Chapter 11 - African American Literature, Citizenship, and War, 1863–1932

Summary

Examining the evolving representation of military service in African American literature reveals how African American writers illustrate the possibility and the disillusionment of military service between the Civil War and World War I, adding individual perspective to the historical record. In The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867), William Wells Brown expresses hope that African Americans would receive citizenship after fighting for their freedom. After Reconstruction, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper wrote Iola Leroy (1893) and Paul Laurence Dunbar published The Fanatics (1901), works that reimagine the consequences of the Civil War in light of the nation’s institutionalized racism. Later, Victor Daly portrayed the experience of an African American soldier in a segregated army in Not Only War (1932). These books demonstrate that the complicated questions about African American military service and citizenship would take generations to resolve.