Freedom Struggles: African Americans and World War I

by Adriane Lentz-Smith

For many of the 200,000 black soldiers sent to Europe with the American Expeditionary Forces in World War I, encounters with French civilians and colonial African troops led them to imagine a world beyond Jim Crow. They returned home to join activists working to make that world real. In narrating the efforts of African American soldiers and activists to gain full citizenship rights as recompense for military service, Adriane Lentz-Smith illuminates how World War I mobilized a generation. Black and white soldiers clashed as much with one another as they did with external enemies. Race wars within the military and riots across the United States demonstrated the lengths to which white Americans would go to protect a carefully constructed caste system. Inspired by Woodrow Wilson's rhetoric of self-determination but battered by the harsh realities of segregation, African Americans fought their own "war for democracy," from the rebellions of black draftees in French and American ports to the mutiny of Army Regulars in Houston, and from the lonely stances of stubborn individuals to organized national campaigns. African Americans abroad and at home reworked notions of nation and belonging, empire and diaspora, manhood and citizenship. By war's end, they ceased trying to earn equal rights and resolved to demand them. This beautifully written book reclaims World War I as a critical moment in the freedom struggle and places African Americans at the crossroads of social, military, and international history.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, World War I, African American, Grad School, United States

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Adriane Lentz-Smith is Associate Professor of History at Duke University and senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics, hosting its community conversations series, "The Ethics of Now." She served as consultant to the PBS documentary The Jazz Ambassadors and can be seen on American Experience's "The Great War."

Reviews

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great examination of the role of military service and civilian support during WWI as a critical event in the long civil rights movement and transition between two major periods in African American history. Given its length this books has a pretty wide lens of the types of wartime experiences it covers, with some good gender analysis as well. Near the end it sacrifices some depth for chronological breadth but still gives a good summary of the interwar years for context

[L.M. Elm · Rating 5 out of 5]

World War I was a way for black men to prove they were just as patriotic as their white counterpart. While the Great War was sold as the war to end all wars it certainly didn’t end the war against segregation before and after the war. Well worth a read.

[Megan]

No Rating read for college class

[Gabrielle Morales]

recommended in “Lovely War” by Julie Berry

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed this book.