the american revolution
Peter Salem firing at British Royal Naval Officer Major Pitcairn at Bunker Hill.
Corbis / Getty Images
During the American Revolution, thousands of black Americans fought – on both sides of the conflict. But unlike their white counterparts, they weren’t just fighting for the independence of the colony or to maintain British control. Most have taken up arms in the hope of being free from the literal chains of slavery. Historians estimate that between 5,000 and 8,000 people of African descent participated in the Revolution on the Patriot side, and that more than 20,000 served the crown. Many fought with extraordinary bravery and skill, even though they lacked the confidence to bear arms. Others worked as spies or raised their voices in the cause of freedom …
To learn more, read: 7 black heroes of the American Revolution
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Civil war
Robert smalls
Corbis / Getty Images
As the American Civil War raged, with the slavery of millions at stake, African Americans weren’t content to sit on the sidelines. Whether slaves, escaped or born free, many sought to actively influence the outcome.
From fighting on bloody battlefields to spying behind enemy lines; daring escapes to political maneuvers; From saving wounded soldiers to teaching them to read, these six African-Americans courageously fought to end slavery and discrimination. Each has changed the course of American history in its own way …
To learn more, read: 6 black heroes of the civil war
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First World War
The African-American troops of the 369th Infantry, formerly the 15th New York Guard Regiment, who were among the most decorated upon returning home in 1918. They were also known as the Harlem Hellfighters.
Provisional Archives / Getty Images
Like many deathfield veterans of World War I, Horace Pippin struggled to shake off his memories. So, in the decade after the war, he captured and tamed them, inside sketch-filled composition books, filling page after page with his neat handwriting. Spelling and grammar are often improvised. The humble drawings are rendered in pencil and pencil. But the stories – even in Pippin’s deaf and down-to-earth tales – offer a rare first-person account of the harrowing combat experience of the Harlem Hellfighters, America’s most famous regiment of African-American soldiers during the First World War.
He had a lot of stories to tell: there was the terrified young recruit who haunted for his own death. The foul trenches, with their endless soundtrack of howling artillery shells and staccato machine gun fire. The gas clouds that suddenly appeared from the sky. The forays through fields strewn with the wounded and dead. And the trauma of being hit by a German sniper and then stuck in a fox hole, bleeding …
To learn more, read: Searing tales of a Harlem Hellfighter from the trenches of World War I
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The Second World War
Photos of Colonel Charles McGee, pilot of the famous Tuskegee Airman.
Dudley M. Brooks / The Washington Post / Getty Images
As the first black aviators to serve in the US Army Air Corps, Tuskegee Airmen broke a barrier of massive segregation in the US military. Their success and heroism during World War II, fighting the Germans in the skies of Europe, shattered the ubiquitous stereotypes that African Americans had neither character nor fighting skills. And their achievements laid the crucial foundation for the advancement of civil rights in the decades to come …
To learn more, read: 6 renowned Tuskegee aviators
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Women of World War II
Worker operating a hand drill on a Vultee ‘Vengeance’ A-31 dive bomber, in Nashville, Tennessee, 1943.
Universal History Archive / Getty Images
Rosie the Riveter – the steel-eyed heroine of WWII with her red bandana, blue jumpsuit and flexed biceps – is one of America’s most indelible military images. The image came to represent the steadfast American worker, the millions of working women who rocked the factories and offices of American defense industries. But what is the iconic image of “Rosie” born reflect the diversity of this workforce – particularly the more than half a million “Black Rosies” who worked alongside their white counterparts in the war effort.
Coming from all over the United States, often as part of the Great Migration, the “Black Rosies” worked tirelessly to combat both the foreign enemy of authoritarianism abroad and the familiar enemy of racism. his home. Leaving behind a dead-end, often degrading job of servants and sharecroppers, the Black Rosies took on new roles in the economy, serving the war effort. They worked in factories as sheet metal workers and assemblers of ammunition and explosives; in shipyards as shipbuilders and along assembly lines as electricians. They were administrators, welders, railroad drivers and more. For decades, they received little recognition or historical recognition …
To learn more, read: Black ‘Rosies’: How African American Women Contributed to WWII
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