Search

This article tells the story of the first American military training mission undertaken in Africa. Between 1910 and 1942, seventeen African American officers trained, reorganized, and commanded the Liberian Frontier Force to defend the West African country of Liberia. This stability mission helped Liberia avoid territorial partition by Britain and France and defeat a series of indigenous rebellions, enabling the Americo-Liberian republic to survive a perilous period in its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the use of statistical analysis and data in the database known as the Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death that was established by scholar Robert W. Fogel to better understand U.S. Civil War soldiers and veterans. It examines several facets of the project including its research on military leadership, desertion, and the experiences of prisoners of the war. It also discusses the experiences of African American soldiers.

The essay discusses the history of African Americans in the U.S. Armed Forces, beginning with the U.S. Civil War. The Reorganization Act of 1866 in 1866 by U.S. Congress regarding the composition of the U.S. Army in the post-Civil War period made provisions for Black troops in the infantry and cavalry. Topics considered include abolitionist Frederick Douglass, black officers, and combat roles of African Americans in conflicts including the Spanish-American War and World War I.

This article examines the intimate encounters between Japanese women and African American servicemen in post--World War II Japan and the ways in which these intimacies challenged American racial politics that were reproduced in Occupied Japan, while at the same time reaffirmed American heterosexual masculine power and the subordination of Japanese women. It interrogates the gendered politics of the historical conception of Afro-Asian solidarity, and contributes to studies of the Black Pacific by considering these interracial intimacies as sites of potent marriage rights discursive production in the postwar years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the Battle of Poison Spring on April 18, 1864 won by the Confederate forces in Arkansas. End of the Camden Expedition, the last major Federal offensive in Arkansas; Racial atrocities in the Civil War; Description of the black soldiers who failed to escape during the encounters.

The article discusses political activity by African American military personnel (G.I.s) during World War II as a martial freedom movement. Topics include opposition to segregation within the U.S. Armed Forces, protest strategies used by African American G.I.s, and support from the organization National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

During the early years of the Vietnam War, thousands of young African-American men eagerly enlisted in the armed forces because they believed the military afforded them educational and vocational opportunities in supposedly the most integrated institution in the United States. By the end of the 1960s, however, reports of the inherent racial bias in the draft, discriminatory treatment in the armed forces, and institutional racism in all branches of the services enraged and shocked African-Americans puncturing their longstanding belief that military service was a civil rights imperative. Anger over the second-class treatment of blacks in the military was a major reason for Martin Luther King Jr.’s , and other civil rights organizations’ break with the Johnson administration over the Vietnam War. In fact, debates over the Vietnam War divided African-Americans more than any other issue in American history. In the coming decades, bitterness over tragic black subtext of Vietnam lingered and informed their disdain for conservatives’ attempt to depict Vietnam as a “noble cause.” African-Americans’ bitter memory of the war and the continuing plight of African-Americans veterans also contributed to their overwhelming opposition to the use of military force against non-white countries in Latin America and Iraq and Afghanistan. For African-Americans, the legacy of Vietnam was “no more Vietnams.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the military presence, service, and activities of African American buffalo soldiers belonging to the 25th U.S. Army Infantry Regiment in Montana. Topics explored include the recorded increase in the number of African American soldiers in the region in the late 1800s, the significant economic contributions of these soldiers to Montana, and the routine participation of African American troops in garrison duties and military drills.

The article responds to the issue article "The Black Civil War Soldier: Conflict and Citizenship" by Deborah Willis. Topics include the significance of Willis' archival research for the article and the photographs included in it, the author's research on black U.S. soldiers in World War II, and expressions of U.S. patriotism by African American military personnel. Portrayals of World War II African American military personnel by poet Gwendolyn Brooks are noted.

The article responds to the issue article "The Black Civil War Soldier: Conflict and Citizenship" by Deborah Willis. Topics include the notion of citizenship in relation to African American military personnel, the notions of obedience and violence in relation to their service in the U.S. Civil War, and the role of the photographs presented by Willis as objects.

The article responds to the issue article "The Black Civil War Soldier: Conflict and Citizenship" by Deborah Willis. Topics include the nature of photography in relation to African American history, the role of service in the war in changing social norms related to slavery, and the use of sources such as photographs and letters by Willis.

The article discusses the service of African American military personnel in the U.S. Civil War, noting photographs and letters depicting their service. Topics include the role of racism in erasing the memories of black soldiers who took part in the war, the roles of slaves and free men as soldiers, and the 1900 exhibition "Exhibit of American Negroes" as part of the Universelle de Paris exposition at the Palace of Social Economy and Congresses in Paris, France.

The article talks about racial tensions and injustice by the U.S. Military in Northern Ireland during the Second World War focusing on African American servicemen. Topics discussed include severe prejudice faced by the servicemen compared to their white counterparts, and American troops in Great Britain being subject to American military law due to the Visiting Forces Act.

In the years following World War I, the Saturday Evening Post continued its longstanding practice of caricaturing and dehumanizing African Americans by portraying black servicemen as bumblers and buffoons. This politics of representation registers and recontains new historical developments in African American experience, but then folds those phenomena back into older, stereotypical forms of knowledge and racially stratified social norms and practices. Hugh Wiley’s Wildcat stories, which were published regularly for more than a decade, exemplify the Post’s practices. A significant response to the Post’s treatment of African American veterans can be found in Edward Christopher Williams’s The Letters of Davy Carr: A True Story of Colored Vanity Fair (republished in 2004 as When Washington Was in Vogue). This epistolary novel, which was published serially and anonymously in the Messenger, a radical little magazine of the Harlem Renaissance, challenges the racist stereotyping of black soldiers by demonstrating that African Americans would be full participants in US print culture and would not be registered and recontained by the phantasms of racism and minstrelsy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on historical topics which includes military service and pension compensation of African American Civil War Soldiers, economic and historical relations between China-Japan, and 19th century beliefs of Letts regarding witchcraft.

The article discusses the Gold Star Mother Program initiated in 1930 by the U.S. government which undertook to send roughly 6700 mothers and wives of fallen World War I soldiers to Europe. The program would arrange for travel of both white and African American women, but the women would travel on separate ships and stay in different hotels. Civil rights activists with the the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) protested the program. However, 279 black mothers and wives did travel to Europe between 1930 and 1933 and reported the trip was nothing like the NAACP predicted.

At the end of the 1960s, the United States military was rocked by race-related violence and riots. Growing fears of black “militancy” eventually compelled the military's largely white leadership to implement policies aimed at ameliorating racial disparities. One of the most significant changes was the establishment of the Defense Race Relations Institute (DRRI) and the requirement that all troops partake in race relations education. Largely overlooked in histories of military race relations and rarely viewed in terms of its place in the larger landscape of US race relations, DRRI was founded to train the military's race relations educators. Its original curriculum and methodology, during the years 1971–74, represented a radical response to the problems of racism in the military, and central to its framework was a critique of whiteness as a nexus of racialized power. This paper attempts to present a complex understanding of the motivations involved in the founding of the DRRI as it historicizes the military's quest to contain race “militancy” through the establishment of DRRI. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This qualitative investigation examines the collective constructions of the legacy of the Tuskegee Airmen and men's perspectives of the impact of their military experiences on their postwar lives. African American men ( n = 93) who participated in the 'Tuskegee Experiment' as pilots, ground crew, and other military personnel were surveyed. The emergent legacy focused on record of excellence and accomplishment in their individual performance and military service, the contesting of American racism and its impact on racial ideology and social policy, and lessons for the next generation that can be drawn from this history. In civilian life, in the military and aviation, and as civic actors the Tuskegee Airmen distinguished themselves as Black men, and as Americans. The meanings of these social identities and the inherent contradictions of race, nation, and war are embedded within the Tuskegee Airmen history and legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the participation of African American soldiers in the Philippine-American War, focusing on the actions these soldiers took during the conflict. Other topics include the role of Filipino insurrection leader Emilio Aguinaldo in starting the conflict, the role African American soldier David Fagan played in the Filipino military after deserting the U.S. Army, the negative treatment of Sergeant-Major John W. Calloway by the U.S. Military for his sympathy of the Filipinos.

This article deals with the response of the Northern Ireland government to the presence of African American troops in the country during the Second World War, using extensive archival research at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, The National Archives at Kew and the National Records and Archives Administration in Maryland. It examines the pressures placed upon Stormont by both Westminster and, more particularly, the American military authorities in relation to U.S. racial mores. It demonstrates that despite edicts from London and attempts by the Americans to impose racial segregation, the Northern Ireland government fashioned a response which did not endorse ' Jim Crow' racism but, instead, dealt with the problem pragmatically and thoughtfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores black internationalist articulations of antifascism in the 1930s through a discussion of the “maps of grievance” mobilized by African American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. It interrogates how African American volunteers linked the conflict in Spain to Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and to struggles against white supremacy in the United States. Through making such linkages, black internationalist intellectuals and political activists have made significant, if frequently neglected, theoretical and political engagements with fascism and antifascism. By decentering the national in internationalism and situating forms of subaltern cosmopolitanism as constitutive of internationalist political activity, it reconfigures aspects of the spatial constitution of internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the role of race in U.S. cultural memory of World War II, with a particular focus on memories and representations of Doris Miller, an African American cook and Navy Cross honoree. According to the author, claims of equality and multicultural inclusion in World War II remembrance do not reflect wartime efforts to suppress black protest and critique. Topics discussed include citizenship, patriotism, and belonging.

An essay is presented on the entertainment of troops at Camp Shelby, a military camp in Mississippi, between 1918 and 1945. It examines the contexts of World War I and World War II and comments on relations with the town of Hattiesburg, Mississippi. The author considers the work of women in recreation and entertainment through the Hattiesburg-area Girls’ Service Organization (GSO) and the United Service Organizations (USO). Sports teams and recreation for African American troops are discussed.

An essay is presented for the 1973 film "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" directed by Ivan Dixon and produced by Dixon and Sam Greenlee. The film's embodiment of revolutionary philosophy, including in regard to the Black Power movement and anti-colonial movements, is discussed. An overview of the film's depiction of the racial identity of African Americans, including of African American soldiers, is provided.

When the United States entered the First World War, the nation's Jim Crow politics contributed to the general rejection of African American men for war-time military service. Only after political pressure from black and white progressives threatened to spill over into the public sphere were the 92nd and 93rd Divisions organized and sent to France. This policy has long been studied and criticized by historians, particularly in light of the long service of the United States Army's four ‘colored regiments’, the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry Regiments. However, in spite of the presence and distinguished service of these four black regiments, the War Department and the army demonstrate a morally ambiguous record of racial tolerance that allowed for the exclusion of Blacks from military service with the American Expeditionary Forces. This record is highlighted in the work of two of the army's medical officers, Charles Woodruff and Robert Shufeldt, whose work on medical ethnology and racial degeneration reveal critical justifications that were not only used to argue for the exclusion of African Americans from military service, but also, in the post-war period, to marginalize the black soldier's combat record and support the view that black men were unfit for future military service. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Negro Comrades of the Crown unveils the amazing history of the alliances that African Americans in search of individual and group freedom forged throughout the antebellum decades with the British Empire. Black soldiers were recruited by the British, who had their own imperial and diplomatic interests, in opposing the United States. Whether in the War of 1812, in raids from Spanish Florida, in the Caribbean, or in opposing the secession of Texas from Mexico, they eagerly joined in battles against the slave republic and its citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a campaign to end racial segregation in bowling alleys in the U.S. during World War II. It comments on the formation of the National Negro Bowling Association (NNBA), later called the National Bowling Association (TNBA), and protests against the discriminatory practices of the American Bowling Congress (ABC). Other topics include the growth of bowling's popularity in the U.S., support for the integration of bowling in the African American press, and discrimination against African American military personnel.

An essay is presented on the interaction between African American soldiers stationed at Camp Gifu in central Japan and Japanese civilians living near the base between 1947 and 1951. It examines how African American soldiers viewed notions of blackness and masculinity through social encounters with local Japanese. The author suggests that African American soldiers asserted a masculinity in their romantic and sexual encounters with Japanese women by relying on stereotypes.

This article recounts the history of African-American Civil War veterans with respect to their pensions. Official statues contained no mention of race indicating that the pensions should be administered to white and black soldiers alike but, despite this, the system managed to deny benefits to many soldiers.

Recounts the participation of African Americans to the United States Civil War from 1961-1865. Leading areas where African Americans enlisted; Information on General Order # 309 which was issued by the War Department in 1863; Role played by African Americans from Delaware during the war.

Discusses the reception of black American servicemen in Australia during World War II. Segregation of black American servicemen; Australian War Cabinet's opposition to the inclusion of black Americans among the Allied forces; Reinforcement of the tenets of White Australia; Conflicts form the association of white women with black servicemen.

Focuses on the comparative mortality among African-American and white troops in the Union Army during the United States' Civil War. Organization of medical records of Union troops into regions; Experiencing of racial peculiarity with diseases; Receiving substandard care from Union Army.