It's one of the last overlooked parts of American military history: the significant role African Americans played in the wars of America. Their story is more than just the 54th Massachusetts in the Civil War, more than just a tank battalion in World War II: African Americans contributed to every war in American history. Gene Betit tells this important story with verve and gusto, as well as respect. By their brave deeds, African Americans have secured a place in American military history, and Betit makes sure they receive their due. In the colonial wars, the Revolution, and the War of 1812, African Americans served as seamen, gunners, and marine sharpshooters in the Navy and served as 15 percent of the Continental Army. During the Civil War, blacks constituted nearly 200,000 soldiers of the Union Army and served in some of the war's most celebrated regiments and toughest battles, and their service inspired the farthest-reaching of the Union's emancipation policies. In the decades after the Civil War, Black soldiers formed an important part of the U.S. Army, fighting as Buffalo Soldiers in the Indian Wars of the 1870s, up through the Spanish-American War. In World War I, the segregated 92nd and 93rd Divisions fought hard and received the Croix de Guerre from France. In World War II, more than one million Blacks served the United States-and more than a hundred thousand were assigned to combat duty, not only in the Black Panther tank battalion and the Tuskegee Airmen, but in other combat units and units that kept the American war effort supplied. In the years since World War II, Truman integrated the military during the Korean War, but the African-American soldiers remain a class part-during Korea, during Vietnam, and beyond. This is a story with importance not only for military history, but for all of American history. And Gene Betit does it careful, exciting justice.
Eugene DeFriest Betit served twenty years in the U.S. Army as a military intelligence analyst and German and Russian linguist. He received graduate degrees in Soviet area studies from Georgetown University. Since then, he has written books about the Civil War and African-American history, served as docent at Belle Grove Plantation, and volunteered at Cedar Creek National Battlefield Park. He lives in Winchester, Virginia.
Dr. Eugene Betit, the author of three previous history books, including Collective Amnesia: American Apartheid (2019), is a skilled researcher and storyteller who carefully weaves a compelling narrative, drawing on primary sources and anecdotes designed to challenge our perspectives of U.S. military history. The book's eight chapters are written chronologically and follow Black people's contributions to U.S. wars. A two-stranded thematic approach details the systemic racism confronting Black people in the military, as well as their resilience, fortitude, and martial prowess despite such obstacles. The final chapter, "Vietnam to Today," pays particular attention to how Black officers, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell, advanced to the upper echelons of military rank. This is a useful primer and reference guide to the history of African American members of the armed forces, accompanied by ample photographs, charts, and appendices listing Black Medal of Honor recipients, four Buffalo Soldier regimental histories, and African American generals and admirals. Kir-- "Kirkus" Dr. Betit has accomplished a magnificent literary feat in chronicling the 240-year story of our African American warriors from the Boston Common to the Persian Gulf. This collection of facts, figures, and stories of Black soldiers is impressive in both its quantity and completeness without being overwhelming. This book is an epic saga of Black slaves becoming American soldiers and eventually their descendants becoming four-star generals leading America's armies, with one Black warrior, Gen. Colin Powell, ultimately reaching the pinnacle of the American military structure, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. As Betit points out, today, the Air Force Chief of Staff is an African American and for the first time the Secretary of Defense is a retired Black four-star general. It will be difficult to fully understand America's military history without reading this book.--Dennis J. Quinn, U.S. Army (Retired), National War College strategist Dr. Eugene Betit's Unsung Patriots: How African Americans Have Helped Fight Their County's Wars from the Revolution to the Present is an important contribution to historical literature that recognizes the significant service of Black men and women in the American military throughout our country's history. The book presents a harsh indictment of the overt and implicit racism and prejudice that has characterized acceptance, recruitment, use, and treatment of Blacks in the armed forces and the subsequent widespread and horrific treatment of Black veterans on their return to civilian life that extended well into the second half of the twentieth century. Based on eight years of extensive research in primary and secondary sources, Dr. Betit combines expert statistical analysis and detailed description of military and political policies with illustrative individual soldier and military unit stories, painting a vivid picture of the impressive service record of Black military men and women.--Wayne Lord Ph.D, Georgetown University For far too long, the myriad contributions African Americans made to the development and progress of the United States from the American Revolution until the present have been absent from America's popular consciousness. This volume, solidly researched and elegantly crafted, offers an excellent synthesis of those contributions and the various obstacles African Americans confronted as they fought and sacrificed for the ideals of liberty, freedom, and equality.--Jonathan A. Noyalas, Shenandoah University Department of History; Director, McCormick Civil War Institute
