Not Only War Is Hell: World War I and African American Lynching Narratives

When Wilbur Little, an African American soldier, returned to Blakely, from service in World War I, a group of men met him at train station and forced him to strip off his uniform. A few days later he defied their warning not to wear uniform again in public, and a mob lynched him (Dray 248). His lynching sent message to all African American soldiers returning from war that their sacrifices for cause of liberty in Europe would not lead to racial equality in America. A number of literary texts by African American writers published between 1919 and 1930s, however, inverted that message by invoking trope of lynched soldier to make case for civil rights. Carrie Williams Clifford's poem Black Draftee from Georgia (1922), for example, alludes to lynching of Wilbur Little: What though hero-warrior was black? His heart was and loyal to core; And when to his loved Dixie he came back, Maimed, in duty done on foreign shore, Where from hell of war he never flinched, Because he cried, Democracy, was lynched. (219) After World War I racial tensions in United States became severely strained. The massive migration of southern African Americans to northern cities, widespread emergence of segregation in North, regeneration of Ku Klux Klan, race riots in several cities, and a new wave of lynchings in South all contributed to a sense of racial unrest. At same time, new works of literature by African American writers--the movement known as New Negro Renaissance or Harlem Renaissance--projected an image of defiant racial identity. this social and artistic context, African American writers invoked trope of African American soldier, person who incontrovertibly deserves equal citizenship, in juxtaposition with images of lynching, radical denial of human rights, to make a case for civil rights. This juxtaposition leads to an aesthetic of lynching images that pushes a progressive agenda, fusing artistic and social ends of New Negro movement and demonstrating literature's value as a weapon in struggle for racial equality. Lynching is deeply embedded in America's racial psyche. Grace Hale explains that by beginning of twentieth century white southerners transformed a deadly and often quiet form of vigilante 'justice' into a modern spectacle of enduring power (201). The lynching spectacle expiated specter of blackness from community while affirming purity of race. Often targeted at mythical beast rapist who personified fears of black hypersexual animalism, orgy of violence established social primacy of race and, as Joel Williamson contends, unified community (124). By time of World War I, lynchings had developed into a programmatic ritual of torture and murder. (1) This ritual, Trudier Harris argues in Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals (1984), is essential to preserving supremacy. Any subversive action, real or imagined, on part of black subjects constitutes an act of evil, defined as a transgression against hegemony. In order to exorcise evil and restore topsy-turvy world to its rightful position, Harris argues, the violator must be punished.... Symbolic punishment becomes communal because entire society has been threatened; thus entire society must act to put down violator of taboo (12). On eve of World War I, film The Birth of a Nation (1915) made lynching spectacle a national event, unifying country along color line and translating lynching ritual into a narrative of regional reconciliation through racial solidarity. (2) Not coincidentally, World War I greatly increased racial antagonism in United States. Labor shortages in essential industries spurred a massive movement of African American southerners into northern cities, effectively exporting color line to North. …

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