Why was there a spike in violence in 1919? Krugler argues that black service members’ experience in World War I was one of the catalysts. In many places, demobilized black veterans, having fought for their country, had a diminished tolerance for racial discrimination—and their families, having sacrificed on the homefront, felt the same way. Meanwhile, white civilians resented what they perceived as an excess of pride (what an Army captain, registering his concern with the Military Intelligence Division, called “social aspirations”) in those who had served. Servicemen were allowed to wear their uniforms for three months after being “demobbed.” Georgian Wilbur Little was lynched in April 1919, reportedly for the sin of wearing his after the cutoff date—a crime that suggests how much the vision of black men in uniform threatened the racial regime.
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Two - this whole “About Face” comic. I think there is something about being in a war and becoming accustomed to an atmosphere of violence, having to dehumanize people who want to kill you so you can more easily kill them, having rigid structure and routine as the thing that allows you to stay grounded and keep moving forward, etc. - that makes it easier to fall into supremacist movements. Like, we had a noticeable uptick in KKK bullshit after WWI and WWII, and I can’t help but feel like a lot of the shit we see today is our War on Terror adventures coming home to roost in some ways.
e; just to be clear, I don’t mean this as a whole insult against all veterans or anything of the sort, because some of the best people I know irl are vets, and I think that service can absolutely have an opposite effect on a person’s moral reasoning