Students who research the 369th Infantry Regiment will discover that African American troops were not allowed to fight alongside white American troops in Europe. The 369th was invited by the French to fight with their troops, and fought so bravely that every man was decorated by the French government with the Cross of War before returning to the U.S. Yet, in spite of the dedication of approximately 200,000 African American men who fought in WW I, discrimination was rampant when they returned to the U.S., and in the summer of l9l9 thousands of lynchings took place across this country. Not coincidentally, that summer, Claude McKay wrote what has become one of his most famous and by far militant poems, “If We Must Die,” which begins:
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If we must die, let it not be like hogs
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Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
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While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
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Making their mock at our accursed lot. (1-4)
McKay couches this highly political poem in the highly structured Shakespearean sonnet formula, ending with this heroic couplet:
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Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
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Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back! (13 – 14)
