay heed to African-Americans: “Fourteen million colored Americans, soldiers and civilians who helped win the war, petition peace conference in fulfillment of war promises of democracy for everyone to incorporate in League covenant following clause: Real democracy for world being avowed aim of nations establishing League of Nations, high contracting powers agree to grant their citizens respectfully full liberty, rights of democracy, protection of life without distinction based on race, color or previous condition.”
By the time the cable arrived, however, the first draft of the Covenant of the League of Nations was complete and Wilson was on his way home to America.