The Annals of Volume 77 Number 3 Iowa Summer 2018 A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY In This Issue BERNARD F. HARRIS JR., a doctoral student at Kansas State Univer- sity, examines the lives, education, and training of the African American cadets who were trained at the Fort Des Moines Officer Training Camp in preparation for service in World War I. Upon graduation, those officers, Harris argues, helped to chip away at the bedrock of racial intolerance that characterized the United States at the time. SARAH EIKLEBERRY, assistant professor of kinesiology at St. Ambrose University, describes the interracial work done by the Des Moines YWCA, especially in its Blue Triangle Branch, from 1919 to 1948. She identifies the opportunities the separatist branch and, eventually, the integrated associ- ation provided for black women and girls. Front Cover Members of a dance team at the Des Moines YWCA’s Blue Triangle Branch strike a joyful pose in 1941. For more on the Blue Triangle Branch of the Des Moines YWCA, see Sarah Eikleberry’s article in this issue. Photo from YWCA of Greater Des Moines Records, Iowa Women’s Archives, University of Iowa Libraries, Iowa City. Editorial Consultants Rebecca Conard, Middle Tennessee State R. David Edmunds, University of Texas University at Dallas Kathleen Neils Conzen, University of H. Roger Grant, Clemson University Chicago William C. Pratt, University of Nebraska William Cronon, University of Wisconsin– at Omaha Madison Pamela Riney-Kehrberg, Iowa State Robert R. Dykstra, State University of University New York at Albany Malcolm J. Rohrbough, University of Iowa The Annals of Third Series, Vol. 77, No. 3 Summer 2018 Iowa Marvin Bergman, editor Contents 231 Chipping Away at the Bedrock of Racial Intolerance: Fort Des Moines and Black Officer Training, 1917–1918 Bernard F. Harris Jr. 263 “A Bond of Common Womanhood Deeper than All Racial Separateness”: Race Relations at the Des Moines Young Women’s Christian Association, 1919–1948 Sarah Jane Eikleberry 303 Book Reviews and Notices A QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF HISTORY FOUNDED IN 1863 Copyright 2018 by the State Historical Society of Iowa ISSN 0003-4827 Book Reviews and Notices 303 TODD E. PETTYS, The Iowa State Constitution, 2nd ed., by John Dinan 305 JOSEPH A. RANNEY, Wisconsin and the Shaping of American Law, by Dale Yurs 306 MICHAEL L. TATE, ED., The Great Medicine Road: Narratives of the Oregon, California, and Mormon Trails, Part 3, 1850–1855, by J. T. Murphy 308 SHARI RABIN, Jews on the Frontier: Religion and Mobility in Nineteenth-Century America, by Hasia R. Diner 310 RICHARD CARWARDINE, Lincoln’s Sense of Humor, by Mark Wahlgren Summers 311 TIMOTHY MASON ROBERTS, ED., “This Infernal War”: The Civil War Letters of William and Jane Standard, by J. L. Anderson 312 KLAS BERGMAN, Scandinavians in the State House: How Nordic Immigrants Shaped Minnesota Politics, by Anna M. Peterson 314 PHILIP F. ANSCHUTZ, Out Where the West Begins, volume 2, Creating and Civilizing the American West, by J. T. Murphy 316 STERLING EVANS, ED., Farming across Borders: A Transnational History of the North American West, by R. Douglas Hurt 318 LYN ELLEN BENNETT AND SCOTT ABBOTT, The Perfect Fence: Untangling the Meanings of Barbed Wire, by Wayne Franklin 320 STEVEN C. HULL, Birth of the American Dream: Four Immigrant Families, Nine Generations, The Middle-Class Struggle, by Bruce Curtis 322 CAROLINE FRASER, Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, by John J. Fry 324 CRAIG A. BISHOP, Billy Sunday, The Baseball Evangelist: The Story of a Remarkable Life, 1862–1935, by David Brodnax Sr. 325 KENNETH WHYTE, Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times, by Kendrick A. Clements 327 JERRY K. BEATTY, Patriotism, Courage & Sacrifice: Warren County’s Response to WW II, by Terrence J. Lindell 328 DENNIS DESLIPPE, ERIC FURE-SLOCUM, AND JOHN W. MCKERLEY, EDS., Civic Labors: Scholar Activism and Working-Class Studies, by Gregory R. Zieren 330 DAVE ZWEIFEL AND JOHN NICHOLS, The Capital Times: A Proudly Radical Newspaper’s Century-Long Fight for Justice and for Peace, by Frank Durham 331 JEFF STEIN, The Floppy Show, by Phillip J. Hutchison 333 M. J. RYMSZA-PAWLOWSKA, History Comes Alive: Public History and Popular Culture in the 1970s, by Rebecca Conard Chipping Away at the Bedrock of Racial Intolerance: Fort Des Moines and Black Officer Training, 1917–1918 BERNARD F. HARRIS JR. A CHILLY OCTOBER wind was blowing as the soldiers marched on the Fort Des Moines parade ground in close for- mation. Their buffed boots made a distinctly heavy sound in cadence on the soft grass. Spectators lining the sides of the field waved and yelled support as they craned their necks to glimpse the soldiers as they passed by. The 639 cadets moved with the precision only months of training could produce and executed each formation maneuver with confidence and determination. These cadets were to be sworn in as commissioned officers in the U.S. Army on October 15, 1917, to fight in World War I. The United States had declared war on Germany just six months earlier, and what had seemed like an impossibility then was about to become a reality.1 This article examines the lives, education, and training of these African American civilians and former noncommissioned officers who answered the War Department’s call for the first mass commissioning of black officers into the U.S. Army. Upon graduation, these officers would assume command of thousands of future black draftees who would fill the ranks of the newly formed 92nd and 93rd Divisions and chip away at the bedrock of racial intolerance in America. 1. Emmett J. Scott, Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War (Chicago, 1919), 90. THE ANNALS OF IOWA 77 (Summer 2018). © State Historical Society of Iowa, 2018. 231 232 THE ANNALS OF IOWA TO UNDERSTAND the lives of these future officers, one must comprehend the depth of the bedrock of racial intolerance in America in 1917. The Plessy v. Ferguson U.S. Supreme Court case of 1896 had established the constitutionality of state-imposed “separate but equal” Jim Crow laws in America. That ruling allowed segregated spaces for passengers on trains and buses and for patrons of public businesses, such as hotels, schools, and theaters. The Supreme Court would not reverse its ruling until the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, which, coinci- dentally, was orchestrated by Charles Houston, one of the 639 graduating cadets at Fort Des Moines.2 Besides the indignities of state-sanctioned segregation, Afri- can Americans also had to endure white mob violence, voting intimidation, lynching, and the cruel system of convict leasing, which allowed railroad and mining companies to lease hun- dreds of convicts they could literally work to death without fear of legal interference. All of these practices contributed to the mi- gration of African Americans from southern states to the North. The manpower drain, especially among black farm labor, caused the state of Georgia to ask for federal government assistance in stemming the flood of migration; and some southern whites suggested that black military draftees should be put to work on farms instead of enrolled in military service.3 One racial incident involving the U.S. Army had ramifica- tions for the future officers commissioned at Fort Des Moines and for the soldiers they would command. On August 23, 1917, soldiers from the 24th Infantry Regiment stationed near the city of Houston, Texas, mutinied. The Crisis, a periodical edited by W. E. B. Du Bois, reported that disputes between the black sol- diers of the 24th and the local population had gained momen- tum over time. The situation reached the breaking point when the soldiers heard a rumor that one of their fellow soldiers had 2. “Topics in Chronicling America—Plessy v. Ferguson (Jim Crow Laws),” Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/rr/news/topics/plessy.html; “Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),” Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/ ourdocs/plessy.html. 3. Douglas A. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of African Americans from the Civil War to World War II (New York, 2008), 53–56; W. E. B. Du Bois, “Editorial,” The Crisis, July 1917. Fort Des Moines 233 This image of Charles Hamilton Houston’s mili- tary draft registration card is from the National Archives. Houston graduated from the Fort Des Moines Officer Training Camp, survived World War I, became a lawyer, and led the legal fight to overturn segregation in American schools that culminated in the successful U.S. Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education. been killed by a local civilian. As a result, some of the soldiers disobeyed orders to remain in camp and instead headed into the city with their military weapons seeking revenge.4 That act of disobedience resulted in the death of 17 people and swift mil- itary disciplinary action against all the soldiers involved.5 It also added to southern fears that any concentration of black soldiers 4. Martha Gruening, “Houston: An N.A.A.C.P. Investigation,” The Crisis, No- vember 1917, 14–19. 5. “Colored Troops—Largest Murder Trial in the History of the United States,” National Archives, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/26431266. 234 THE ANNALS OF IOWA On November 1, 1917, 64 soldiers from the 24th Infantry Regiment stood trial for their actions in Houston, Texas, on the evening of August 23, 1917. Unrestricted image from National Archives. in large numbers would be a menace to peace and order.6 As a concession to those fears, the 92nd Division was later scattered across seven camps in the North and was not allowed to con- centrate on one post in the United States as other white divi- sions could until they reached France.7 IN APRIL 1917 the United States declared war on Germany and entered World War I.