For Democracy, Not Hypocrisy: World War and Race Relations in the United States, 1914–1919

Abstract

the morning of 4 December 1918, thousands gathered on the Manhattan waterfront to watch the president of the United States, Woodrow Wilson, set sail for France and the peace conference at Paris. Five destroyers escorted Wilson's ship, the George Washington, out of the harbour to the open sea. Standing on the ship's bridge, the president waved and tipped his hat in response to the tribute paid by the adoring crowd. Aboard the ship were scores of advisers who, with Wilson, hoped to transform the practice of international relations and improve the lives of people everywhere. With the First World War over, the mood was festive and expectant. The United States was triumphant and its president was off to Europe to reconstruct the world. Little more than four months after Woodrow Wilson sailed for Europe, in April 1919, William Monroe Trotter followed him. Trotter was already a legend among AfricanAmericans, owing to actions as a race reformer which included highly publicized confrontations with Booker T. Washington and Wilson himself.1 Chairman of the National Equal Rights League, a black-run civil rights organization, and editor of the Boston Guardian, Trotter believed the peace conference, with its talk of democracy and selfdetermination, would provide a stage from which to tell the world about the plight of blacks in the United States. When the state department refused Trotter a passport, he obtained in disguise a seaman's passport and took a job on a freighter bound for Le Havre, where he jumped ship. In Paris, for several weeks he bombarded the French and foreign press, and delegates to the conference including Wilson and his aide Colonel Edward House with letters and memoranda