“As many as 1200 men became commissioned officers ... Negro nurses were authorized by the War Department for service in base hospitals at six army camps—Funston, Sherman, Zachary Taylor and Dodge, and women served as canteen workers in France and in charge of hostess houses in the United States. Sixty Negro men served as chaplains, 350 as Y. M. C. A. secretaries and others in special capacities.... In the whole matter of the War the depressing incident was the Court Martial of sixty-three members of the Twenty Fourth Infantry, U. S. A. on trial for rioting and the murder of seventeen people at Houston Texas, August 23rd, 1917. As a result of it thirteen of the defendants were hanged, December 11th, forty-nine sentences to imprisonment for life, four for imprisonment for shorter terms and four were acquitted.”[363] President Wilson’s action in this matter was a vindication of President Roosevelt’s action in the previous riot at Brownsville and a stern condemnation of the sentimentalists, white and black whose strictures upon Roosevelt had led the Negro soldiery to harbor the amazing idea, that troops of any color could take the law into their own hands and make Zaberns in America, on a scale beyond the wildest imaginations of any War Lord’s minions, in Europe. FOOTNOTES: [352] Warne, Immigrant Invasion, p. 174. [353] The New Republic, June 24, 1916. [354] Ibid. July 1, 1916. [355] _News and Courier_, December 17, 1916. [356] Rhett’s Oration on Calhoun, Pamphlets Vol. 8 p. 151 Johnston C.L.S. [357] Bureau U. S. Census 1910 Bulletin 129, p. 64. [358] R. R. Wright Jr. Letter _News and Courier_, November 6, 1916. [359] Pickens, The New Negro, p. 18. [360] Ibid. p. 228. [361] Ibid. p. 37. [362] _Chicago Tribune._ [363] Brawley, Short History of American Negro, p. 357. CHAPTER XV In the year immediately following the end of the great World War armed clashes between whites and Negroes in the United States occurred in the great cities of the North and West, Washington, Chicago and Omaha and also in the State of Arkansas. These race riots drew comment from whites and Negroes. Prior to these riots in the time of peace, there had been others during the World War at Chester and Philadelphia, in the State of Pennsylvania and one in Illinois at East St. Louis. Both Dr. DuBois, the president of “The National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People,” and the colored minister Wright, whose article on Negro migration has been alluded to, gave advice. It is interesting to compare their utterances. The communication of the minister is first cited. “To my dear Brethren and Friends: