It is hard to ignore the devastating conflict now taking place in Israel/Palestine, the death and destruction. We are reminded of the time when the origins of this current violence erupted. A few years before World War I began, Ralph Waldo Tyler, an African American journalist and war correspondent, was actively involved in the National Colored Soldiers’ Comfort Committee, which was founded by Booker T. Washington. In 1917, when the Balfour Declaration was issued and a Jewish state was created, Tyler became the secretary of the organization, which provided financial support for Black soldiers and their families.
Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1860, Tyler began his career as a journalist in the 1880s. Among his activities were being the editor of the Afro-American; co-founding the Free American, a short-lived African American newspaper; and contributing to other publications. A year before his appointment to Washington’s Comfort Committee, Tyler campaigned to be the U.S. Consul to Brazil, a quest that possibly brought him to the attention of Washington. His position there undoubtedly enhanced President Theodore Roosevelt’s appointing him to be the next auditor of the Department of the Navy, a post he would hold until 1913, four years before the U.S. officially entered World War I. Tyler’s criticism of Woodrow Wilson’s administration, particularly his segregationist policies, ended his tenure as auditor.
Tyler, apparently still favored by Washington, was next recommended, mainly by Emmett J. Scott, Washington’s secretary, to be the national organizer of the National Negro Business League (NNBL). In this capacity, he traveled extensively to better understand the social and political conditions troubling Black Americans. Key to these ventures was his contact with the various local branches of the NNBL. Out of these contacts, he wrote a report that put the Great Migration in context throughout the nation. His reports were published in a number of newspapers, journals, and magazines.
With the war fully engaged, Tyler was selected as the only Black journalist stationed overseas to report on the conditions of Black troops on the front. His coverage was very important since the mainstream press generally overlooked the issues confronting the thousands of soldiers and laborers fighting and working in France. His story was critical in forging a committee of Black journalists, under the direction of Scott, to develop a sweeping account of the problems endured by the Black troops and workers. Scott had been assigned to the Secretary of War, Newton Baker, as the special assistant for race relations, which, of course, facilitated Tyler’s appointment.
Tyler’s coverage of the Black troops included their treatment by both U.S. commanders and the enemy, but before his reports could be circulated to the press, they had to be thoroughly read and approved by Scott and Baker. Tyler agreed to accept the position without pay because he did not want to be encumbered and have his reports minimized or censored. His reports, many of which he did from the trenches of the battleground, were also screened by the U.S. Committee on Public Information before being disseminated to the press, a procedure that was not favorable to Tyler. The reports later formed the basis of Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War (1919).
In one of the significant books about Black American troops in WWI, The Unknown Soldiers by Arthur Barbeau and Florette Henri, there is this quote from Tyler: “The only discrimination a colored man from the states, or any country, encounters in this land of liberty is at the hands of the YMCA, and most regretfully, Colored soldiers who have been at the fighting front, who have wounds to prove they have been in battle, and whose Croix de Guerre, decorating their breast[,] was the proof that they had performed some act of valor for their country[,] are the victims of the YMCA’s undemocratic discrimination….Too many YMCA people over here accord Colored soldiers treatment due a pariah rather than a patriot….”
According to an account in The Unknown Soldiers, Scott advised Tyler to tone down his comments about the YMCA and the association of Black troops with French women. “I very much hope that you will preserve as much equanimity of spirit as possible. There is so much for all of us to do that you cannot for a minute permit yourself to be overcome by the injustices which surround us. In other words, it is possible, I sometimes fear, for most, or all of us to permit our indignation to eat into our vitals,” Scott wrote. It probably unnerved Scott that Tyler had contrasted the relatively unbiased treatment by the French with the bias of American organizations. When the war was over, Tyler returned to Ohio and to journalism, becoming the editor of the Cleveland Advocate in 1919 while contributing articles to other publications. His letters and other memorabilia can be found at the Schomburg Center.