Presents


Washington D.C. and World War I


In the 500 block of T Street, NW is the former home of Major James E. Walker, Commander of the First Separate Battalion, D.C. National Guard, the local all-black unit in WW1. Walker, a District school teacher and later supervising principal who once served at Syphax and Banneker schools, joined the battalion in 1896. By 1912, he had been commissioned a major. Four years later, the First Separate Battalion was sent to the Arizona-Mexico border where it saw service against the Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.

In 1917, one of the First Separate Battalion, D.C National Guard, became the first American Army units called into service. The battalion's initial mission was to defend the nation's capital. On January 1, 1918, the First Separate Battalion was ordered to Camp Stuart at Newport News, VA. Once there, the unit became companies A through D of the 372nd Infantry Regiment, 93rd Infantry Division. While sailing to France, Major Walker's men learned that he had died of tuberculosis. Major James E. Walker is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. At least one local American Legion Post and a District elementary school are named in his honor.

In combat in France, the Regiment comprising Walker's men, the 372nd lost 33 men killed and more than a third of its men were wounded in battle. Several soldiers as well as the unit itself were cited by the French Army for bravery. One witness, a young white lieutenant, said that casualties were heavy in Walker's former unit because the men refused to surrender or retreat.

Major Walker's son-in-law Athur C. Newman who livednext door the corner later commanded the First Separate Battalion. A number of other black men from D.C. served as officers in the First World War. The Curtis family sent three of its sons: A. Monroe, Arthur, and Merrill. They were all First Lieutenants, two in the Medical Corps and one in the Field Artillery.

Indeed, the service of all the District's black men in World War 1, although seldom discussed, is a record in which all Americans can take pride.



This has been another Sketch in Color, I'm C.R. Gibbs
Copyright 1997



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