Having been for 18 years confidential secretary to Booker T. Washington, and being at the time of his appointment secretary of the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute for Negroes, Mr. Scott was peculiarly fitted to render necessary advice to the war department with respect to the Negroes of the various states, to look after all matters affecting the interests of Negro selectives and enlisted men, and to inquire into the treatment accorded them by the various officials connected with the war department.  In the position occupied by him, he was thus enabled to obtain a proper perspective both of the attitude of selective service officials to the Negro, and of the Negro to the war, especially to the draft.  In a memorandum on the subject addressed to the Provost Marshall General, December 12, 1918, he wrote: 

“The attitude of the Negro was one of complete acceptance of the draft, in fact of an eagerness to accept its terms.  There was a deep resentment in many quarters that he was not permitted to volunteer, as white men by the thousands were permitted to do in connection with National Guard units and other branches of military service which were closed to colored men.  One of the brightest chapters in the whole history of the war is the Negro’s eager acceptance of the draft and his splendid willingness to fight.  His only resentment was due to the limited extent to which he was allowed to join and participate in combatant or ‘fighting’ units.  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.