The Wounded World: W.E.B. Du Bois and the First World War

By Chad L. Williams

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023

David F. Beer, Reviewer

W.E.B. Du Bois and American Officers in France

So between July 28, 1914, and August 28, eight of the greatest nations of the world, representing its highest and best culture…declared that organized and worldwide murder was the only path to salvation and peace. 

 W. E. B. Du Bois (p. 289)

This is a remarkable book about a remarkable man. The author, Professor Chad Williams, has given us a solid and extremely readable study of the man and the book he sadly never completed: W. E. B. Du Bois and his account of the African American experience in the First World War. Had this encyclopedic endeavor been completed and published, I think it could have become the definitive account of Black America’s participation in the war. Nevertheless, after reading Professor Williams’s 530-page work we have a clear understanding of what Du Bois wanted his work to cover, and we also get considerable insight into the character, genius, and foibles of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868–1963).

By the outbreak of WWI, Du Bois was a well-known author, speaker, and intellectual. He “had scaled heights thought unimaginable for an African American person in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century America” (p. 11). He had attended Harvard, obtaining a doctorate in history in 1895 and spending two years at the University of Berlin along the way.

Germany greatly influenced his intellectual and cultural character and also his Vandyke beard and handlebar mustache—but he was a Black American and proud of it. He early decided to devote his life to the liberation and education of the African American race, yet the Great War (“This sudden failure of civilization…”) was also to consume much of his energy and thinking (pp. 11-12).

Ready for Service "Over There"

Despite his impressive academic and literary credentials, Du Bois also suffered from the long-lasting social and spiritual agony of discrimination and a Jim Crow society. He saw it all around him. He had helped found the NAACP in 1909 and was to have a long—if at times uneasy—role in that organization and also with his popular monthly magazine The Crisis. His editorship of this publication over the years is detailed throughout Professor Williams’s study, as are Du Bois’s European travels and organization of the Pan-African Conference. However, it was the Great War itself, and above all the treatment of “colored” soldiers by the United States government, army, and society, that tortured his soul.

The treatment of African American soldiers in WWI was truly shocking and is unsparingly described by Professor Williams. Yet it’s not surprising, given the history of race relations already existing in the country. In the context of slavery, segregation, lynchings, and flagrant prejudice, Black soldiers met barriers and rejection beginning with the recruiting office, throughout their service in the war, on to the Armistice and the later Gold Star Mothers arrangements. They suffered an endless barrage of slander and stereotyping, mistreatment, and outright treachery perpetrated by white officers, NCOs, and politicians. Even President Wilson was not exempt from this, and none of it ended with the end of the war.

Americans with French Gear in the Trenches

Du Bois was aware of all this but also tried to understand the deeper meaning of the war and how it might lead to a better world without racial prejudice. He decided to write another book. This time he would describe the whole experience of the African American soldier in the war. The project was ambitious and would need noted African American scholars on the editorial board, plus financial assistance.

His proposed book would be a history of five or six volumes, published over a period of five years and hopefully with a grant of $5,000 from the NAACP (p. 102). Du Bois was not without competition, however, even from the start. He was stunned by a sudden press release sent to him announcing the intentions of a colleague:

Steps have been taken to tell the full story of the Negro’s participation in the Great War by Dr. Emmett J. Scott. In order to assure a comprehensive and authoritative history Scott has assembled a virtual who’s who of scholars, activists, and other race leaders to assist him. ‘Publishers of international importance will print and circulate the history, with copies placed as nearly as possible in every colored home in America’ (p. 103).

From this point Dr. Du Bois took on an even more intensive schedule than he previously had in his hectic life, full as it was with his travels to Europe, speeches, correspondence, a plethora of obligations and duties, and sometimes tragedy. Now he had this book to write—while sorting out the massive amounts of information and research he gradually acquired. Over the years the title of his work evolved from History of the Black Man in the Revolution of 1914-1918 to The Black Man and the Wounded World (p. 353).

I can understand why Du Bois never finished his book—the demands on his long professional and personal life were too intensive, and financial and other setbacks along the way were practically impossible to overcome. It wasn’t because he lacked energy; life never seemed to give him time and luxury to complete The Black Man and the Wounded World. Two more major wars were to insert themselves in his thoughts and work as time went on. Surprisingly, however, he did not lose faith in his world: “He embraced life to the end, believed in the possibility of democracy, and trusted in the certainty of human progress” (p. 429).

Wounded Evacuees

Professor Chad Williams’s story of this never-to-be completed book is a sweeping and overarching study which includes black-and-white photos, full notes, and an index. It is one of the best biographies I have ever read. 

David F. Beer