When the 17th Provisional Training Regiment at Des Moines, Iowa, graduated 278 Blacks as Army lieutenants at the beginning of World War I, eleven of the graduates were from Massachusetts and two of them, Oliver Lewis and Edward Dugger, were African-American from Roxbury. Edward Dugger helped to organize and gain official recognition for a Black Massachusetts National Guard unit, the 372nd Infantry, after his return from fighting in France and his discharge from the Army at the end of the war.
