Freedom Struggles
eBook - PDF

Freedom Struggles

African Americans and World War I

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Freedom Struggles

African Americans and World War I

About this book

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.

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Yes, you can access Freedom Struggles by Adriane Lentz-Smith,Adriane Danette Lentz-Smith in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & North American History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Illustrations
  3. Introduction: Studying War
  4. 1. World on Fire
  5. 2. Fighting the Southern Huns
  6. 3. Men in the Making
  7. 4. At War in the Terrestrial Heaven
  8. 5. The World’s Experience
  9. 6. Saving Sergeant Caldwell
  10. 7. Forewarned Is Forearmed
  11. Epilogue: Th e Fruit of Conquest
  12. Notes
  13. Acknowledgments
  14. Index