Abstract

The First World War was a period of significant social upheaval, as political, economic, and social conditions were placed under extreme stresses. W. E. B. Du Bois viewed this period as not just a conflict between nations, rather it was a life and death struggle for the future of the “darker races of the world.” Accordingly, Du Bois believed that African American participation in the Great War would be instrumental in attaining not only their own rights, but the rights of all “darker races.” However, it was an accident of timing, necessitated by the need for wartime labour and fighting men—on both sides of the Atlantic—that brought thousands of black Africans and African Americans to France. Thus, the war would place hundreds of thousands of black men into a heavily racialized context. This thesis proposes to track the racial artifacts that African Americans experienced as the Great War took them from the “brutal” race regime of the United States, to its “benevolent” counterpart in France, and back again. As such, it seeks to understand how this conflict shaped the articulation of race within a transnational context. In addition, a secondary goal of this comparative exploration of “brutal” American and “benevolent” French racisms, is to qualify the reputation of France as a bastion of racial equality.