African War History

Surrounded by a ring of fire, the scorpion stings itself to death. The image, widespread among antislavery leaders before the Civil War, captures their long-standing strategy for peaceful abolition: They would surround the slave states with a cordon of freedom. They planned to use federal power wherever they could to establish freedom. For their part the southern states fully understood this antislavery strategy. They cited it repeatedly as they adopted secession ordinances in response to Lincoln's election.

When African American servicemen went to fight in the Vietnam War, discrimination and prejudice followed them. Even in a faraway country, their military experiences were shaped by the racial environment of the home front. War is often viewed as a crucible that can transform society, but American race relations proved remarkably durable. In Race in the Crucible of War, Gerald F. Goodwin examines how Black servicemen experienced and interpreted racial issues during their time in Vietnam.

At first, neither George Washington nor the Continental Congress approved of enlisting African Americans in the new army. Nevertheless, Black men—both slave and free—filled the ranks and served in all of the early battles. Black sailors also saw action in every major naval battle of the Revolution, including members of John Paul Jones's crew aboard the Bonhomme Richard. At least thirteen Black Americans served in the newly formed US Marine Corps during the war.

The story of the Confederate States of America, the proslavery, antidemocratic nation created by white Southern slaveholders to protect their property, has been told many times in heroic and martial narratives. Now, however, Stephanie McCurry tells a very different tale of the Confederate experience. Confederate Reckoning is the startling story of this epic political battle in which women and slaves helped to decide the fate of the Confederacy and the outcome of the Civil War.

Nothing but Freedom examines the aftermath of emancipation in the South and the restructuring of society by which the former slaves gained, beyond their freedom, a new relation to the land they worked on, to the men they worked for, and to the government they lived under. Taking a comparative approach, Eric Foner examines Reconstruction in the southern states against the experience of Haiti, where a violent slave revolt was followed by the establishment of an undemocratic government.

John Brown is a lightning rod of history. Yet he is poorly understood and most commonly described in stereotypes, as a madman, martyr, or enigma. Not until Patriotic Treason has a biography or history brought him so fully to life, in scintillating prose and moving detail, making his life and legacy - and the staggering sacrifices he made for his ideals - fascinatingly relevant to today's issues of social justice and to defining the line between activism and terrorism.

In New York Times bestselling author Walter Dean Myers's last novel, he delivers a gripping story based on the life of a real dancer known as Master Juba, who lived in the nineteenth century. This engaging historical novel is based on the true story of the meteoric rise of an immensely talented...

“A memorable narrative of a civil rights case that deserves a larger place in American memory.” —Jon Meacham “Riveting. . . . It’s like a real-life To Kill a Mockingbird, but with even more subtlety and complexity.” —Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein In this gripping saga of...

A vivid and groundbreaking portrait of a young, struggling George Washington that casts a new light on his character and the history of American independence, from the bestselling author of Astoria Two decades before he led America to independence, George Washington was a flailing young soldier...

The enduring image of World War I is of men stuck in muddy trenches, and of vast armies deadlocked in a fight neither could win. It was a war of barbed wire, poison gas, and horrific losses as officers led their troops on mass charges across No Man's Land and into a hail of bullets. While these impressions are all too true, they hide the fact that trench warfare was dynamic and constantly evolving throughout the war as all armies struggled to find a way to break through the opposing lines.

In March 1865, a 30-man team of mostly Black Union soldiers traveled from Jacksonville, Florida 100 miles behind enemy lines to conduct a ridiculously daring raid in remote Marion County. Then they had to return on foot to St. Augustine 80 miles from the raid site, knowing an accomplished Confederate cavalry unit would be hot on their trail. The Black raiders planned the operation, employed their own strategy, led by a Black Sergeant-Major—no White officer—and carried out the mission.

Through oral histories and original interviews with surviving family members, Dan Goldberg brings 13 forgotten heroes away from the margins of history and into the spotlight. He reveals the opposition these men faced: the racist pseudoscience, the regular condescension, the repeated epithets, the verbal abuse, and even violence. Despite these immense challenges, the Golden Thirteen persisted—understanding the power of integration, the opportunities for black Americans if they succeeded, and the consequences if they failed.

Born into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded with Wood's employer, abducted her, and sold her back into bondage. She remained enslaved throughout the Civil War, giving birth to a son in Mississippi and never forgetting who had put her in this position. By 1869, Wood had obtained her freedom for a second time and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for damages in 1870. Astonishingly, after eight years of litigation, Wood won her case: In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500.

With an executive order from President Franklin Roosevelt in 1941, the United States Marine Corps - the last all-white branch of the U.S. military - was forced to begin recruiting and enlisting African Americans. The first black recruits received basic training at the segregated Camp Montford Point, adjacent to Camp Lejeune, near Jacksonville, North Carolina.

From lesser-known state figures to the ancestors of Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, and James Meredith, Mississippi Zion brings the voices and experiences of everyday people to the forefront and reveals a history dictated by people rather than eras. Author Evan Howard Ashford, a native of the county, examines how African Americans in Attala County, after the Civil War, shaped economic, social, and political politics as a non-majority racial group. At the same time, Ashford provides a broader view of Black life occurring throughout the state during the same period.

The Italians were defeated at Adwa in 1898. But by 1935, they were playing for keeps. Learn more about the devastating Italian invasion of Ethiopia. Although the Ethiopians had beaten the Italians at their own game in the 1898 Battle of Adwa, when Italian armored divisions began pouring out of Italian-controlled Eritrea in 1935, the situation seemed almost impossible to overcome.

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century - but they've never been as intense as they are today. In this eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments, Karen L. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them.

In January 1944, 16 Black enlisted men gathered at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois to begin a cram course that would turn them into the US Navy's first African American officers on active duty. Years later, these pioneers came to be known as the Golden Thirteen, but at the outset they were treated more as pariahs than pioneers. This book collects their stories.

The story of the fascinating, fraught alliance among Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman—and how its breakup led to the success of America’s most important social movement. “Fresh, provocative and engrossing.” —New York Times In the crucial early...

One of the lesser-known stories of the Civil War is the role played by escaped slaves in the Union blockade along the Atlantic coast. From the beginning of the war, many African American refugees sought avenues of escape to the North. Due to their sheer numbers, those who reached Union forces presented a problem for the military. Fortunately, the First Confiscation Act of 1861 permitted the seizure of property used in support of the South's war effort, including slaves. Eventually regarded as contraband of war, the runaways became known as contrabands.