Chris’s Reviews > Men of Color to Arms!: Black Soldiers, Indian Wars, and the Quest for Equality > Status Update

In 1878 the Republican controlled Senate killed a bill that would have desegregated the Army. At that time the way the bill was written desegregation would've led to expulsion and exclusion of blacks from military service. Blacks had been serving during and continually since the Civil War.

This helps to remedy gaps in our learned history. The majority—mostly due to Hollywood—probably think that blacks only served in the military during the Civil War and from WWII onward with nothing in between.

Interesting that George Armstrong Custer was assigned to command a black regiment after the Civil War, but he believed himself to good for the assignment and rejected it. This could be the premise of an alternate history story where he was forced to take command.