Returning Soldiers

Unidentified African American soldier
Library of Congress, 2021653121

When American entered the Great War, many African Americans supported the war effort and joined the US Army, believing that military service would help them to gain them full citizenship rights, including both social and political equality. Yet African-American soldiers returned home to heightened racial tensions and an increase in mob violence. Social and political unrest exploded in the “Red Summer” of 1919. A report prepared for the U.S. Congress identified 38 race riots in towns and cities across America in the nine-month period from January through October,* and “at least sixteen veterans were lynched between November 1918 and the end of 1920, some of them still in uniform.”**

W.E.B. DuBois’s editorial “Returning Soldiers,” appeared in The Crisis in May of 1919. He reminded readers of the sacrifice that black troops had made in fighting “for America and her highest ideals,” but lamented the violence and degradation of on-going racism: 

This country of ours, despite all its better souls have done and dreamed, is yet a shameful land. It lynches. And lynching is barbarism of a degree of contemptible nastiness unparalleled in human history. Yet for fifty years we have lynched two Negroes a week, and we have kept this up right through the war.***

“Sam Smiley,” published in 1932 nearly fifteen years after end of the First World War, protests the violence that African Americans continued to experience. The poem works “to make a case for civil rights…. in effect to protest lynching by portraying lynching.”†

Sam Smiley

          I
The whites had taught him how to rip
    A Nordic belly with a thrust
Of bayonet, had taught him how
    To transmute Nordic flesh to dust. 

Unidentified African American soldier with rifle
Library of Congress, 2017648680 

And a surprising face had made
    Belated impress on his mind:
That shrapnel bursts and poison gas
    Were inexplicably color blind.

He picked up, from the difficult
    But striking lessons of the war,
Some truths that he could not forget,
    Though inconceivable before.

And through the lengthy vigils, stuck
    In never-drying stinking mud,
He was held up by dreams of one
    Chockfull of laughter, hot of blood.

          II

On the return Sam Smiley cheered
    The dirty steerage with his dance,
Hot-stepping boy! Soon he would see
    The girl who beat all girls in France.

He stopped buckdancing when he reached
    The shanties at his journey’s end;
He found his sweetheart in the jail,
    And took white lightning for his friend.

One night the woman whose full voice
    Had chortled so, was put away
Into a narrow gaping hole;
    Sam sat beside till break of day.

He had been told what man it was
    Whose child the girl had had to kill,
Who best knew why her laugh was dumb,
    Who best knew why her blood was still.

And he remembered France, and how
    A human life was dunghill cheap,
And so he sent a rich white man
    His woman’s company to keep. 

Julius Bloch, "Lynching"
Woodmere Art Museum

          III

The mob was in fine fettle, yet 
   The dogs were stupid-nosed, and day
Was far spent when the men drew round
    The scrawny woods where Smiley lay.

The oaken leaves drowsed prettily,
    The moon shone down benignly there;
And big Sam Smiley, King Buckdancer,
   Buckdanced on the midnight air.
—Sterling A. Brown

The poem’s author, Sterling A. Brown, was too young to serve in the war. He entered Williams College in the fall of 1918 on a minority student scholarship and went on to complete a MA in English from Harvard in 1923.†† Southern Road (1932), his first collection of poetry, includes Brown’s first ballad, “Sam Smiley.” Biographer John Edgar Tidwell notes, “Brown's poetry received its motivation from a need to reveal the humanity that lies below the surface racial stereotypes only skim.”†††
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*“For Action on Race Riot Peril,” New York Times, 5 Oct. 1919, p. 10. 
**Mark Whalen, The Great War and the Culture of the New Negro, University Press of Florida, 2008, p. 12. 
*** W.E.B. DuBois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis, May 1919, pp. 13-14.
† David A. Davis, “Not Only War Is Hell: World War I and African American Lynching Narratives,” African American Review, vol. 42, no. 3/4, 2008, pp. 477, 479. 
†† John Edgar Tidwell, “Sterling A. Brown,” Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford UP, 1997, p. 105.
††† Tidwell, “Sterling A. Brown,” p. 105.

In Flanders Fields: An Echo

African American troops near Verdun 1918
(Library of Congress cph 3c16442) 

John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” was one of the most popular poems of the war and continues to be read, recited, and studied today. A recent student study guide argues that the poem is “adaptable to any number of circumstances beyond the occasion for which it was written,” because anyone who has been defeated or known others who have sacrificed for a cause “can relate to the speaker’s desire that the ‘torch’ will be carried on by someone else who finds the cause, or the defeated combatant, honorable.”*

In 1920, the Dunbar Entertainer published “In Flanders Fields: An Echo,” a poem that challenged Americans to uphold the light of justice and extinguish the burning crosses and flames of hatred that scarred the landscape of post-war America.

In Flanders Fields

An Echo

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row

   That mark the graves where black men lie;

   Their souls, long wafted to the sky,

Look down upon the earth below.

E’en while we mourn their loss, we see

Their brothers hanged upon a tree   
   By whom they saved. Their pain fraught cry

   Mounts up to those who stand on high

And watch the scarlet flowered sea

   In Flanders fields.

In Flanders fields they shall not sleep!

No! For their murdered kin they keep

   A vigil through the day and night,

   ‘Til God Himself shall snatch from sight

Such scenes as make our heroes weep

   In Flanders fields.

            —Orlando C. W. Taylor (1920, Dunbar Entertainer)

The Tuskegee Institute estimates that in the 86 years between 1882 and 1968, at least 4,743 people were lynched in the United States; 3,446 of them were African Americans. As African American troops returned home from the war that had “promised to make the world safe for democracy,” they confronted a new battle:

Many black veterans were denied the benefits and disability pay they’d been promised. In the first summer after the war, known as the Red Summer, anti-black riots erupted in more than twenty American cities, including Houston, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. “This is the right time to show them what will and what will not be permitted, and thus save them much trouble in the future,” one Louisiana newspaper opined, in an editorial titled “Nip It In the Bud.” In the years after the war, at least thirteen black veterans were lynched. Countless more survived beatings, shootings, and whippings.***

The poem’s author, Orlanda Capitola Ward Taylor, was born in Texas in 1891 and witnessed a lynching as a young teen. An educator, journalist, and radio host, he is best known for co-founding in 1925 New Orleans' first African American newspaper, The Louisiana Weekly, and for his pioneering work in black radio broadcasting. He died in 1979.

----------------------------------------------------

*Gale, Cengage Learning, A Study Guide for John McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields,”2016.

**Amanda Betts, In Flanders Fields: 100 Years Writing on War, Loss and Remembrance, Knopf, 2015.

*** Peter C. Baker, “The Tragic, Forgotten History of Black Military Veterans,” The New Yorker, 27 November 2016.

I Sit and Sew

Detail of WWI recruiting poster

Referring to your memorandum of February 12^th, relative to the appointment and training of colored nurses for colored soldiers, at the present time colored nurses are not being accepted for service in the Army Nurse Corps, as there are no separate quarters available for them and it is not deemed advisable to assign white and colored nurses to the same posts.

            — W.C. Gorgas, Surgeon General, U.S. Army, Feb. 14, 1918*

As America mobilized for war in 1917, political rallies, recruiting events, posters, and news editorials reminded them of why they were joining the bloodiest conflict the world had yet known: they were fighting to make the world safe for democracy.  But an editorial appearing in the New York Tribune voiced the concerns of many Americans and challenged that premise:

Democracy implies equality of privilege and equal obligation of service.  If we fight for this for the world in general we ought to be prepared to practice it among ourselves.  At present we mingle democracy with discriminations.  All the elements of our citizenship do not stand on the same level.**

Crisis, March 1918

The editorial denounced the inequities and harsh treatment that black soldiers were regularly experiencing, but it failed to mention that black women who attempted to assist in the war effort were also the victims of prejudice. Hired for factory work at salaries considerably below those paid to white women performing the same jobs, black women were also frequently barred from volunteering as canteen and aid workers. Perhaps most concerning was the treatment of black nurses. Emmett J. Scott, Special Advisor of Black Affairs to the Secretary of War, sent a memo denouncing the War Department’s discriminatory policies:

 It is difficult for me to understand why some colored nurses have not been given an opportunity to serve. This vexing question is being put to me almost daily by colored newspaper editors, colored physicians, surgeons, etc., who are constantly bombarding my sector of the War Department, inquiring what has been done, and urging that something should be done in the direction of utilizing professional trained and efficient colored nurses.***

Alice Dunbar-Nelson was a poet, playwright, journalist, and political activist. During the war, she was the only black woman to serve on the Women’s Committee of the Council of Defense (organizing women’s groups and supporting women’s war efforts), and she was active in the Circle of Negro War Relief, establishing a local chapter to provide assistance to black soldiers and their families.†  

 In 1918, her war poem “I Sit and Sew” was published in the A.M.E. Church Review.

I Sit and Sew

I sit and sew – a useless task it seems,

Alice Dunbar-Nelson

My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams –

The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,

Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken

Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death,

Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath –

But – I must sit and sew.

I sit and sew –  my heart aches with desire  –

That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire

On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things

Once men. My soul in pity flings

Appealing cries, yearning only to go

There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe  –

But  – I must sit and sew.

The little useless seam, the idle patch;

Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,

When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,

Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?

You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream

That beckons me—this pretty futile seam,

It stifles me—God, must I sit and sew?

            —Alice Dunbar-Nelson

Stifled, despairing, yet dreaming, a woman occupies her hands with a mundane domestic task while her heart and mind yearn to leave for the battlefields.  She is not naïve in imagining a glorious war. This woman knows of the “wasted fields” on which lie “writhing grotesque things/ Once men.” It is in fact because of these men who are “Pitifully calling me” that she longs to travel to “that holocaust of hell,” to assist the wounded where they “lie in sodden mud and rain.” But—as is repeated three times in the poem—she is condemned to wait, to sit, to sew.

Crisis, August 1918

In 1920, Dunbar-Nelson’s lengthy essay “Negro Women in War Work” appeared in Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War.††  Her essay describes how “Into this maelstrom of war activity the women of the Negro race hurled themselves joyously. They asked no odds, remembered no grudges, solicited no favors, pleaded for no privileges. They came by the thousands, hands opened wide to give of love and service and patriotism” (375).

And yet as Dunbar-Nelson acknowledges, “The problem of the woman of the Negro race was a peculiar one….There were separate regiments for Negro soldiers; should there be separate organizations for relief work among Negro women? If she joined relief organizations, such as the Red Cross Society, and worked with them, would she be assured that her handiwork would reach black hands on the other side of the world, or should she be great-hearted and give her service, simply for the sake of giving, not caring who was to be benefited?” (376).

Dunbar-Nelson’s essay asserts that black women “did all that could be done—all that they were allowed to do” (377), but they were blocked from fully supporting their troops.  Like Emmett J. Scott, she found the order excluding black nurses from overseas service deeply troubling: “Colored women since the inception of the war had felt keenly their exclusion from overseas service. The need for them was acute; their willingness to go was complete; the only thing that was wanted was authoritative sanction” (378).

The African American community feared that without black nurses, black soldiers would receive inadequate medical care. Social codes forbidding intimacies between the races were likely to prevent white women from nursing black soldiers, and segregated hospital facilities were likely to offer substandard medical care. The concerns were real: during the war, black soldiers died at a disproportionately higher rates due to poorly staffed, segregated hospitals.†††

The poem “I Sit and Sew” testifies to the complex intersections of gender and race in America.  In the conclusion to her essay “Negro Women and War Work,” Dunbar-Nelson praises black women for not only their war service, but their persistent hope in the face of discrimination:

She shut her eyes to past wrongs and present discomforts and future uncertainties. She stood large-hearted, strong-handed, clear-minded, splendidly capable, and did, not her bit, but her best, and the world is better for her work and her worth (397).

Crisis, May 1919

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*Emmett J. Scott, Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War, Homewood Press, 1919, p. 448. 

**“Race Prejudice and the War.” The Chicago Defender, 24 Nov. 1917, p. 12 (thanks to Vinny for this reference).

***Scott, Official History, p. 451.  The memo was sent by Emmet J. Scott to Dean F.P. Keppel, Office of the Secretary of War, dated 28 Feb 1918. 

†Sandra L. West, “Dunbar-Nelson, Alice (Alice Ruth Moore), ” p. 93.  Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, edited by Aberjhani and Sandra L. West, Infobase, 2003.

††Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “Negro Women in War Work,” pp. 374-397. Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War, edited Emmett J. Scott, Homewood Press, 1919.

†††Emmett J. Scott, “Did the Negro Soldier Get a Square Deal?” pp. 429-430. Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War, edited Emmett J. Scott, Homewood Press, 1919.

Their only crime

“Although a citizen of the United States, the black man is regarded by the white American as an inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are possible.  The black is constantly being censured for his want of intelligence and discretion, his lack of civic and professional conscience and for his tendency toward undue familiarity. The vices of the Negro are a constant menace to the American who has to repress them sternly.”

            —“Secret Information Concerning Black American Troops,” sent August 7, 1918 from Colonel J.L.A. Linard with the A.E.F. to the French Army. Later published by W.E.B. DuBois in the Crisis, May 1919, pp. 16-18.

Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

Over 350,000 black Americans were inducted into the American Army during the First World War, but units were strictly segregated by race, and black soldiers were assigned to hard labor and low status jobs (such as the grave digging, exhumation, and reburial work of the war). Few black units saw combat; an exception were the units who were assigned to the French military, where they fought with bravery and distinction. In the American Army of the First World War, racism was not only accepted, but often enforced. 

Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr. has been described as a “forerunner of the African American cultural renaissance of the 1920s,”* and the Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance notes that his poetry and one-act play On the Fields of France  provide an important contribution to First World War literature.  Cotter’s poem “O Little David, Play on Your Harp” uses a well-known African-American spiritual to frame the oppression and misery of war, genocide, and racism.  You can listen here to a 1919 recording of the song performed by Lt. Noble Sissle and Lt. James Reese Europe of the 369^th Harlem Hellfighters.

O Little David, Play on Your Harp

O Little David, play on your harp,
That ivory harp with the golden strings
And sing as you did in Jewry Land,
Of the Prince of Peace and the God of Love
And the Coming Christ Immanuel.
O Little David, play on your harp.

A seething world is gone stark mad;

And is drunk with the blood,
Gorged with the flesh,
Blinded with the ashes
Of her millions of dead.
From out it all and over all
There stands, years old and fully grown,
A monster in the guise of man.
He is of war and not of war;
Born in peace,
Nurtured in arrogant pride and greed,
World-creature is he and native to no land.
And war itself is merciful
When measured by his deeds.
Beneath the Crescent
Lie a people maimed;
Their only sin—
That they worship God.
On Russia’s steppes
Is a race in tears;

Crisis, June 1918

Their one offense—
That they would be themselves.
On Flanders plains
Is a nation raped;
A bleeding gift
Of “Kultur’s” conquering creed.
And in every land
Are black folk scourged;
Their only crime—
That they dare be men.

O Little David, play on your harp,
That ivory harp with the golden strings;
And psalm anew your songs of Peace,
Of the soothing calm of a Brotherly Love,
And the saving grace of a Mighty God.
O Little David, play on your harp.

            —Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr.

The celebratory refrain of the Negro spiritual contrasts sharply with a “seething world” that has “gone stark mad.”** Spiraling out of control, the world at war is drunk on blood, sated by the decaying bodies of the dead, and blinded by the ashes of destruction. 

Yet bigger than the war and more terrible than even its slaughter, a monster “of war and not of war” towers over all. This fiend, born in peace, raised by pride, and fed by greed, is a citizen of every nation, and he wears a human disguise. In the Ottoman Empire (“beneath the Crescent”), he has directed the massacre of the Armenians; in Russia’s pogroms, he has murdered thousands of Jews; and he has brutally commanded German atrocities in occupied Belgium. Cotter’s poem unites these victims of deadly prejudice with blacks who are whipped and beaten “in every land”; their only crime is daring to believe themselves fully human. 

Many black Americans hoped the war that was to “make the world safe for democracy” would also address the racism that was prevalent in America. In “O Little David,” Cotter challenges his audience to acknowledge that the enemy within, the “monster in the guise of man,” is as terrible a foe as any to be encountered on the battlefields of Europe. 

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*James Robert Payne, “Joseph Seamon Cotter, Jr., The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, Oxford, 2001, p. 90.

**The subject of the song, however, is relevant to the poem’s message. David’s harp playing was commanded by King Saul, who employed the boy to soothe his mad rages (I Samuel 16), and the young shepherd shocked Israel’s army with his courage and skill in fighting the colossal Goliath (I Samuel 17). 

Out in No Man's Land

James Reese Europe & Harlem Hellfighters 369th Regt. band

Who would think that little U.S.A. would ever give to the world a rhythm and melodies that, in the midst of such universal sorrow, would cause all students of music to yearn to learn how to play it?

....I sometimes think if the Kaiser ever heard a good syncopated melody he would not take himself so seriously.*

            --Noble Sissle, drum major of the Harlem Hellfighters regimental band 

James Reese Europe (more commonly known as “Jim Europe”) was the first black bandleader to record in the United States and the first to conduct a black orchestra performing ragtime/jazz music on the concert stage of New York’s Carnegie Hall.  He was also the first black American officer to enter the trenches of the First World War, the first to lead troops in combat in the war, and the first black American to be given a public funeral in New York City.  And yet James Reese Europe is virtually unknown today, both for his contributions to music and for his service in the First World War.

In 1916, before the United States entered the war, Jim Europe joined the 15^th Infantry Regiment of the New York National Guard, explaining to a friend, “there has never been such an organization of Negro men that will bring together all classes of men for a common good. And our race will never amount to anything, politically or economically, in New York or anywhere else unless there are strong organizations of men who stand for something in the community.”**

Europe was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 15^th Infantry Regiment of the National Guard in December of 1916, and when the US entered the war, his regiment (later known as the 369^th or “Harlem Hellfighters”) was assigned to the 92^nd Division, one of only two black military divisions that the segregated U.S. Army allowed to participate in combat.***

He was trained as a machine-gunner, but because Europe was one of the most popular bandleaders in America before the war, he was also charged with forming the best military band in the U.S. Army.† Recruiting musicians from New York, Chicago, and Puerto Rico, he put together a military band that some described as the best in the world.†† It is estimated that the Harlem Hellfighters regimental band traveled over 2,000 miles in France, performing for foreign dignitaries and military commanders, wounded soldiers in hospitals, troops on recreational leave, French citizens, and American Army Headquarters in Paris.

Europe is on the right

In between concerts, Lieutenant Europe was assigned to machine gun duty in the trenches on the Western Front. Charles Welton, writing for the New York Age, said that in addition to Europe “sowing jazz selections over the agricultural terrain and bunching bits of it in the cantons en route,” the officer also “did solo work with a machine gun forty times heavier than a trombone, and actually got it working in syncopated time.”†††

In the spring of 1918, Europe participated in a French raid on German trenches. He described the night raid to Noble Sissle, his friend and drum major of the Harlem Hellfighters' regimental band.  Europe’s description is rich with the sounds of the war as he remembered the din of artillery shells whirring overhead that sounded “like a thousand pheasants,” the exploding shrapnel “hizzing hither and thither,” the crack of an officer’s pistol firing a red flare from his Very pistol, and “the excited yelling of our men, as they darted first up one trench and down another, bombarding every nook and corner with hand grenades.” Europe told Sissle, “I found everything last night that I ever heard existed out there.”††††

Injured in a gas attack just weeks later, Europe used his time in the hospital to compose music; among the songs he wrote while recuperating was “On Patrol in No Man’s Land.”° You can listen to the 1919 recording of the song here. 

On Patrol in No Man’s Land

What's the time? nine? all in line

Alright, boys, now take it slow

Are you ready? Steady!

Very good, Eddie.

Over the top, let's go

Quiet, sly it, else you'll start a riot

Keep your proper distance, follow 'long

Cover, smother, when you see me hover

Obey my orders and you won't go wrong

There's a minnenwerfer coming --                               

look out (bang!)

Hear that roar, there's one more

Stand fast, there's a Very Light                                   

Don't gasp or they'll find you alright

Don't start to bombing with those hand grenades

There's a machine gun, holy spades!

Alert, gas! Put on your masks

A-just it correctly and hurry up fast

Drop! There's a rocket for the Boche barrage                  

Down, hug the ground,

close as you can, don't stand

Creep and crawl, follow me, that's all

What do you hear? Nothing near

Don't fear, all is clear

That's the life of a stroll

When you take a patrol

Out in No Man's Land!

Ain't it grand?

Out in No Man's Land.

            --James Reese Europe

The song was recorded on the Pathé label by Jim Europe and members of the 369^th Infantry Hellfighters band in March 1919, shortly after they returned from the war.  It’s probable that the composition had been performed in France: with band instruments simulating the sounds of machine gun fire, artillery explosions, and gas raid sirens, the song communicates the danger of battle while assuring its listeners that action on the front lines is a grand adventure not to be missed.

Advertisements for the recording included personal testimonials:
One of the boys in our office went to war.  On his return I asked him what American effort most impressed him and he answered JIM (Lieut.) EUROPE’S BAND.  He said that the French and British bands would play and one would say to himself, “what beautiful music!” But when Europe’s band came along no one, whatever his race, could keep still. There was that pep, that something of life and animation that made everybody want to do something.°°

Lt. James R. Europe

Before leaving for the war, John Love, personal secretary to the wealthy Wanamaker family of Philadelphia and a professional acquaintance of Europe, had tried to dissuade him from overseas service. In the summer of 1917, Europe had undergone emergency surgery for health complications related to Grave’s Disease, and Love argued that Europe would be entitled to a medical exemption. Jim Europe replied, “if I could, I would not. My country calls me and I must answer; and if I live to come back, I will startle the world with my music.”°°°

Tragically, in early May of 1919, just months after the New York City Homecoming Parade, Jim Europe was killed backstage during a concert in Boston by a disgruntled musician who was later declared mentally unfit to stand trial. Notable jazz musician Eubie Blake was Jim Europe’s business partner and friend. Later in life, as he recalled the legacy of James Reese Europe, Blake said, 

People don’t realize yet today what we lost when we lost Jim Europe. He was the savior of Negro musicians. He was in a class with Booker T. Washington and Martin Luther King. I met all three of them. Before Europe, Negro musicians were just like wandering minstrels…. Before Jim, they weren’t even supposed to be human beings.  Jim Europe changed all that.  He made a profession for us out of music. All of that we owe to Jim. If only people would realize it.°°°°

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* Quoted in Scott's Official History of the American Negro in the World War (1919), by Emmet J. Scott, p. 309.

** Noble Sissle’s Memoirs of Lieutenant ‘Jim’ Europe, quoted in Reid Badger’s excellent biography of James Reese Europe, A Life in Ragtime, 1995, p. 142.

*** For more information, see the article “Fighting for Respect: African-American Soldiers in WWI” by Jami Bryan.

† Badger, A Life in Ragtime, p. 143.

†† New York Times, May 12, 1919, cited in Badger, A Life in Ragtime, p. 7.

††† Quoted in Scott’s Official History, p. 306.

†††† Sissle’s Memoirs, cited in Badger’s A Life in Ragtime, pp. 181-182.

° The sheet music credits the song to James Europe, Noble Sissle, and Eubie Blake. Blake has said he had no part in writing the music but was credited for the song because “because that’s the kind of partners they were.” Sissle’s memoir on Europe’s life recounts visiting Jim Europe in the hospital and hearing Europe’s greeting: “Gee, I am glad to see you boys! Sissle, here’s a wonderful idea for a song that just came to me, in fact it was [from the] experience that I had last night during the bombardment that nearly knocked me out.” Cited in Badger’s A Life in Ragtime, p. 187.

°° Talking Machine World, June 15, 1919.  Cited in Tim Brooks’ Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919, p. 285.

°°° From John Love’s letter to Noble Sissle dated 28 January, 1920 and included in Sissle’s Memoirs. Cited in Badger’s A Life in Ragtime, p. 154.

°°°° From Eubie Blake, by Al Rose. Cited in Brooks’ Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919, p. 291.