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The shots that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914, sparked the bloodiest war in world history. For Europeans, the “Great War” was an unmitigated disaster that wiped out a generation of young men, took millions of civilian lives, and ruined empires and nations alike. Across the Atlantic, the American people faced a less brutal wartime experience. At the beginning of the conflict, President Woodrow Wilson declared that the United States would be a neutral nation -- a position that endured for two and a half years -- as American businesses prospered from a flood of European military orders. Later, when the United States joined the war in April 1917, American soldiers fought abroad, suffering relatively few casualties in the last months of combat. In November 1918, when the armistice was signed ending the fighting, the United States emerged from the conflict stronger than before, with no war-time destruction or serious economic damage. Despite the short duration of the American war effort, the conflict affected the nation in deep and profound ways. In one of the most important areas of change, the war opened many new opportunities for African Americans, who embraced President Wilson's “War to Make the World Safe for Democracy” in hopes that their loyal service would provide a way to challenge both racial discrimination at home and colonial oppression of Africans abroad. - Adapted from Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming.
The film below discusses the Great Migration, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the East St. Louis and Houston Riots, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and the Red Summer of 1919. Key figures include: W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Adam Clayton Powell Sr., Joel Spingarn, Charles Hamilton Houston, and Woodrow Wilson. |
