Scraping the Barrel: The Military Use of Sub-Standard Manpower

5. Scraping the Barrel: African American Troops and World War I

Like American society, around World War I the US Army saw African-Americans as second-rate. There were Black units, but they were assigned to remote areas. When the Army was expanded to fight WWI, political pressures forced the Army to form new and larger Black units. Black college graduates were also recruited as officers. However, the African American units were not given particularly good training nor high-profile missions. Some units performed down to the level of training and expectations, and the Army blamed race for the poor performance rather than itself for setting the units up for failure.