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With America's entry into World War I (April, 1917) President Woodrow Wilson requested Herbert Hoover to leave his position as Chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium and return to this country to take charge of its wartime Food Administration. Three years of intense fighting in western Europe had devastated its people and their ability to farm. The Food Administration's goals were to provide food for its own troops and those of its Allies in war-torn Europe as well as to feed the American and Allied populations.
Hoover believed that unlike Europe, where strict food rationing had been instituted, food policy in the United States would be based on an entirely different idea: "Our conception of the problem in the United States is that we should assemble the voluntary effort of the people…We propose to mobilize the spirit of self-denial and self-sacrifice in this country."
"Food Will Win the War" became the slogan and the Food Administration's widely disseminated posters, articles, workshops and educational material resulted in a 15% reduction in domestic food consumption without rationing. This meant that in a 12-month period of 1918-1919, this country furnished 18,500,000 tons of food to the Allies.

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Because Germany was one of America’s adversaries in the war, many Anglo-Americans began to fear that German Americans were still loyal to the Kaiser, or German emperor. With the war, German Americans became a perceived security threat. 
Once the United States entered the war, a search for spies and saboteurs escalated into efforts to suppress German culture. Many German-language newspapers were closed down. Public schools stopped teaching German. Lutheran churches dropped services that were spoken in German.
Germans were called "Huns." In the name of patriotism, musicians no longer played Bach and Beethoven, and schools stopped teaching the German language. Americans renamed sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"; dachshunds "liberty hounds"; and German measles "liberty measles." Cincinnati, with its large German American population, even removed pretzels from the free lunch counters in saloons. More alarming, vigilante groups attacked anyone suspected of being unpatriotic. Workers who refused to buy war bonds often suffered harsh retribution, and attacks on labor protesters were nothing short of brutal. The legal system backed the suppression. Juries routinely released defendants accused of violence against individuals or groups critical of the war.
All of this anti-German sentiment did two things. First, it motivated Anglo-Americans to push back against anything German. States banned German-language schools and removed German books from libraries. Some German Americans were interned, and one German American man, who was also targeted for being socialist, was killed by a mob.Secondly, in response to this, German Americans began intentionally “assimilating” to avoid becoming targets. They changed their names to English-sounding ones, renamed German streets, and began to speak German only in private. In public, they spoke English.
From History.com and Digital History

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More than 350,000 African Americans served during World War I. Many were assigned menial support roles, due to American society’s deep fears and prejudices. Despite facing racism at home and in uniform, tens of thousands of black soldiers served courageously and capably in combat.
When war broke out, black Americans debated whether or not to support the war effort if the U.S. joined the fighting. Some questioned why they should help the U.S. defend democracy overseas, when they were denied its full benefits at home. When war came, many African-Americans chose to prove their right to equality by serving their country. African American troops were organized into segregated units, mostly led by white officers. In response to protests, the Army eventually trained over 1,300 black officers.
200,000 black troops shipped overseas. Many white commanders believed black soldiers would perform poorly under fire. Others feared that black combat veterans would be emboldened to resist racism when they returned home. As a result, most African Americans were assigned to labor duties in the rear areas.General Pershing intended to train and raise an independent American army, and resisted British and French requests for U.S. troops. However, he agreed to send the French several African-American regiments from the 93rd Division. 
The most famous of these was the 369th Infantry Regiment. Although it was also known for its famed regimental band, which brought jazz to Europe, it was first and foremost a fighting unit. During the Meuse-Argonne offensive at the end of the war, the 92nd “Buffalo Soldiers” Division joined the fighting, serving under U.S. command. In addition, a small number of African-American women served as nurses and in the Navy.					From worldwar1centennial.org

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In the United States, reaction to the “European” war was mixed.  Socialists, internationalists, woman suffrage workers, and peace activists viewed the situation with growing horror as decades of work for arbitration, international networks, and support for a peaceful community of nations dissolved in the quickly expanding war.  Many of these activists believed the U.S., as a neutral nation, could act as an arbitrator to end the hostilities.

There were parades, lobbying in Congress, letters to the editor, and organizing to directly negotiate with the leaders of belligerent nations, as well as citizen leaders of internationally-focused organizations.Others understood that Americans still had ties to their ancestral homelands, hailing from countries on all sides of the War.  Many did not want the U.S. to support one side or the other in this conflict across the Atlantic.  This was combined with a strong sentiment on the part of many Americans to avoid a big and costly war in Europe.  

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The service of American women at war cost them more than just the burden of putting their lives on hold, deferring marriage and children, or pursuing higher education. The sacrifice of these women went far beyond that; in all more than six-hundred of these patriotic women lost their lives in service to their nation. The question was, how would the nation return that debt?
Many suffragists were cooperating with Wilson in hopes of securing his support for suffrage while other suffragists were being imprisoned and brutally treated for protesting Wilson’s reluctance to extend women the vote. Both the moderate suffragists and the militant suffragists were exerting pressure upon Wilson, and millions of American women were demonstrating, through service and sacrifice, their claim to full citizenship.
Finally Wilson, at best a reluctant supporter of suffrage, threw his support behind the issue. On September 30, 1918 with war’s end weeks away Wilson addressed Congress:“We have made partners of the women in this war…Shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege?”
With the support of the president the die was cast. Although the Susan B. Anthony bill – to give women the right to vote - was be debated by Congress for many months, and the issue would be contentiously battled out among the states for ratification. Finally on August 18, 1920, the Susan B. Anthony amendment became the nineteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States. With that, twenty-million women won the right to vote.			From nps.org

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At the time of the First World War, most women were barred from voting or serving in military combat roles. Many saw the war as an opportunity to not only serve their countries but to gain more rights and independence. With millions of men away from home, women filled manufacturing and agricultural positions on the home front. Others provided support on the front lines as nurses, doctors, ambulance drivers, translators and, in rare cases, on the battlefield. Some girls even served doughnuts to soldiers on the front lines!
Around 12,000 women enlisted in the military. Most women served stateside on naval bases, replacing men who had deployed to Europe. While many female recruits performed clerical duties, some worked as truck drivers, mechanics, radio operators, telephone operators, translators, camouflage artists and munition workers. 
From theworldwar.org

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Several thousand men, drafted into the armed forces to fight in the fields of France, personally opposed the war as conscientious objectors (C.O.s).  The U.S. government had not provisions for men opposed to military service during World War I.  Many of the C.O.s were placed in military camps where officers and fellow enlisted men tormented them; others were sent to military prisons, where they survived under a variety of conditions.  Some endured solitary confinement and other harsh conditions.  Several men died due to the treatment they received.  Some C.O.s remained in custody long after the war ended in 1918.



(From WW1 Online)

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Required all men between the ages of 21 and 30 to register for the draft.
Candidates were drafted through a lottery system and then accepted or rejected for service by a local draft board. Medical and education deferments were made possible, and substitutions were made illegal.
About 2.8 million Americans were drafted, and another 2 million volunteered to fight. 

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THE ESPIONAGE ACT OF 1917 was a law passed by Congress after the United States entered World War I designed to protect the war effort from disloyal European immigrants. The Act criminalized the publication or distribution of “information” that could harm or hinder US armed forces as well as of “false reports or false statements” intended to promote America’s enemies, and it empowered the Postmaster General to seize mail that it judged to fall within these categories. The Sedition Act of 1918 refers to a series of amendments to the Espionage Act that expanded the crimes defined in that law to include, among other things, any expression of disloyalty to or contempt of the US government or military. From https://jackmillercenter.org/cd-resources/espionage-sedition-acts/

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The Committee on Public Information was a government agency created during World War I to distribute information intended to influence public opinion to inspire support for America's entry in the war. The organization was essentially a propaganda arm of the federal government, and was presented to the public and the Congress as a reasonable alternative to government censorship of war news.
The administration of Woodrow Wilson believed a government office dedicated to providing favorable publicity for the cause of entering the war was necessary. Americans had never sent an army to Europe. And joining the war on the side of Britain and France was a concept that needed to be sold to the public the way an ordinary consumer product might be sold.
In its few years of operation, the Committee on Public Information (CPI) fed material to newspapers and magazines, commissioned advertising campaigns, and produced propaganda posters. It even arranged for thousands of public speakers to appear all over the country, making the case for Americans to fight in Europe.

From the article “Committee on Public Information, America’s WW1 Propaganda Agency” on ThoughtCo.com

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Perhaps the greatest effect of World War I on African American life was its triggering of the first phase of the Great Migration, the unprecedented movement of southern blacks northward. During this phase, between 1915 and 1920 (the second phase was between 1920 and 1930), approximately 500,000 blacks trekked northward; the years between 1916 and 1918 had the greatest volume. After believing, wrongly, that blacks would return quickly to the South, white southerners became truly alarmed as the pace of migration quickened. They resorted to legal (the arrest of northern labor recruiters) and extralegal (refusal to sell African Americans train tickets for travel to northern cities) methods to prevent the relocation of the black labor force that had supported the southern economy. From www.njstatelib.org.

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US citizens were encouraged to grow their own food to limit civilian consumption. The government would encourage families to conserve food and grow their own vegetables in “Victory Gardens”. First promoted during World War I, war gardening, or victory gardens, provided American citizens an opportunity to assist with the war effort. Americans were encouraged to produce their own food, planting vegetable gardens in their backyards, churchyards, city parks, and playgrounds