Strength and Goodness (Force-Bonté) by Bakary Diallo is one of the only memoirs of World War I ever written or published by an African. It remains a pioneering work of African literature as well as a unique and invaluable historical document about colonialism and Africa’s role in the Great War. Lamine Senghor’s The Rape of a Country (La Violation d’un pays) is another pioneering French work by a Senegalese veteran of World War I, but one that offers a stark contrast to Strength and Goodness. Both are made available for the first time in English in this edition, complete with a glossary of terms and a general historical introduction. The centennial of World War I is an ideal moment to present Strength and Goodness and The Rape of a Country to a wider, English-reading public. Until recently, Africa's role in the war has been neglected by historians and largely forgotten by the general public. Euro-centric versions of the war still predominate in popular culture, Many historians, however, now insist that African participation in the 1914-18 War is a large part of what made that conflict a world war.

This overview explores the use of black people, either through coercion or enticement, in the armed forces of predominantly white societies in times of crisis when the supply of white soldiers was exhausted or when whites refused to fill the ranks of a wartime army. A chronological review, the study begins with references to Biblical armies and ends with the technological environment of the modern world, looking at how blacks were employed, exploited or rewarded for their service over the centuries. While the balance sheet is mixed, military institutions have proven to be leaders in integration and equality for blacks both in the United States and in Europe. Inequality still exists in the modern American military; however, the authors contend, it is more likely to be based upon educational disparities than on the color of a soldier's skin. African American soldiers played a significant role in the creation and expansion of the United States. The authors write about conquistadors who utilized blacks as soldier slaves. They recount the stories of the black men who fought during the Revolutionary War. They detail the experience of the Buffalo Soldiers in securing and protecting the western wilderness and follow the black soldier fighting alongside Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders. From the decks of the battleship ^IMaine^R to the Philippine Islands, from the hills of Vietnam and the deserts of the Middle East, and, finally, to the all-volunteer army, this book reveals the impact that black soldiers have made on American history.

Sixteen months after the start of the American Civil War, the Federal government, having vastly underestimated the length and manpower demands of the war, began to recruit black soldiers. This revolutionary policy gave 180,000 free blacks and former slaves the opportunity to prove themselves on the battlefield as part of the United States Colored Troops. By the end of the war, 37,000 in their ranks had given their lives for the cause of freedom. In Forged in Battle, originally published in 1990, award-winning historian Joseph T. Glatthaar re-creates the events that gave these troops and their 7,000 white officers justifiable pride in their contributions to the Union victory and hope of equality in the years to come. Unfortunately, as Glatthaar poignantly demonstrates, memory of the United States Colored Troops' heroic sacrifices soon faded behind the prejudice that would plague the armed forces for another century.

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.

Many black soldiers serving in the U.S. Army during World War II hoped that they might make permanent gains as a result of their military service and their willingness to defend their country. They were soon disabused of such illusions. Taps for a Jim Crow Army is a powerful collection of letters written by black soldiers in the 1940s to various government and nongovernment officials. The soldiers expressed their disillusionment, rage, and anguish over the discrimination and segregation they experienced in the Army. Most black troops were denied entry into army specialist schools; black officers were not allowed to command white officers; black soldiers were served poorer food and were forced to ride Jim Crow military buses into town and to sit in Jim Crow base movie theaters. In the South, German POWs could use the same latrines as white American soldiers, but blacks could not. The original foreword by Benjamin Quarles, professor emeritus of history at Morgan State University, and a new foreword by Bernard C. Nalty, the chief historian in the Office of Air Force History, offer rich insights into the world of these soldiers.

Inspired and informed by the latest research in African American, military, and social history, the fourteen original essays in this book tell the stories of the African American soldiers who fought for the Union cause. An introductory essay surveys the history of the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) from emancipation to the end of the Civil War. Seven essays focus on the role of the USCT in combat, chronicling the contributions of African Americans who fought at Port Hudson, Milliken's Bend, Olustee, Fort Pillow, Petersburg, Saltville, and Nashville. Other essays explore the recruitment of black troops in the Mississippi Valley; the U.S. Colored Cavalry; the military leadership of Colonels Thomas Higginson, James Montgomery, and Robert Shaw; African American chaplain Henry McNeal Turner; the black troops who occupied postwar Charleston; and the experiences of USCT veterans in postwar North Carolina. Collectively, these essays probe the broad military, political, and social significance of black soldiers' armed service, enriching our understanding of the Civil War and African American life during and after the conflict. The contributors are Anne J. Bailey, Arthur W. Bergeron Jr., John Cimprich, Lawrence Lee Hewitt, Richard Lowe, Thomas D. Mays, Michael T. Meier, Edwin S. Redkey, Richard Reid, William Glenn Robertson, John David Smith, Noah Andre Trudeau, Keith Wilson, and Robert J. Zalimas Jr.

Strength and Goodness (Force-Bonté) by Bakary Diallo is one of the only memoirs of World War I ever written or published by an African. It remains a pioneering work of African literature as well as a unique and invaluable historical document about colonialism and Africa's role in the Great War. Lamine Senghor's The Rape of a Country (La Violation d'un pays) is another pioneering French work by a Senegalese veteran of World War I, but one that offers a stark contrast to Strength and Goodness. Both are made available for the first time in English in this edition, complete with a glossary of terms and a general historical introduction. The centennial of World War I is an ideal moment to present Strength and Goodness and The Rape of a Country to a wider, English-reading public. Until recently, Africa's role in the war has been neglected by historians and largely forgotten by the general public. Euro-centric versions of the war still predominate in popular culture, Many historians, however, now insist that African participation in the 1914-18 War is a large part of what made that conflict a world war.