#black troops

[mimi-0007]

[xshindaaix]

Wukong & Ahri (Xiaoli) from Black Troops (donghua) ~

From the game ~

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Black troops from World War I parade over the 145th Street Bridge from Lenox Avenue, ca. 1920.

Photo: Bettmann Archives/Getty Images

[todaysdocument]

Missouri in the war. Twenty African American men left for Camp Funston

Record Group 165: Records of the War Department General and Special StaffsSeries: American Unofficial Collection of World War I PhotographsFile Unit: Colored Troops

A black and white photograph of twenty Black men in suits standing on the stone steps of a building..  They wear armbands indicating that they have enlisted in the army.  Printed information on the left side states that the photo was taken by Keecken Studio on September 27, 1918 in the town of Marshall, Saline County, Missouri.

[uwmspeccoll]

Milestone Monday

54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment

On this day, July 18 in 1863, one of the first formal African American military units, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, supported by several white regiments, attempted an unsuccessful assault on Confederate-held Battery Wagner in what is known as the Second Battle of Fort Wagner. Despite the Confederate victory, the valor of the Black Union soldiers in the battle was hailed, strategically encouraging more African-Americans to enlist in Union regiments. 

The 54th Massachusetts and this battle were most popularly memorialized by the 1989 Academy Award-winning film Glory, starring Matthew Broderick as the regiment’s white commander Colonel Robert G. Shaw (pictured above), and Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Jihmi Kennedy, and Andre Braugher as members of the Black troops. A well-known monument by Augustus Saint-Gaudens on the Boston Common also memorializes Shaw and his regiment, and is part of the Boston Black Heritage Trail.

Curiously, Medal of Honor awardee Sergeant William Harvey Carney (also pictured above) is not depicted as a character in the movie Glory. During the Battle of Fort Wagner, Carney grabbed  the U.S. flag as the flag bearer fell and rallied the troops by carrying the flag to the enemy ramparts and back, crying "Boys, the old flag never touched the ground!" The battle cry would later be turned into a song in Carney’s honor in 1900. This heroic action became the first for which the Medal of Honor was awarded to an African American.

In commemoration of this milestone, we present the second revised and corrected edition of History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, 1863-1865 by Captain Luis F. Emilio of the 54th, published in Boston by the Boston Book Company in 1894.

View more Milestone Monday posts.

[zumainthyfuture]

Black Troops Were Welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow Wasn’t: The Race Riot of One Night in June 1943

Black American GIs stationed in Britain during the war were given a warm welcome by their hosts but treated harshly by their white US Army comrades.

           Bullet holes found in the wood surrounds of the NatWest Bank in Bamber Bridge, in Lancashire in the north of England, in the late 1980s led to the rediscovery of an event that saw some of the few shots fired in anger in England during World War II, which had been largely forgotten. These were not shots fired by invading troops, but by American GIs against their own military police.    

           Intrigued by his discovery, Clinton Smith, the black British maintenance worker who discovered the holes in the woodwork, asked locals how they could have got there. He was told that they were the remnants of the Battle of Bamber Bridge, when black American troops stationed in the town faced off against white US Army military police on the night of June 24-25, 1943.    

           More a mutiny than a battle, it led to the death of Private William Crossland in nearby Mounsey Road, and four other injuries to black American soldiers in a five-hour confrontation which spread from the thatched Olde Hob Inn at one end of the town to the Adams Hall army camp, where from early 1943 the US Eighth Army Quartermaster Truck Company, a black company apart from a few white officers, had been based. The event was officially downplayed, in order not to undermine morale on the home front, but the events of that night led to the conviction of 27 black American soldiers.  

You can read the rest here

[nappynewz]

Black Troops More Likely to Face Military Punishment Than Whites, New Report Says

Black Troops More Likely to Face Military Punishment Than Whites, New Report Says

Mortar gunners fire mortar rounds during training alongside Lithuanian forces at Pabrade Training Area in Pabrade, Lithuania June 21, 2014.Spc. Brett Hurd, 173rd Airborne Brigade / U.S. Army

Black service members are significantly more likely to face military punishment than their white colleagues, according to a new report that alleges rampant racial bias in the military. (more…)

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[gwydionmisha]

Black Troops Were Welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow Wasn’t: The Race Riot of One Night in June 1943

Black American GIs stationed in Britain during the war were given a warm welcome by their hosts but treated harshly by their white US Army comrades.