鈥楾he Wounded World鈥� probes one of W.E.B. Du Bois鈥� greatest regrets
Civil rights leader and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois spent decades attempting to turn his painful reckoning with World War I into a definitive account of Black soldiers鈥� participation in the global conflict.
For more than 20 years after the war, Du Bois worked on a manuscript he titled 鈥淭he Black Man in the Wounded World.鈥� But while his considerable labor resulted in an ambitious and sprawling draft approaching 1,000 pages, he was unable to complete the project. Now, historian Chad L. Williams has written a first-rate intellectual history exploring the complicated reasons behind that failure in 鈥淭he Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War.鈥�
By the time the war broke out in 1914, Du Bois was, in Williams鈥� words, 鈥淏lack America鈥檚 foremost thinker and leader.鈥� Author of the seminal 1903 essay collection 鈥淭he Souls of Black Folk,鈥� he was the first African American to earn a doctorate from Harvard and was a co-founder of the NAACP. He had a powerful platform as editor of the NAACP鈥檚 monthly magazine, The Crisis.
Though a pacifist, Du Bois used his considerable influence to urge readers to support the war effort. In a July 1918 editorial, he wrote that 鈥渢he colored race鈥� ought to 鈥渇orget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the allied nations that are fighting for democracy.鈥� At the time of the editorial鈥檚 publication, Du Bois was being considered for a government appointment, as a captain of military intelligence. 鈥淒u Bois, who had just months earlier offered blistering criticisms of the government, now astonishingly offered The Crisis as a platform of wartime聽propaganda,鈥� Williams writes. 聽
The editorial 鈥� which, Williams adds, 鈥渟melled of calculation and opportunism鈥� 鈥� severely damaged its author鈥檚 reputation. Readers bristled at the idea that they should set aside their urgent concerns about lynchings, segregation, and rampant discrimination to announce themselves as loyal patriots. As Williams, who teaches history and African and African American studies at Brandeis University, notes, 鈥淭he democracy that [President] Woodrow Wilson extolled and promised to make safe around the world felt like a distant reality鈥� to Black Americans.聽
In addition to jockeying for the military appointment, however, Du Bois sincerely believed that the sacrifices of Black troops overseas would hasten the cause of equality at home. He ended up becoming bitterly disillusioned by the racism Black soldiers and officers endured at the hands of their fellow Americans. He managed to get press credentials to travel to France, where he investigated unfounded rumors of Black officers鈥� incompetence. He heard from the men themselves about white officers鈥� constant attempts to humiliate and undermine them. His time in Europe convinced Du Bois that 鈥渁 history of the Negro in this war done carefully and with scientific thoroughness is of vital importance to our future鈥�; he added that 鈥渁lready forces to discredit our work are mobilizing.鈥澛�
Alarmed by explosions of racial violence in America in the period after the war, Du Bois immediately began work on his history. But his self-imposed deadlines would come and go as the enormity of the task weighed on him and other projects distracted him. He put out a call in The Crisis for Black veterans to send him their photographs and documents for use in the book. Many responded, mindful of his promise that their precious artifacts would be returned. As his project stretched over years, his materials became disorganized and he failed to fulfill that promise. Williams quotes letters from veterans fruitlessly beseeching Du Bois to return their belongings.
Through Du Bois鈥� correspondence and his periodic applications to foundations to help support his work, Williams is able to trace his subject鈥檚 changing historical understanding of the war, culminating in his eventual belief that, in the author鈥檚 words, World War I 鈥渉eld no redemptive value.鈥� Instead of ushering in a new era of democracy, as he had hoped, Du Bois concluded that the war had, in Williams鈥� words, 鈥渞einforced white supremacy, imperialism, capitalist greed, and reckless militarism.鈥澛�
Du Bois had lived through another catastrophic world war by the time he died, at age 95, in 1963. Over the course of his long life, he produced dozens of works of nonfiction and fiction. Through dogged research, Williams has illuminated the mystery of the book that could not be written and that haunted its author to the end.
