Ten Thousand Black Soldiers Train at Historically Black Colleges for WWI Officer Corps

After the NAACP and Black community leaders pressured the War Department to train Black officers rather than relegating all Black soldiers to menial roles, the Army established a segregated officer training camp at Fort Des Moines, Iowa in 1917. Over 1,200 Black men received commissions as officers, providing military leadership to the hundreds of thousands of Black soldiers who served in World War I.