Mark Ellis

J. Edgar Hoover and the “Red Summer” of 1919

J. Edgar Hoover directed the Bureau of Investigation (BI), later renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation, from 1924 until his death in 1972. His autocratic style of management, self-mythologising habits, reactionary political opinions and accumulation of secret files on real, imagined and potential opponents have been widely documented. The views and methods he advocated have been variously attributed to values he absorbed as he grew up and to certain peculiarities of his personality. Most biographers trace his rapid rise to prominence in the BI to his aptitude for investigating alien enemies during World War I, and radicals during the subsequent Red Scare. He was centrally involved in the governments response to the alleged threat of Bolshevism in America, and, although he later denied it, he co-ordinated the notorious Palmer raids of January 1920, in which thousands of aliens were rounded up and several hundred were deported.

German minorities in World War I: A comparative study of Britain and the USA

Abstract This article deals with the experience of German minorities in Britain and the USA during World War I. The introductory section points to the fact that serious racial persecutions have taken place during total war in the twentieth century. The subsequent sections detail the experience of Germans in the USA and Britain respectively, pointing to the development of ethnic groups before 1914 and moving on to demonstrate the persecution that they faced from governments and public opinion in both countries. The conclusion compares the wartime experience of Germans in Britain and the USA, and suggests that in terms of strength of hostility, British and US treatment of enemy aliens remains similar. The main difference concerns the much smaller number of Germans in Britain and the greater ethnic diversity of the USA. These two factors, especially the former, meant that the British government could deal with its German population more thoroughly than could the Wilson administration in the USA.

Federal surveillance of black Americans during the First World War

The outbreak of the First World War and subsequent American involvement led to widespread government surveillance and monitoring of black organizations and individuals. Fearing sedition, a threat seemingly posed by German intervention and the Bolshevik ‘menace’, government agencies actively sought to identify and counter perceived dangers. Whilst blacks began increasingly to question the democratic rhetoric of the war effort, at least in so far as it had ramifications for the easing of prejudice and discrimination within the USA, the study clearly illustrates the assumptions about ‘race’ which helped formulate government fears and the lack of significant evidence of sedition or conspiracy.

Joel Spingarn's “Constructive Programme” and the Wartime Antilynching Bill of 1918

In the summer of 1918, the white chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Major Joel E. Spingarn, called for urgent congressional action on mob violence. He seized the opportunity of a post in the Military Intelligence Branch (MIB) of the War Department General Staff in Washington, D.C., to put forward a “constructive programme,” the central idea of which was the passage of a bill to make lynching in wartime a federal offense. Attempting to exploit the peculiar circumstances of the national emergency and the expansion of federal powers during World War I, Spingarn also proposed a series of more modest initiatives designed to lessen discrimination and raise black morale. The official reaction to the arguments he advanced in support of his program sheds light on the reluctance of the Democratic administration of Woodrow Wilson to develop a policy on race relations. It also suggests some of the problems and hazards facing a would-be reformer working from within.

Programme specifications for multidisciplinary programmes: the BA Arts and Social Sciences Pass Degree, University of Strathclyde

This article considers the issue of programme specification in the context of a faculty‐based multidisciplinary programme. It argues for the creation and articulation of a multidisciplinary programme specification for the BA Arts and Social Sciences Pass Degree (Levels 1‐3) and subject‐based programme specification for each subject within the degree programme covering all four Levels in the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework. It describes the structure of a multidisciplinary programme specification and considers the issues it will raise.

Black leadership in the United States: Douglass, Garvey and King compared

Eric J. Sundquist (ed.), FREDERICK DOUGLASS: NEW LITERARY AND HISTORICAL ESSAYS, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 295 pp., £30.00. Judith Stein THE WORLD OF MARCUS GARVEY: RACE AND CLASS IN MODERN SOCIETY, Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986, 294 pp., £27.50. Clayborne Carson, Ralph E. Luker, Penny A. Russell, (eds), THE PAPERS OF MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., VOLUME I: CALLED TO SERVE, JANUARY 1929‐JUNE 1951, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992, 484 pp.,

“Closing Ranks” and “Seeking Honors”: W. E. B. Du Bois in World War I

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