. The number of colored draftees accepted
for military duty, and the comparatively small number of them claiming
exemptions, as compared with the total number of white and colored men
called and drafted, presents an interesting study and reflects much
credit upon this racial group."

Over 1,200 Negro officers, many of them college graduates, were
commissioned during the war. The only training camp exclusively for
Negro officers was at Fort Des Moines, Iowa. This camp ran from June 15,
1917, to October 15, 1917. A total of 638 officers was graduated and
commissioned from the camp. Negro Regulars and Negro National Army men
who had passed the tests for admission to officers training camps were
sent mainly to the training schools for machine gun officers at Camp
Hancock, Augusta, Georgia; the infantry officers training school at Camp
Pike, Little Rock, Arkansas, and the artillery officers training school
at Camp Taylor, Louisville, Kentucky. They were trained along with the
white officers. The graduates from these camps along with a few National
Guardsmen who had taken the officers' examinations, and others trained
in France, made up the balance of the 1,200 commissioned.

In connection with the artillery training an interesting fact developed.
It had been charged that Negroes could not develop into artilleryman. A
strong prejudice against inducting them into that branch of the service
had always existed in the army. It was especially affirmed that the
Negro did not possess the mathematical ability necessary to qualify as
an expert artillery officer. Nevertheless, out of a number of Negro
aspirants, very small in comparison with the white men in training for
officers' commissions at the camp, five of the Negroes stood alongside
their white brothers at the head of the class. The remainder were
sprinkled down the line about in the same proportion and occupying the
same relative positions as the whites. The prejudice against the Negro
as an artilleryman was further and effectually dispelled in the record
made by the 349th, 350th and 351st artillery regiments and their machine
gun battalions in the 92nd division.

With the exception of the training camp for officers at Des Moines,
Iowa, no important attempt was made to establish separate Negro training
camps. In the draft quotas from each state were whites and blacks and
all with few exceptions, were sent to the most convenient camp.
Arrangements existed, however, at the dif