[Footnote 1:  On the whole subject of the actual life of the Negro soldier unusual interest attaches to the forthcoming and authoritative “Sidelights on Negro Soldiers,” by Charles H. Williams, who as a special and official investigator had unequaled opportunity to study the Negro in camp and on the battle-line both in the United States and in France.]

While the Negro soldier abroad was thus facing unusual pressure in addition to the ordinary hardships of war, at home occurred an incident that was doubly depressing coming as it did just a few weeks after the massacre at East St. Louis.  In August, 1917, a battalion of the Twenty-fourth Infantry, stationed at Houston, Texas, to assist in the work of concentrating soldiers for the war in Europe, encountered the ill-will of the town, and between the city police and the Negro military police there was constant friction.  At last when one of the Negroes had been beaten, word was circulated among his comrades that he had been shot, and a number of them set out for revenge.  In the riot that followed (August 23) two of the Negroes and seventeen white people of the town were killed, the latter number including five policemen.  As a result of this encounter sixty-three members of the battalion were court-martialed at Fort Sam Houston.  Thirteen were hanged on December 11, 1917, five more were executed on September 13, 1918, fifty-one were sentenced to life imprisonment and five to briefer terms; and the Negro people of the country felt very keenly the fact that the condemned men were hanged like common criminals rather than given the death of soldiers.  Thus for one reason or another the whole matter of the war and the incidents connected therewith simply made the Negro question more bitterly than ever the real disposition toward him of the government under which he lived and which he had striven so long to serve.

4. High Tension:  Washington, Chicago, Elaine

Such incidents abroad and such feeling at home as we have recorded not only agitated the Negro people, but gave thousands of other citizens concern, and when the armistice suddenly came on November 11, 1918, not only in the South but in localities elsewhere in the country racial feeling had been raised to the highest point.  About the same time there began to be spread abroad sinister rumors that the old KuKlux were riding again; and within a few months parades at night in representative cities in Alabama and Georgia left no doubt that the rumors were well founded.  The Negro people fully realized the significance of the new movement, and they felt full well the pressure being brought to bear upon them in view of the shortage of domestic servants in the South.  Still more did they sense the situation that would face their sons and brothers when they returned from France.  But they were not afraid; and in all of the riots of the period the noteworthy fact stands out that in some of the cities in which the situation was most tense—­notably Atlanta and Birmingham—­no great race trouble was permitted to start.