II. The American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) and the Exportation of Jim Crow

The conflict between American racism and European tolerance set the stage for the creation of the ‘Secret Information’ memorandum. When Black American troops were deployed to France, the rigid racial doctrine of the American military immediately collided with the relatively colorblind social environment of their French allies.

2.1. Systemic Racism in the Military Command

The American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), commanded by General John J. Pershing, rigidly enforced segregation. Black soldiers were subjected to endemic racism, not only from fellow white soldiers but often from their own white officers. Du Bois’s later investigation documented how racist white officers provided poor leadership, sometimes covering up their own failures by falsely blaming or disparaging Black units. Even combat units, such as those in the Ninety-second Division, faced persistent discrimination and skepticism.   

2.2. The Reality Overseas: French Acceptance and American Alarm

In France, Black troops encountered a different social dynamic. French citizens and soldiers frequently treated African American service members “with familiarity and indulgence,” often mingling with them socially. This welcome and recognition of dignity stood in stark contrast to the dehumanizing conditions of Jim Crow in the United States.   

This integration was not welcomed by white American leadership. White American officers and soldiers were severely alarmed by the breach of racial etiquette, perceiving French tolerance as a direct threat to the established domestic racial order. They attempted to impose Jim Crow standards on foreign soil, putting up “Whites Only” signs on bases and instituting curfews intended to restrict the social autonomy of Black soldiers.   

2.3. Defining Intolerable Aspirations

The core motivation driving the U.S. military to intervene in French internal social relations was the protection of the American racial hierarchy upon the soldiers’ eventual return. The official American concern was that “contact with the French will inspire in black Americans aspirations which to them (the whites) appear intolerable”. These “intolerable aspirations” were nothing less than the desire for equal social and political standing—the very rights Du Bois and the NAACP demanded.   

The directive openly stated that French “indulgence and this familiarity are matters of grievous concern to the Americans. They consider them an affront to their national policy”. This declaration demonstrates that the AEF viewed the preservation of American Jim Crow not as a regrettable cultural norm, but as a critical strategic priority. The military establishment feared that a Black soldier, returning home having been treated as an equal by an allied nation, would be unwilling to submit once again to the humiliation of segregation. The energy exerted by AEF GHQ to control allied social conduct during a period of intense warfare suggests that maintaining the system of white racial power was considered a necessary condition for domestic stability, prioritized even over allied relations or military unity.   

The timeline below highlights the critical sequence of military decisions and political responses during this period:

III. Provenance and Motivation of the ‘Secret Information’ Memorandum

The central mandate of this analysis is to identify the source and precise motivations behind the transmission of the document formally titled “Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops” (sometimes referred to as the French Directive).

3.1. Identifying the Source: General Pershing’s Headquarters (AEF GHQ)

The provenance of the controversial memorandum traces directly to the highest command structure of the American military operating in Europe. The document was issued from the headquarters of U.S. General John J. Pershing, the Commander-in-Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). The directive was dated August 7, 1918, indicating its status as an official AEF policy transmitted during a critical period of the war.   

3.2. The Transmission Mechanism: Colonel J.L.A. Linard

The document was covertly channeled through the French Military Mission stationed with the American Army. While the directive was addressed to French officers, providing them “an exact idea of the position occupied by Negroes in the United States,” the intent was the enforcement of American racial policy.   

The memorandum was signed by Colonel J.L.A. Linard of the American Expeditionary Force Headquarters. Colonel Linard, serving as a French liaison, was utilized to deliver American racial mandates under the guise of an advisory document from an allied officer. This mechanism created a bureaucratic shield, attempting to make the imposition of Jim Crow seem like neutral, necessary advice rather than a unilateral, racist policy demand.   

3.3. Deconstructing the Document: The Segregation Mandate

The content of the directive is explicit and shocking in its demands for the institutionalization of American segregation within French social life. It begins by asserting that the “American attitude upon the Negro question… does not admit of any discussion,” and that white opinion is “unanimous”.   

The document reinforces the foundation of Jim Crow doctrine, claiming that the increasing number of Black Americans necessitated an “impassable gulf” to prevent a “menace of degeneracy” for the white race. It proceeds to issue strict policy requirements for French interaction with Black troops:   

1. Social Segregation: French officers were strictly warned against allowing any “pronounced degree of intimacy between French officers and black officers.” The directive explicitly instructed: “We must not eat with [the blacks] them, must not deal with them on the same plane as with the white American officers without deeply wounding the latter”.   
2. Public Dissemination: It mandated that French Military Authorities, through civil authorities, “give information on this subject to the French population residing in the cantonments occupied by American colored troops,” effectively requiring the French civil society to adopt American racial prejudice.   
3. Defining the Black American Status: The memorandum decreed that the Black American soldier, despite being a citizen, “is regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are possible”.   

3.4. Strategic Motivation: The Supremacy of Racial Control

The transmission of this secret information was driven by the overriding political motivation to protect the post-war racial hierarchy in the United States. The explicit fear articulated in the document—that French tolerance would inspire “aspirations which to them (the whites) appear intolerable” —was a clear recognition by the AEF leadership that the exposure of Black soldiers to equality would radically destabilize the status quo back home.   

The decision to allocate significant administrative and diplomatic energy to enforcing racial boundaries during a total war represents a profound self-betrayal of military necessity. By demanding that an allied nation adopt American racist policies, AEF GHQ demonstrated that its commitment to preserving white supremacy superseded its commitment to securing military cooperation or upholding the moral objectives of fighting for global democracy. The American war effort was, therefore, not merely a fight against the Central Powers, but simultaneously a campaign to institutionalize American racial segregation on the international stage. This calculated act was designed to avoid “profoundly estranging American opinion,” primarily that of the segregationist South and the powerful white political establishment.   

IV. The Turning Point: Du Bois’s Exposure and the Failure of Accommodation

The exposure of the ‘Secret Information’ memorandum by W.E.B. Du Bois constituted a decisive victory for the protest tradition and a critical blow to the credibility of the accommodationist strategy advocated by Emmett J. Scott and his administration allies.

4.1. The Crisis Exposes the Truth: Publication of the Directive

Du Bois, traveling in France in late 1918 and early 1919 as part of the press delegation accompanying President Woodrow Wilson to the Paris Peace Conference , discovered the directive. Recognizing its significance as irrefutable documentary evidence of official governmental malice, he published the full text in the May 1919 issue of The Crisis.   

The Crisis, the widely read and highly influential journal of the NAACP, served as a crucial national corrective to the racial stereotypes and silences of the mainstream press. The publication of the memorandum validated every charge the NAACP had ever made regarding governmental hypocrisy. Du Bois leveraged the document to passionately assert that the United States, by actively exporting its Jim Crow policies and attempting to suppress the dignity of its own troops, was “No nation… less fitted for this role” of global moral protagonist. 

4.2. Scott’s Official Narrative Undermined

For Emmett J. Scott, the document’s public exposure presented an enormous crisis. His entire administrative strategy was predicated on the belief that consistent loyalty and distinguished military service would eventually compel white America to grant Black Americans full citizenship rights. The ‘Secret Information’ proved that even while Black soldiers were fighting and dying, the highest levels of the American military were plotting to negate any social progress they might achieve through their interaction with the French.   

Scott’s subsequent historical account, Official History of the American Negro in the World War, could not entirely ignore the incident, but his description was necessarily constrained by his official allegiance. Scott included a reference to the directive, stating that “biased Americans succeeded in having issued” the memo from Pershing’s headquarters. This attribution to vague “biased Americans,” rather than a forceful, immediate condemnation of the AEF leadership, lacked the moral authority and militant force of Du Bois’s public exposé.   

The political consequence of the revelation was decisive: the memorandum provided concrete proof that cooperation with the U.S. government led not to reward, but to systemic deceit. This profound betrayal irrevocably damaged the legitimacy of the accommodationist model in the immediate post-war era, providing undeniable validation for the Du Boisian protest strategy.

4.3. Post-War Investigations and Legacy

Du Bois used his time in France and the subsequent publication of the directive to launch a wide-ranging assessment of the treatment of African American soldiers. His investigations confirmed that Black servicemen endured overseas racism that was experienced as physically and emotionally damaging, akin to the “shell shock” recognized in other World War I participants.   

Furthermore, investigations by figures like Robert Russa Moton, the head of the Tuskegee Institute, also concluded that the racist rumors circulated during the war—allegations of cowardice or misconduct against Black troops—were “seriously exaggerated”. Du Bois argued that white officers were frequently covering up their own failures by shifting blame onto Black units.   

The collective experience—fighting valiantly abroad, experiencing relative freedom in France, discovering irrefutable proof of their government’s active racial conspiracy, and returning home to face renewed segregation and intense racial violence (the Red Summer of 1919)—galvanized a new generation of militant Black leadership. Veterans, especially the Black officer class from Fort Des Moines, returned resolved to continue fighting for equality with “Deeds, not Words,” forming the vanguard of the “New Negro” movement. The exposure of the ‘Secret Information’ memorandum served as the documentary justification for this militant transition.   

V. Conclusion and Legacy

The ideological conflict between Emmett J. Scott and W.E.B. Du Bois during World War I centered on whether African American dignity could be achieved through administrative cooperation or required militant confrontation. The transmission of the “Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops” memorandum in August 1918 served as the definitive evidence that conclusively resolved this debate, at least for the post-war era.

The analysis confirms that the memorandum originated from General Pershing’s Headquarters (AEF GHQ) and was transmitted by Colonel J.L.A. Linard through the French Military Mission. The motivation was the explicit enforcement of Jim Crow segregation on French soil, driven by the fear that French social “familiarity and indulgence” would inspire “aspirations which to them (the whites) appear intolerable” in Black soldiers. This action revealed that the U.S. military prioritized the preservation of the domestic racial hierarchy above wartime diplomatic unity or the moral cause of democracy.   

Du Bois’s subsequent public exposure of this betrayal in The Crisis in May 1919 permanently discredited the Scott/Washingtonian model of accommodation, proving that the government was not merely negligent toward Black troops but actively malevolent. The shock of this revelation energized the returning veterans and fueled the militancy of the “New Negro” era, solidifying the protest tradition—championed by the NAACP—as the dominant strategy for civil rights advocacy in the subsequent decades. The war, which African Americans had hoped would be a vehicle for integration, ultimately became the crisis that revealed the hypocrisy of American identity and solidified the necessity of relentless struggle against structural racism.

W. E. B. Du Bois and the NAACP

• W.E.B. Du Bois, “Close Ranks” Editorial from The Crisis | BlackPast.org
• DuBois – Close Ranks Excerpt (1918) | Truman Library
• World War I in the Historical Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois | Cambridge
• W. E. B. Du Bois | The Hutchins Center, Harvard
• W. E. B. Du Bois and The Crisis | UMBC
• The Walter White Project: The NAACP and World War I
• The Crisis – Modernist Journals Project

African American Soldiers in World War I

• Analysis: The Story of a Black Infantry Unit | EBSCO
• Fighting Against the Odds: Black Soldiers in the Second World War | Gilder Lehrman
• African American Soldiers in World War I | Oxford Research Encyclopedias
• “The Damnable Dilemma”: African-American Accommodation and Protest during World War I | Semantic Scholar
• Deeds, Not Words: African American Officers of World War I in the Battle for Racial Equality | University of Mississippi

Emmett J. Scott and Historical Accounts

• Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War | Winthrop
• Scott, Emmett Jay | Texas State Historical Association
• Emmett J. Scott: The American Negro in World War I (Table of Contents) | BYU
• E.J. Scott: The American Negro in the World War, Chapter XXX | BYU

International Perspectives and Racial Policy

• A French Directive | Yale MacMillan Center
• A WWI-Era Memo Asking French Officers to Practice Jim Crow With Black American Troops | Slate
• French Military Mission Stationed with the American Army (Aug 7, 1918) | VIU

Civil Rights Context

• Niagara Movement (1905–1909) | BlackPast.org

Museums and Archives

• New York State Military Museum