African Americans in the Military

This detailed history of the many achievements of African-American guardsmen in U.S. history from the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries fills an important gap in our knowledge about the involvement of African American militias in wartime and peacetime service. Using extensive primary and secondary sources, this account describes the establishment of African American militia groups in 1877, their role in the Spanish American War and in quelling civil disturbances and disasters up to 1914, their service in World Wars I and II and in the years between the wars, and their reorganization and integration into the National Guard in 1949 and 1950.

Henry Ossian Flipper was one of the 19th-century West's most remarkable individuals and the first African American graduate of West Point. Although Flipper's record of accomplishment was significant, he was court-martialed and dismissed from the service in 1882. This is Flipper's own account of his career, along with a biographical essay by Quintard Taylor Jr.