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• 1 2019-07-24T14:03:18+00:00 Treaty of Versailles 1 Treaty of Versailles is signed in Paris, ending World War I and creating the League of Nations. plain 2019-07-24T14:03:18+00:00 06-28-1919 African Americans in Chicago and across the U.S. hoped that their service and patriotism in World War I would advance their communities at home and improve race relations. They also saw the war as a fight for freedom and democracy around the world, which they hoped would include their own civil rights. 
  
  At the peace conferences in Paris and Versailles, France, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson called for the “self-determination” of peoples, suggesting that groups like national minorities ought to have the equal right to choose their own government instead of living under the domination of empires. His calls for the spread of democracy inspired peoples in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East to look to American principles in their fights against colonial oppressors.
  
  Yet while Wilson attempted to enlist European powers at the Versailles peace conference in his new vision for the world, lynchings and race riots in the U.S. seemed to undermine his attempt to promote American values and democracy. While leaders like W. E. B. DuBois and anti-colonial nationalists initially saw 1919 as a potential moment for galvanizing changes in social and political rights for people of color around the world, in reality Wilson’s vision of world-wide democracy was limited by race. He intended these principles to apply to groups in Europe, not to the subjects of European empires in Asia or Africa, and not to African Americans in the United States.