Chad L. Williams, “Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers in the World War I Era” (The University of North Carolina Press, 2010)

New Books in African American Studies · May 13, 2011 · 48m

One of the great “grey” areas of World War I historiography concerns the African-American experience. Even as the war was ending, white historians, participants, and politicians strove to limit the record of the African-American soldiers’ participation, while also casting the standard narrative of the war as a white American crusade against German militarism. The rich experience of the African-American community–from the quest for legitimacy and equality by educated black social and political leaders, to the Great Migration of thousands of families out of the Deep South in search of wartime…