Picture This: World War I Posters and Visual Culture

7. Images of Racial Pride: African American Propaganda Posters in the First World War

JENNIFER D. KEENE Images of Racial Pride: African American Propaganda Posters in the First World War n uring World War I governmental agencies in the United States produced thousands of posters that targeted both the entire country and specific segments of the population , including the African American community. These posters encouraged black citizens to do their part for the war effort by buying war bonds, conserving and producing food, and supporting troops in the field. Official wartime propaganda sought to tap into the patriotism and racial pride of African Americans to secure the enthusiastic support of this vital minority community. To achieve these goals the government successfully enlisted active support from a host of black newspapers , businesses, churches, and fraternal organizations, all of which helped bring the government’s message into the black community by reproducing and displaying these posters. African Americans, however, had additional goals besides winning the war. Many saw the war as a chance to advance the civil rights agenda. Here was an opportunity to prove their mettle in battle and to demonstrate both the key role they played in the economy and their willingness to sacrifice and die to ensure their nation’s security. In return for their wartime service African Americans expected to receive long-overdue recognition of their civic and social rights, namely a dismantling 208 JENNIFER D. KEENE of Jim Crow and an end to disenfranchisement. The African American community did not simply publicize these postwar goals through the printed word. A thriving private poster industry that marketed positive, uplifting images of African American soldiers emerged alongside the official propaganda poster campaign. Many of these privately produced posters expanded the meaning of wartime patriotism and bravery by linking these themes to specific expectations of an improved postwar democracy. Rather than simply establishing two parallel propaganda campaigns, over the course of the war the government and the African American community used visual imagery to engage in an ongoing conversation over the ultimate significance of valorous wartime service. This dialogue took many forms. Similar images were copied and reused for different purposes, either to contest or reinforce government propaganda. Images allowed private citizens to both show support for and criticize various government campaigns. Through this exchange both the government and its citizenry tried to exercise control over the messages that images of racial pride conveyed. At times the government and blacks appeared in agreement about the need to assert African American economic, military, and physical agency by underscoring the important role that black workers and soldiers played in the war effort. By extension , many in the black community saw this governmental focus on their duty to support the nation in time of crisis as official recognition of their status as citizens. At other moments, however, similar images were employed in drastically different ways, with the army, for instance, turning a privately produced image of a proud black man leaving his sweetheart to go to war into one that emphasized the importance of obedience to army regulations requiring prophylactic treatment after illicit sex. In many privately produced posters, images of heroic black soldiers offered a subversive critique of racial discrimination IMAGES OF RACIAL PRIDE 209 within the military, in stark contrast to the official propaganda campaign, which used these same images simply to encourage uncritical support of the nation during a time of war. If governmental propaganda did not go far enough in the eyes of African Americans to address their specific grievances, to southern white newspapers that disseminated this propaganda, it went too far. Their independent dialogue with the government consisted of diluting the generally uplifting tone of wartime propaganda by imbuing it with conventional racial stereotypes to underscore southern whites’ resistance to recognizing any kind of black power. Depending on the context, therefore, images of valiant African American soldiers and loyal black workers conveyed quite different messages. Unlike official posters, commercially produced posters aimed at the black community devoted an equal amount of attention to the present and the future. Winning the peace, they suggested, was every bit as important as winning the war. This contrasted sharply with the intended consequences of similar images reproduced in official propaganda, which aimed merely to stimulate African American support for the war without opening up the Pandora’s box of American race relations. African Americans intended to use their contributions, and by extension the...