Of the four colored regiments in the Regular Army, the 24th infantry had been on the Mexican border since 1916; the 25th infantry in Hawaii all the years of the war; the Ninth cavalry in the Philippines since 1916, and the 10th cavalry had been doing patrol and garrison duty on the Mexican border and elsewhere in the west since early in 1917.  These four regiments were all sterling organizations dating their foundation back to the days immediately following the Civil war.  Their record was and is an enviable one.  It is no reflection on them that they were not chosen for overseas duty.  The country needed a dependable force on the Mexican border, in Hawaii, the Philippines, and in different garrisons at home.

A number of good white Regular Army regiments were kept on this side for the same reasons; not however, overlooking or minimizing the fact not to the honor of the nation in its final resolve, that there has always been fostered a spirit in the counsels and orders of the Department of War, as in all the other great government departments, to restrain rather than to encourage the patriotic and civic zeal of their faithful and qualified Negro aids and servants.  That is to say, to draw before them a certain imaginary line; beyond and over which the personal ambitions of members of the race; smarting for honorable renown and promotion; predicated on service and achievement, they were not permitted to go.  A virtual “Dead Line”; its parent and wet nurse being that strange thing known as American Prejudice, unknown of anywhere else on earth, which was at once a crime against its marked and selected victims, and a burden of shame which still clings to it; upon the otherwise great nation, that it has condoned and still remains silent in its presence.

Negro National Guard organizations had grown since the Spanish-American war, but they still were far from being numerous in 1917.  The ones accepted by the war department were the Eighth Illinois Infantry, a regiment manned and officered entirely by Negroes, the 15th New York Infantry all Negroes with five Negro officers, all the senior officers being white; the Ninth Ohio, a battalion manned and officered by Negroes; the 1st Separate Battalion of the District of Columbia, an infantry organization manned and officered by Negroes; and Negro companies from the states of Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and Tennessee.  Massachusetts also had a company known as the 101st Headquarters company and Military Police.  The Eighth Illinois became the 370th Infantry in the United States army; the 15th New York became the 369th Infantry; the Ninth Ohio battalion and the companies from Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts and Tennessee, as well as the District of Columbia battalion, were all consolidated into the 372nd Infantry.