Race
During the First World War Virginia Polytechnic Institute was restricted to only white male students. But the African American communities surrounding VPI supported the school as housekeepers, groundskeepers, cooks, and more. The flow of undervalued Black labor decreased as young African American men enlisted and were drafted. In the war one out of every ten American soldiers were Black. Over 367,000 African American men served during the war.
While Black men expected to serve in the front lines, over 60% were assigned to non-combat roles. Black soldiers in these roles repaired shoes, transported soldiers, repaired roads, dug trenches and latrines, worked in lumber yards, removed unexploded ordnance from battlefields, and gathered and buried soldiers killed in action. Some, like Christiansburg Industrial Institute graduate William H. Morgan, served in stevedore units unloading cargo ships and transporting material to the front day and night.
Among those black men who saw combat was George E. Morrison of Dublin, Virginia. Morrison served in Company C, 367th Infantry Regiment of the all-Black 92nd Division. Morrison’s regiment saw combat during the final weeks of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. For their bravery during the AEF’s push towards Metz the French government awarded the 367th the Croix de Guerre. After the war, Morrison returned to Dublin to continue farming, operate a general store, and raise a family. Every year, on the 11th hour on November 11, he would stop work and make his children pause for a moment of silence to remember the war.
Black Americans served bravely during the war, but their service went largely unrecognized by the American population. Black soldiers fought for democracy in France, only to return to the United States where their freedoms were not protected or guaranteed. The war changed a generation of African Americans who were determined to make democracy a reality in the United States. As W. E. B. DuBois wrote in May 1919, “We return fighting. Make war for democracy. We saved it in France, and by the Great Jehovah, we will save it in the United States of America.”
Virginia Polytechnic Institute remained segregated after the war. VPI did not admit any black students until 1953 when Irving Linwood Peddrew became the first black student admitted. Even after accepting Peddrew, VPI’s campus remained segregated as black students were not allowed to live on campus or eat in the cafeteria with other white students.
