In 1919, the pioneering newspaper editor and civil rights activist Monroe Trotter obtained papers to work as a cook on a ship sailing from the United States to France. After the ship docked, he learned that crew members were not permitted to disembark, so he sneaked off and arrived in Paris “ragged and hungry and in need of funds,” he would write later.

This was not his first choice as a mode of transportation. Trotter had requested permission from the State Department to travel to the Paris Peace Conference following the end of World War I, to advocate for the Black American community to the delegates, including U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. But he was denied a visa.

Trotter and Wilson had a history. In 1914, Trotter had led a group of Black activists, all of whom had supported Wilson’s elections, to a meeting with the president where they expressed disappointment with his support for segregation. After Wilson gave a patronizing lecture about how Black Americans would be better off not competing against whites, Trotter told Wilson he risked losing Black voters, at which point the president angrily ended the meeting.