History of Blacks in the U.S. Armed Forces

The great tragedy for many blacks who have served the United States in the military was not what happened to them on the battlefield or in the cockpit or on a destroyer, but what happened to them when they returned from battle.

It was not that they were met with violence when they returned, or even that things were very much different for them when they returned. But that was what was terrible, for many blacks (and maybe even for the majority of them) one of the primary reasons that they had gone to war - from the 18th through the 20th centuries - was to improve their lives. They looked around at the racist society that had denied them opportunities all of their lives and they thought that just maybe, if they could fight for their country, then finally people would realize that blacks were real Americans too and deserved all the accolades and elements of the American Dream.

The fact that this was not so, that blacks returned to find the society that had treated them so badly to be essentially unchanged, is explored in this paper, which examines the role of blacks in the U.S. armed forces from Revolutionary times through the wars of the 20th century, looking especially at both their chances for advancement in the military and what they came home to when they left the services.

Nearly every schoolchild growing up in America knows the story of Crispus Attucks, the leader of a group of American colonists who was killed when the group was fired upon by British troops in the 1770 e

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lacks in the regular U.S. Army at the beginning of the Civil War (McPherson, 1964, p. 192). With the outbreak of war in 1861, many blacks along with many abolitionists believed and hoped that the war would compel the Union states to lay aside racism and accept regiments of black volunteers. Frederick Douglass was one of the forces behind urging blacks to enlist, and within 36 hours of Lincoln's first call for troops, blacks in Boston met and began to organize militia companies. The belief among many blacks at the time was that an overt dedication to the union cause would aid their requests for full citizenship. Douglass himself supported this belief: Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States (McPherson, 1964, p. 192). The willingness of blacks to fight alongside other Union troops not only helped the union effort, but also did help the push for more equal rights for black men in society (although not black women). The passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments, which both improved the position of black men wh

Category: History - H