Happy Black History Month! This year the Rediscovering Black History blog at the National Archives would like to highlight select posts from the past. This public blog was created to inform researchers, scholars, students, and anyone interested in records related to African-American history at the National Archives and Presidential Libraries on the vast amount of textual, electronic, photographs, and special media available for use. For the past four years, NARA employees, student interns, and independent researchers have written informative and insightful blogs on the black experience through the use of our holdings. The highlighted blog posts for the month of February will center around popular themes. Today’s theme is military.
African Americans have contributed to every war fought by the United States from the Revolutionary War to today’s current conflicts. The records used on this topic are mostly military records from all branches, which includes textual, motion pictures, and photographs to highlight the actions of African Americans primarily during the Civil War and World War II. Selected blogs focus on the heroic actions of black soldiers, discrimination in the military, and little unknown stories about the involvement of African Americans enlisted in the US military.
- “The Significance of Motion Picture Footage Housed at the National Archives and Records Administration Relating to the African American Soldier” by Donald Roe
- “Black British POWs” by Jesse Wilinski
- “Civil War Era Tintypes: Randall Nash, USCT, Inf.” by Jesse Wilinski
- “”Teamwork”: African-American Soldiers during World War II” by Kevin L. Bradley
- “USS Mason, USS PC-1264, and the African-American Crews during World War II” by Tina L. Ligon and Kevin L. Bradley
- “Master Charles Michael Lee, A Patriot” by Netisha Currie
- “African-American Comics During World War II” by Ray Bottorff
- “Pictorial History of Black Women in the US Navy during World War II and Beyond” by Tina L. Ligon
- “Firefly Project and the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion (“Smoke Jumpers”)” by Greg Bradsher and Sylvia Naylor
Thank you all for sharing this with IKE