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Article: African Americans and World War I
- Article from:
- American Decades
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The Gale Group, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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AFRICAN AMERICANS AND WORLD WAR I
Jim Crow
In 1914, 90 percent of African Americans lived in the states of the former Confederacy, where so-called Jim Crow statutes had legalized the segregation of Americans by race. These statutes had been validated by a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 1890s, culminating in the famous 1896 "separate but equal" doctrine of
Plessy
v.
Ferguson
, which made segregation the law of the United States. To make matters worse, President Woodrow Wilson appointed to his cabinet officials who were openly prejudiced, and who extended segregation within federal departments. Nowhere was the separation of races more strict, more prone to violence, or more ...