Unsung Patriots: African Americans in America’s Wars by Eugene DeFriest Bétit published by Stackpole Books (2023)
I first heard of the “Harlem Hell Fighters” of World War I as a boy. In my twenties I got to know a Tuskegee Airman who lived in my village on Long Island. My parents told me that Black troops had been segregated until Truman and that we had fought against Nazi racial oppression with an army that had long been engaging in widespread discrimination against African Americans. I began studying the Civil War’s United States Colored Troops after I learned about them during a visit to the Petersburg Battlefield nearly forty years ago. So, I was not ignorant of Black military service in the United States, but I knew a lot about a few segments. I was grateful to read Eugene DeFriest Bétit’s new book Unsung Patriots: African Americans in America’s Wars because it presents a unified history of Blacks in the American military from Colonial times until the early 21st Century in a lively narrative that will engage both the general reader and those with specialized military interest. Unlike some accounts of Blacks in the army, Bétit does not shy away from retelling the stories of sometimes deadly discrimination against African Americans by the top brass and of widespread prejudice by the white rank and file.
Some aspects of Black military service were completely obscure to me before I read this new book. I was very unfamiliar with the use of Black militiamen during the Colonial Period by the English colonies, for example. The book gives a good basic account of the adaptation to biracial defense during the 1600s and 1700s by colonists worried about French and Native American raids. One area I wish Bétit had covered is the use of Black troops by Britain’s opponents in the New World.
Bétit gives more detail on Black soldiers in New England in the fight against the British at the start of the Revolution, and the response of Southern officers like George Washington to seeing armed Blacks in the ranks. According to Bétit, one-in-seven of the men fighting against Britain was Black! And they were there from the start. On April 19, 1775 when the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord, forty to fifty African Americans were among the men who converged along the Battle Road to confront the Redcoats. At Bunker Hill, Peter Salem, a Black militiaman, is credited for killing Royal Marine Major John Pitcairn in July, 1775. Another Black soldier, Salem Poor, reportedly killed British Lieutenant Colonel Abercrombie. Massachusetts Brigadier General John Thomas said that “we have some Negros but I look upon them as equally serviceable with other men…many have proved themselves brave.”
In spite of the important service Blacks rendered right from the start, there were attempts to expel from Continental Army service. As early as 1775, Edward Rutledge of South Carolina wanted the Continental Congress to expel all Blacks currently serving. The English-born rebel general, Horatio Gates, forbade “Officers of the several regiments of Massachusetts Bayforces,” to “enlist any…negro or vagabond.” In October 1775, Washington and his staff agreed that Blacks needed to be driven out of the army.
Colonel Alexander Hamilton, an aide to Washington, took a different view, writing that “The contempt we have been taught to entertain for Blacks makes us fancy many things founded neither in reason nor experience…their natural faculties are probably as good as ours.” Hamilton’s friend, South Carolina’s Lieutenant Colonel John Laurens, also spoke out in favor of Black soldiers in the Continental Army, but his proposal for their service was condemned by his native state. Laurens said that his state’s rejection was due to its leaders’ prejudices and greed. These would be two common motives for excluding Blacks from the military for the next century-and-a-half.
In 1780, Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island was commanding the largest force opposing the British in the South. He joined forces with Laurens to call for Black enlistment, but he was hit hard by Southern leaders who believed it would lead to the end of slavery. With men whom Washington trusted calling for the enlistment of Blacks, even Washington warmed to the idea. Unfortunately, South Carolina and Georgia used the offer of slaves in exchange for military service as an inducement for white men to join the army!
Throughout his treatment of Blacks during the Revolutionary War, Bétit sets a pattern he uses in discussing subsequent conflicts up to Vietnam. He describes the situation of Blacks in civil society at the start of the conflict, he looks at their participation in the military during the conflict, and he examines efforts to exclude them. He also describes social changes after the conflict in reaction to Black service. Sometimes the cause of racial equality was advanced, other times Black returning home after the war were lynched.
While the record of the rebels during the Revolution was very mixed, the state legislatures of New Jersey, New Hampshire, and other colonies authorized the recruitment of Blacks, and Black companies were organized in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and elsewhere. Still, Black service in the “Cause of Freedom” did not lead to freedom for Blacks.
Three decades later, Blacks served in the army and navy during the War of 1812. Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie who cried out “Don’t Give Up the Ship” in 1813, was a Rhode Islander whose navy was a quarter Black. Slaveowner Andrew Jackson’s lionized defenders of New Orleans included a large force of Free Blacks. After both the Revolution and the War of 1812, Northern states passed measures to gradually end slavery, but Southern states became more dedicated to resisting emancipation. By the time of the Civil War, Blacks were completely excluded from service in the United States Army.
Bétit’s narrative devotes two chapters to Black service in the Civil War. While the Confederacy rejected Black enlistment until the last weeks of the war, the Union Army’s professional leadership began by opposing Black enlistment but was forced by anti-slavery political leadership, the clamor for enlistment by Blacks, and the desperate need for new soldiers to finally incorporate Blacks into the army. While some of these Black Unionists faced terrible discrimination after enlistment, others served under competent officers who tried to work with Black soldiers to win more equal treatment from the military and society at large. Bétit does a fine job of revealing the prejudices lurking at the highest levels of military command, as well as the valiant struggle of Blacks for inclusion and liberation. Both the Black soldiers and their white regimental officers faced execution if they were captured by the Confederates, so this service carried the greatest risk imaginable.
In the Civil War, Black troops marching through the South were able to end slavery in the localities they traversed. Their contributions to Union victory, both as combat troops and logistical support, were vital in saving the Union and destroying slavery everywhere in the United States. Bétit highlights the experiences of the troops in freeing their people, however, I did find myself wishing he had written more about the Black soldiers’ role in occupying the former-Confederate states in the months after most white troops had been discharged over the summer of 1865.
In spite of their commendable service during the Civil War, Black soldiers continued to be discriminated against after the conflict ended. The Lincoln administration’s near-total ban on Black officers was continued after the war, and Blacks were only allowed to serve in the “Buffalo Soldier” segregated regiments of the Regular Army. Bétit writes about the effort to exclude Blacks from West Point, the slowness in promoting Black soldiers, and other fights to keep Blacks at second class status in the army.
As the United States invaded Cuba and the Philippines in its end of the Century war with Spain, Blacks once again answered the call to arms, even storming San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. T.R. was photographed with his Black comrades in arms and he acknowledged their heroism, but, Bétit shows, Blacks were cropped out of photos of the war and T.R. deleted references to them after the war.
The United States entered World War I under its most racist president in fifty years, progressive Woodrow Wilson. Tens of thousands of Black fighting men were sent to France in all-Black segregated units commanded by whites-only officers. Blacks serving in segregated units after the Civil War were in regiments commanded largely by Northern officers since most Southern professional soldiers had resigned their commissions at the start of the Civil War. Southern Blacks serving during the First World War were often commanded by the sons of Confederate soldiers and they suffered very immediate abuse from their immediate commanders. Wilson’s army made little attempt to protect Blacks serving their country.
On the other hand, several Black units served with French forces. The French government made an effort to ensure that its military leadership treated the Black Americans with the respect due to soldiers. These soldiers were issued the same equipment and rations as French soldiers. French honors like the Croix de Guerre were bestowed on Blacks for bravery just as they were on whites. Blacks in these units were so welcomed by the French that American military intelligence asked the French to treat Blacks worse so that Black servicemen were always reminded that they were inferior and that the races needed to be separated. Even as Black men were being chewed up by German machine gun fire in their front, the U.S. Army was shooting them in the back!
This concern about Black Americans serving with the French did not end with the November 11, 1918 Armistice. Betit writes that when Black soldiers got back to the United States, the American military police greeting their ships liked to rough them up to remind them that this was the United States and not France and that their place in America in 1919 was the same as it had been in 1914.
Things did not improve for Blacks when they returned home. While New York held a monster parade honoring the return of the Harlem Hell Fighters, many Black veterans returned to homes in the South where no greeting was extended. Black veterans were told that they should never wear their uniforms in their Southern hometowns by local white leaders. In the “Red Summer” of 1919, Black veterans were beaten and a number were lynched by white terror mobs hoping to head off the spectre of Black veterans demanding equality. The author’s description of the horrors these veterans endured makes a lie of claims that America has always honored its service men. After World War I, the Black vet had a target on his back.
Things did not improve for Blacks in the army and navy over the two interwar decades. Blacks were still segregated and still discriminated against. Hitler admired the American race laws so much that he had them analyzed as a guide for Nazi legislation. When World War II finally came to America on December 7, 1941, the massive need for manpower insured that Blacks would have to be recruited, albeit under discriminatory guidelines. While Eleanor Roosevelt served on the board of the NAACP and denounced military racism, her husband cut deals with Southern segregationists in Congress that insured it would still be part of the military. It was so bad that the head of the Marine Corps announced that Blacks hoping to serve should join the army since they had no place in the Marines!
Blacks in the army in World War II organized protests against the discrimination they were suffering both at the hands of the military leadership and from local authorities where they were training in the South. Facing harsh military justice, these brave men stood up for themselves and their comrades to demand to be treated like citizens of the United States. Many of you know the story of Jackie Robinson’s protest, but Bétit tells of a number of others who braved the same persecution.
After the war, segregation only had two more years of life. Harry Truman, a Border State Democrat who once thought of joining the Ku Klux Klan, ordered the military to desegregate. Over the next three decades integration proceeded in fits and starts, but eventually succeeded. Of course, the fact that the first fully-integrated American conflict was Vietnam was hardly reassuring. Bétit does a good job of examining the impact of wars in Korea and Vietnam on Black soldiers and communities, and of the endless struggle of Black professional soldiers for respect and fairness. He also looks at the work of civilian advocates like Thurgood Marshall of the NAACP Legal Defense to achieve equity.
Today we live in a world where Black generals and commanders are no longer mere tokens and where Black troops are more than servants, laborers, and cannon fodder. Bétit does a fine job of showing us how Black struggle made this happen. Although the book is a little light on developments over the last quarter-century when African American men and women rose to the highest levels of command, he provides a clear history of the efforts that made that happen.
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