A group of Black American soldiers who won the Croix de Guerre for “gallantry in action” for their service in World War I, 1919.

Articles of War

How an author discovered W. E. B. Du Bois’s definitive history of Black participation in W.W. I, and why it remained unfinished—and largely forgotten

By Chad L. Williams

It was late October 2000. A wide-eyed graduate student at the time, I had recently decided to write my dissertation on Black soldiers and World War I—what would eventually become my first book, Torchbearers of Democracy (2010). Now I was embarking on my first research trip to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, whose library houses the papers of W. E. B. Du Bois.

I had, in advance, gone through the online finding aid. A nondescript reference to “Du Bois World War I materials” grabbed my attention.This might be promising, I thought.