World War I and Arkansas

Objective

Students will explore World War I and its effects on Arkansas by engaging with both primary and secondary sources in order to understand the lived experiences of Arkansans and Arkansan soldiers in the war.

Key Vocabulary

1. Primary Sources: first-hand information from those who experienced a time or event, including memoirs, interviews, letters, and public documents
2. Secondary Sources: second-hand information; works that have been collected, interpreted, or published by someone other than the original source

Necessary Materials

Students’ writing utensils, lined paper for students’ notes, printed or online copy of the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas entry World War I for each student and a printed or online copy of the Maxwell Lyons letter for each student

Historical Background

Several factors led to the start of the Great War, what we only later called World War I. Wide-stretching political alliances and growing nationalism highlighted tensions, and finally the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, ignited the conflict in Europe.

Over the next four years, fifteen nations sent 65 million soldiers to war; 8.5 million of them were killed, 21 million were injured, and 7.7 million were captured or missing.

Great advances in military technology including barbed wire, machine guns, poisoned gas, armored vehicles, submarines, and airplanes all contributed greatly to the war’s death toll and slow-moving battlefront. Warfare on open fields proved obsolete and deadly, leading to the development of trench warfare. Miles and miles of trenches were dug on the eastern and western fronts of the war. Progress was measured by the placement of the trenches; that progress was so slow it was measured by literal inches of movement over days or weeks at a time.

The United States insisted on staying out of the war entirely, being much more interested in the civil war in Mexico than in a war across the ocean. Despite staying out of the early part of the Great War, however, people in the United States were still affected by the happenings in Europe. In Arkansas for example: armies needed cotton for uniforms, increasing the prices paid for cotton; lead and zinc mining increased dramatically across the state; and a factory in Helena (Phillips County) employed hundreds to manufacture rifle stocks from local hardwood trees. Such high demand for resources, goods, and products was felt across the country, with the United States trading almost entirely with the Allied Powers. Even if the U.S. was uninvolved in the war on an official level, it nonetheless took sides with its economic policies.

While running for reelection in 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ran partially on the promise to keep the U.S. out of the Great War. However, after German submarines sunk American passenger ships near the British Isles, policy changed. On April 6, 1917, less than a month into his second term, Wilson officially committed the U.S. to the Allied Powers alongside France and Britain, thus formally entering the Great War.

The Arkansas National Guard was incorporated into the U.S. Army to bolster the number of troops, and young American men ages twenty-one to thirty were required to register for military service. By June 5, 1917, a total of 149,207 Arkansans alone had registered. After the age limit was increased to 45, the total went up to 199,857. Despite new job opportunities due to wartime, this wave of working-age enlistments caused a labor shortage in Arkansas. Colleges and universities struggled to remain open as their students went off to war.

Lands were claimed by the government to facilitate the training of soldiers, especially at Camp Pike (now Camp Joseph T. Robinson) in North Little Rock; bond drives were held to fundraise for the war; and the American Red Cross held activities across the entirety of the state including gathering both money, supplies, and clothes. Those few that spoke out against the war or the war support efforts were publicly shamed, humiliated, and in some cases beaten and run out of town.

The war formally ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, though actual war efforts ended at different times across different regions; some commemorate the war’s end based on the armistice of November 11, 1918.

American casualties in the war were far fewer than those of other nations, in no small part due to the U.S. joining the war so late. From Arkansas, 71,862 served directly in the war; according to registration cards, 18,322 soldiers were Black and two were Native American. Of all of these soldiers, 2,183 died (over half from illness) and 1,751 were injured.

The massive relocation of huge groups of people spread the so-called Spanish flu across the U.S. and killed nearly 7,000 Arkansans in 1918, more than triple the number of soldiers who died in the war.

With the end of the war, soldiers returned home, back to their families, back to colleges and universities. The prices of cotton, lead, and zinc fell. Most of the lands claimed by the U.S. government were returned to their former owners. That said, the experiences of soldiers changed the culture of the state and the country, the new infrastructure and economic boom that wartime brought changed opportunities, and women and Americans of color fought hard to hold on to and continue to improve what new opportunities they found during this time.

Activities

Bellringer

For a major historical event like World War I, checking in for prior knowledge with students can both help the teacher know where to direct their own energy in the lesson as well as help students to connect prior knowledge to the lesson of the day.

As such, for this bellringer a simple knowledge-check quiz is both beneficial and easy to prepare. Open response should work fine, but for younger grades multiple choice options could boost engagement. For a higher-energy start to the lesson, make it a competition, with some sort of reward for whichever group can get the most correct answers. Present the following prompt and questions to students. Materials from the National World War I Museum and Memorial are a great resource for answering these questions: https://www.theworldwar.org/education-resources

Direct Instruction

Instruct students on these major aspects of World War I:

• Circumstances leading to the war. Discuss alliances, nationalism, existing tensions, and the assassination of Franz Ferdinand.
• New technologies, especially machine guns, chemical weapons, and assembly lines in factories.
• Harsh conditions of trench warfare; disease, trauma, food insecurity, and how the soldiers in the trenches coped.
• Why America was so isolationist at the time, and what led to the change in policy.
• How America was impacted financially and culturally at the time, including new job opportunities and new opportunities for women and people of color.

  

Engaging Secondary Sources

Have students read the CALS Encyclopedia of Arkansas (EOA) entry on World War I, either via internet access or printouts prepped beforehand. As they read, have students focus on specifically how Arkansas was directly impacted by the events of the war. Students should either annotate as they read, discuss in groups as they read, or report out after reading what they learned. Some key points students should be looking for (feel free to use these as close-reading questions for students to answer):

• How were industries like cotton or lead and zinc mining impacted during the war?
• How were jobs impacted by the war?
• What health problems were revealed in Arkansas due to soldier enlistment?
• Where did the U.S. government put their new wave of fresh soldiers to train?
• What conflicts between Arkansans arose due to the war?
• How many Arkansans participated in the war?
• How many Arkansans died during the war (both in combat and from the flu)?

Analyzing Primary Sources

Have students access Correspondence: Maxwell Lyons to his parents, October 13, 1918 from the Arkansas Studies Research Portal, either via internet access or printouts prepped prior to class. This letter from Maxwell Lyons to his family back in Arkansas reveals much about the time period and the impact the war had on Arkansans.

Have students attempt to read the handwritten letter from Maxwell Lyons. After a minute or two, transition to having students read the transcript provided below of that very letter. Students should pay attention to what details Maxwell Lyons chose to share, as well as the attitude he presents toward his family, fellow soldiers, and the war as a whole.

Evaluation

Student evaluations should come in the form of written response or class discussion following students reading Maxwell Lyons’s letter. At this point, students have been given extensive information on the impact World War I had on Arkansas. One possible evaluation is to have students analyze Lyons’s letter for similarities between his words and the events going on in Arkansas at the time according to the EOA entry. Alternatively, students could write their own “letter to home” from the perspective of an Arkansas soldier in World War I, in which they include both details of the soldiers’ struggles and concerns for family regarding things that were happening in the state at the time. (More primary sources can be accessed in the Arkansas and the Great War digital collection from the CALS Butler Center for Arkansas Studies.)

Extensions

There are many resources on the EOA and internet in general regarding soldiers of the Great War, their personal experiences, and some of the ways they overcame that trauma. One of the most prevalent coping strategies was, in fact, writing. Create a list of writings, either letters or short fiction or poetry (especially poetry; see Poets of World War I from the Poetry Foundation), from soldiers and others affected by World War I and have students analyze their meaning, their significance, and what they reveal about the time period and lived experiences.