Unsung Patriots: African Americans in America's Wars

It's one of the last overlooked parts of American military history: the significant role African Americans played in the wars of America. Their story is more than just the 54th Massachusetts in the Civil War, more than just a tank battalion in World War II: African Americans contributed to every war in American history. Gene Bétit tells this important story with verve and gusto, as well as respect. By their brave deeds, African Americans have secured a place in American military history, and Bétit makes sure they receive their due.

In the colonial wars, the Revolution, and the War of 1812, African Americans served as seamen, gunners, and marine sharpshooters in the Navy and served as 15 percent of the Continental Army. During the Civil War, blacks constituted nearly 200,000 soldiers of the Union Army and served in some of the war's most celebrated regiments and toughest battles, and their service inspired the farthest-reaching of the Union's emancipation policies.

In the decades after the Civil War, Black soldiers formed an important part of the U.S. Army, fighting as Buffalo Soldiers in the Indian Wars of the 1870s, up through the Spanish-American War. In World War I, the segregated 92nd and 93rd Divisions fought hard and received the Croix de Guerre from France. In World War II, more than 1 million Blacks served the United States--and more than 100,000 were assigned to combat duty, not only in the Black Panther tank battalion and the Tuskegee Airmen, but in other combat units and units that kept the American war effort supplied.

In the years since World War II, Truman integrated the military during the Korean War, but the African-American soldiers remain a class apart--during Korea, during Vietnam, and beyond.

This is a story with importance not only for military history, but for all of American history. And Gene Bétit does it careful, exciting justice.

Eugene DeFriest Bétit served twenty years in the U.S. Army as a military intelligence analyst and linguist and received a doctorate from Georgetown University. Since then, he has written books about the Civil War and African-American history, served as docent at Belle Grove Plantation, and volunteered at Cedar Creek National Battlefield Park. He lives in Winchester, Virginia.