Brian G. Shellum's Blog
February 19, 2019
My Latest Book
I decided to write African American Officers in Liberia after completing my second book on the military career of Charles Young (Black Officer in a Buffalo Soldier Regiment). In that book I covered Young’s two tours in Liberia but was left with the feeling that there was a much larger story to tell. This was one of those untold stories historians look for, waiting to be voiced.
I wondered what it like for an African American officer to fight for the survival of Liberia in the early years of the twentieth century. That was the mission of Benjamin O. Davis, Charles Young, John E. Green, and fourteen other African American officers who trained and commanded the Liberian Frontier Force from 1910 to 1942. These black American officers signed on to a complex and risky enterprise financed by Washington yet directed by the Liberian government. Essentially, the United States extended its newfound imperial reach and dollar diplomacy to cover Liberia, defending an Americo-Liberian colonial government against encroachment and partition by Britain, France, and Germany. At the same time, the Americo-Liberian minority who ruled in Monrovia employed the African American officers to subjugate the indigenous people living in the hinterland.
These African American officers carried out this challenging mission for an American government that did not treat them as equal citizens at home. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the United States was a place where southern blacks were systematically disenfranchised by Jim Crow laws and frequently lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. Even in a U.S. Army offering opportunities to black soldiers and noncommissioned officers, institutional racism persisted and a clear color line prevailed. These former U.S. Army servicemen performed their duties as instruments of imperialism for a country ambivalent about having them serve under arms at home. This paradox intrigued me and compelled me to write this book.
I wondered what it like for an African American officer to fight for the survival of Liberia in the early years of the twentieth century. That was the mission of Benjamin O. Davis, Charles Young, John E. Green, and fourteen other African American officers who trained and commanded the Liberian Frontier Force from 1910 to 1942. These black American officers signed on to a complex and risky enterprise financed by Washington yet directed by the Liberian government. Essentially, the United States extended its newfound imperial reach and dollar diplomacy to cover Liberia, defending an Americo-Liberian colonial government against encroachment and partition by Britain, France, and Germany. At the same time, the Americo-Liberian minority who ruled in Monrovia employed the African American officers to subjugate the indigenous people living in the hinterland.
These African American officers carried out this challenging mission for an American government that did not treat them as equal citizens at home. In the first decades of the twentieth century, the United States was a place where southern blacks were systematically disenfranchised by Jim Crow laws and frequently lynched by the Ku Klux Klan. Even in a U.S. Army offering opportunities to black soldiers and noncommissioned officers, institutional racism persisted and a clear color line prevailed. These former U.S. Army servicemen performed their duties as instruments of imperialism for a country ambivalent about having them serve under arms at home. This paradox intrigued me and compelled me to write this book.
