American Patriots: the Story of Blacks in the Military from the Revolution to Desert Storm

By Gail Buckley. New York: Random House, 2001. 534 pages. $28.95.

American Patriots is, as the title clearly states, a history of the participation of black Americans in the conflicts of our nation from 1770 to the present. From the outset it ought to be said, however, that Gail Buckley is not a historian. The daughter of the famous singer Lena Horne, Buckley writes with the training and style of a journalist. She has only a weak grasp of the primary source material that is available on the topic of African-American military service. She does not have the academic training to separate some of the wheat from the chaff. That said, this is a decent book, perhaps even an important book. Professional officers should buy it, not just get it from the library, and they should read the stories Buckley presents. While there are more academically rigorous books on the subject, they are not well known and are difficult to find. American Patriots will be a book that influences how we relate to each other regarding race and culture, because it is certain to be widely read.

At first glance this work would appear to be pure history, but it contains little comprehensive narrative, and much of the historical context is lost because the author tends to focus upon individuals. A more accurate title might have been "Stories of Blacks in the Military," as this is what most of the book presents--individual vignettes. However, these vignettes prove to be the strength of the book. Buckley's accuracy steadily increases as the book moves from early America to more recent times. This is partly a function of the fact that there are few useful and reliable primary sources from the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 that include accounts of African Americans. Yet even the author's material on the Civil War is somewhat dated, incomplete, and does not rest upon the firmest scholarship available. The book would have benefited from the use of some of the more recent work in this emerging field. Over the past ten years alone, numerous solid dissertations on the topic of African-American service in the Civil War have been turned into respectable works with academic and historical value. Buckley seems entirely unfamiliar with such material, and her book suffers for its exclusion. Unfortunately, in the coverage up to the mid-20th century, the author appears to favor good stories over good history. In permitting this, her editor let her down.

More stringent editorial guidance also might have spotted the areas where Buckley relied too heavily on outdated secondary sources, or the passages that appeared to be too good to be true and therefore needed to have some basic facts verified. In some instances it seems that the mythology of a hundred years ago is now being repackaged as history, merely because that mythology is now a century old. A sharp editor catches such things, assigns a fact-checker, and works with a writer to bring out the best product possible.

American Patriots does not really come into its own until the chapters reach World War I. From then on, the author is on steadier ground and her material is both more original (few in today's military are aware of the role that race and bigotry played in our Army in the "Great War") and based on more reliable sources. She uncovers a few little-known sources, especially some relating to the service of the 369th and 371st Infantry regiments, two units of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) that served entirely within the French command structure throughout the war. She also draws the reader's attention to one of the often-omitted facts of this period, the racist command structure of the only all-black American division in the AEF, the 92d Infantry Division. Racial attitudes of the white officers in command of this division (the unit did not truly fight as a division until the last days of the war) almost certainly undercut the unit's combat effectiveness.

Despite the criticisms above, students of military history or sociology need this book. Most soldiers are not historians, and American Patriots is full of the inspirational tidbits that help soldiers and leaders develop a sense of heritage. Gail Buckley wrote this with the best of intentions, her writing is clean and unpretentious, and our exposure to these aspects of our common heritage will be useful for Army leaders at every echelon.

Major Robert Bateman, Department of History, US Military Academy, West Point, New York.

COPYRIGHT 2002 U.S. Army War College
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group