Discusses the contributions of black soldiers in the United States, from the American Revolution to the battlefields of today, presenting individual and group stories, details of battles, and descriptions of army life.

A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiers.. Though both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served were black. Simultaneously, photography culture blossomed-marking the Civil War as the first conflict to be extensively documented through photographs. In The Black Civil War Soldier, Deb Willis explores...

"A Stranger and a Sojourner: Peter Caulder, Free Black Frontiersman in Antebellum Arkansas tells the story of Peter Caulder, a free African American settler in the Arkansas Territory. After serving as a rifleman in the War of 1812, Caulder established a community of free-born African Americans in northern Arkansas and was largely accepted by his white neighbors until an 1859 expulsion law forced the community to flee the state and settle in Missouri." "Like...