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Black Soldiers in the U.S. Armed Forces: Basic Documents, 1639–1973
Black soldiers in the U.S. Armed Forces is a documentary history of African American participation in the military from colonial times to the Vietnam War. Originally published as a thirteen-volume set, this important collection is out of print in hard copy but is now available in this digital edition.
Using military, government, and private records, Black Soldiers in the U.S. Armed Forces traces the development of official military policy toward Black personnel and the social and political forces influencing this policy. The documents here illustrate the roles of African Americans and the treatment they received. The contents are arranged chronologically; the first six volumes take the reader to the end of World War II, while volumes 7-13 deal with postwar developments.
Three major themes emerged during this period of almost 350 years. First, when in need of manpower, the armed forces, for entirely practical reasons, turned to the African American. Second, influential individuals, acting on principle but usually arguing in terms of increased military efficiency, prodded the armed forces toward acceptance of Black soldiers and whites as equals. Third, the Black community, gathering strength and self-awareness, succeeded in exerting strong if sometimes indirect pressure upon personnel policies within the armed forces.
The story of Black soldiers in the armed forces is not an account of slow, steady progress from exclusion to limited, segregated service, and finally to equal treatment and opportunity with whites. At times, the accomplishments of decades vanished within a few years; for example, the Jim Crow era, beginning about 1890, caused the Navy to reverse a policy of racially integrated crews that had begun in the War of 1812. For the Army, the fruits of Jim Crow included the Brownsville Affray of 1906, the Houston Riot, and the restricted use of Black soldiers in World War I combat. After the armistice, Black soldiers found few opportunities in the small peacetime defense establishment. The need for workforce during World War II and reliance on Selective Service brought many African Americans into the services, but the return of peace signaled a revival of limited and segregated duty. Not until the early 1950s did pressure from a presidential committee and the need for combat troops in Korea force the Army and Marine Corps to accept racial integration.
These volumes should also help explain how a major American institution responded to a fundamental challenge to American society, the struggle for minority rights. Although the services share the prejudices and shortsightedness that have bedeviled the country, as well as the compensating impulses toward decency and fairness, they have never mirrored American society as some leaders have claimed. They are obviously demographically different, and unlike civilian society they are disciplined organizations, able to control the behavior if not the attitudes of their members.
New
David Bailie Warden Papers
David Bailie Warden (1778-1845) emigrated to the United States from Ireland as a young man and became a respected member of the cultural, scientific, and diplomatic circles of his adopted nation. His writings on and interest in politics, literature, medicine, chemistry, natural science, and education resulted in lively correspondence with many leaders in these fields -- among them Jefferson, Gallatin, Baron Alexander von Humboldt, Joseph Gay-Lussac, Washington Irving, and Alexander Dallas Bache. These letters and manuscripts are published here for the first time.
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Military and Government
Thousands of diverse publications related to the history, glory, might, and daily nitty-gritty of administrating America’s fighting forces.
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Road to Palestine: Government Records, Lviv, Ukraine, 1890–1939
In the early 1990s historical archives of the former Soviet Union were partially opened, greatly contributing to the advancement of academic research on Eastern Europe. Among them is the Central State Historical Archive in Lviv (Tsentral'nyi Derzhavnyi Istroychnyi Arkhiv in Lviv), now a centralized repository for historical documentation of Western Ukraine prior to Soviet rule. This archive has opened a new window for researchers into the history of the Jews who lived in the territory of Galicia for many centuries. Specifically, the collection gives access to 13 documentary fonds (archival record groups) drawn from the Historical Archive in Lviv. These fonds shed light on a variety of Zionist and Jewish welfare institutions working in East Galicia from the early 1920s until the Nazi invasion of Poland in September 1939, soon followed by the Soviet annexation of East Poland. As such, this collection significantly enlarges the scope of already available documentary sources, mainly housed at the Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York and the Central Zionist Archive in Jerusalem, on the development of Zionism and Jewish youth organizations in interwar Poland.
