I also noticed the “optimistic tone” throughout The Crisis regarding the possibilities for greater postwar status for African Americans. As Jennifer D. Keene notes in “Images of Racial Pride: African American Propaganda Posters in the First World War,” along with a genuinely patriotic desire to win the war, many African Americans in 1918 also connected other motivations and hopes to their part in the war effort. They hoped that by proving their willingness to fight and die for America, and by proving their ability to bolster the home-front economy by a greater presence in the work force, that the basic rights of black Americans would finally be given proper recognition after the war (207).

In hindsight, many would perhaps have preferred a more defiant stance, resenting the need to prove anything to the dominant white culture, especially since the hopes for post-war justice were not immediately realized (or ever completely, some would argue). Racial tensions in Tulsa, for example, were as high as ever after the war. In the 1921 Tulsa Race Riot, both black and white World War I veterans participated, with reports of black veterans even digging trenches to prepare for an attacking white National Guard and American Legion.

But surely DuBois and the NAACP felt the same resentment. Their optimistic and peaceful stance was a practical necessity, working for long-term results. Even if the economic freedom expressed in the political cartoon “War: The Grim Emancipator” was not immediately forthcoming (The Crisis 72), DuBois and The Crisis knew that African American involvement in the war effort, both abroad and at home, would contribute to eventual social change.