W. E. B. DuBois, "Close Ranks"

Editorial by W. E. B. DuBois, The Crisis, July 1918.¹

CLOSE RANKS

[1] This is the crisis of the world. For all the long years to come men will point to the year 1918 as the great Day of Decision, the day when the world decided whether it would submit to military despotism and an endless armed peace — if peace it could be called — or whether they would put down the menace of German militarism and inaugurate the United States of the World.².

[2] We of the colored race have no ordinary interest in the outcome. That which the German power represents today spells death to the aspirations of Negroes and all darker races for equality, freedom and democracy. Let us not hesitate. Let us, while this war lasts, forget our special grievances and close our ranks shoulder to shoulder with our own white fellow citizens and the al­lied nations that are fighting for democracy. We make no ordinary sacrifice, but we make it gladly and willingly with our eyes lifted to the hills.³

Source

The Crisis: A Record of the Darker Races 16/3 (July 1918): 111. New York: National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The Modernist Journals Project, Brown University and The University of Tulsa.

Footnotes

1. W. E. B. Dubois wrote this editorial in the July 1918 issue of his newspaper, The Crisis, to endorse Black men enlisting to fight in World War I.

2. The United States declared war on Germany on 4 April 1917. American troops first engaged the enemy around 28 May 1918

3. paraphrase of Psalm 121:1.