Customer Reviews

Black Soldiers in Jim Crow Texas, 1899-1917 (Centennial Series of the Association of Former Students, Texas A&M University)

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Unlike most "contribution" books on black soldiers in American history which treat them simply as dark-skinned, blue-jacketed white men, Christian's work focuses on the meaning of African Americans' military service for race relations in Texas. This state, both a century ago and now, lay at the nexus of several cultures and races, including Anglos, Hispanics, and Blacks. The presence of black troops strangely revealed similarities between the other two groups with regard to anti-black racism, indicating that Mexicans themselves adopted much of the "southern" outlook toward English-speaking minorities. Christian's book will not sell as well as others on this topic, like Leckie's for example, because he addresses little of the "saddles and boots" history that campaign narrative fans are so fond of. But he moves military history in an admirable new direction, taking on questions that social historians have asked for twenty years. His approach and methodology are somewhat traditional, ignoring many books on the sociology of race which could complement his study, and the writing is a tad dry. But those problems are minor. Hopefully this study will gain the place it deserves, both in African American history and the history of the army in Texas.