This commemoration of African-Americans in the U.S. military includes contributions from W. Stephen Morris and Luther H. Smith, one of the most-celebrated Tuskegee Airmen. Other black military heroes featured in the book include Crispus Attucks, the first man to die in the Revolutionary War; Lt. James Reese Europe, who brought jazz music to Europe in 1918; Lt. Charity Adams, commander of the only all-black Women's Army Corps unit during World War...

In April 1864, the Union garrison at Fort Pillow was comprised of almost six hundred troops, about half of them black. The Confederacy, incensed by what it saw as a crime against nature, sent its fiercest cavalry commander, Nathan Bedford Forrest, to attack the fort with about 1,500 men. The Confederates overran the fort and drove the Federals into a deadly crossfire. Only sixty-two of the U.S. colored troops survived the fight unwounded. Many

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"Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve. As these courageous women help to form the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, they are dealing...

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister, was a fervent member of New England's abolitionist movement, an active participant in the Underground Railroad, and not only corresponded with John Brown before the ill-fated raid on Harper's Ferry, but was part of a group that supplied material aid to Brown. When the Civil War broke out, his reputation, enhanced by his impassioned articles about Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner in the Atlantic, made him...

In this enlightening and informative work, military historian Lt. Col. Michael Lee Lanning (ret.) reveals the little-known, critical, and heroic role African Americans played in the American Revolution, serving in integrated units-a situation that would not exist again until the Korean War-more than 150 years later. At first, neither George Washington nor the Continental Congress approved of enlisting African Americans in the new army. Nevertheless,...

Josiah Wedgewood and Marcus Perry were friends in Virginia, but now that they are both involved in the Normandy invasion, the differences in their positions is uncomfortable, for Josiah is a white infantryman and Marcus is a black transport driver, the only role the segregated army will allow him.

Christopher Paul Moore is a curator and research historian for the New York Public Library's world-renowned Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. This noble work of history is a tribute to the inspiring accomplishments of black servicemen and servicewomen whose selflessness helped America achieve victory in World War II.

Bombingham by Anthony Grooms is the powerful story of a middle-class black family living in a time of great unrest. Accepting the charge of writing a letter to the parents of a fallen friend and fellow soldier, Walter Burke begins to reflect on the effects that segregation has had on his family and the effect the Vietnam war is having on him. Narrator Dion Graham provides an exceptional reading of Grooms' unsentimental prose.

A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers.. Though both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomed-marking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier, Deb Willis explores...