Hidden Heroism

Choice

A valuable muckraking type of work that makes available excellent...historical evidence.

Marion (SC) Star & Enterprise

Edgerton writes powerfully of the relationship between race in American society and race in the American military.

Journal of Military History

...provides a well-written summary of the contributions of African-American soldiers over the years.

Weston Town Crier

Hidden Heroism offers in one volume a summary of Black participation in American armed conflicts...While the topic is military history, it is accessible to the non-military reader.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Differing from such standard works as Bernard Nalty's Strength for the Fight (1986) and Gerald Astor's The Right to Fight (1999), this generalist's history focuses on debunking the most controversial aspect of its subject: the racist argument that African-Americans were natural cowards, unwilling and unable to meet the demands of the battlefield. This "American exceptionalism," according to Edgerton, is best interpreted as arising from a long-standing fear of black uprisings, originating in the slaveholding South and spreading northwards after the Civil War, despite a post-Civil War corps of black professionals that served with pride of regiment and pride of race. In the two World Wars, a white-dominated military culture not only insisted that blacks could not fight, but denied them training for combat. It is scarcely surprising that some victims of the stereotype lived down to it, while others rose above it. Edgerton intriguingly takes account of civilian riots, and the armed forces' recent success in drastically reducing institutional racism in a relatively short period of time. Throughout, the book is carefully argued and documented, although reliant on secondary sources. And if its subject now feels like something of a straw man, all the better. (Feb.) Forecast: Public and university libraries will be a lock for this title, as will the African-American studies market. Yet Edgerton's accessible style will make it appealing to buffs as well as to regular readers of history. In order for it to reach them, booksellers will have to be able to see beyond Westview's academic focus. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Investigates the history of African-American participation in American wars, from the French and Indian Wars to the present. Demonstrates that blacks were often subjected to increased racism after returning from armed service because they were perceived as a threat to whites. Includes b&w historical photos. Edgerton teaches anthropology at the University of California-Los Angeles School of Medicine. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Kirkus Reviews

Serviceable survey of the role of African-Americans in the US military. UCLA anthropologist Edgerton (Death or Glory, 1999, etc.) offers a timely work in light of recent—and long overdue—honors accorded to African-American veterans of WWII and Korea. The slighting of African-American soldiers was no accident, he argues, inasmuch as generations of white officers and political leaders regarded black fighters as"naturally cowardly,""unfit to associate with the American soldier," and marked by"inferior intelligence, carelessness, false pride, and easy discouragement." Edgerton rightly notes that military oversight committees in Congress and the upper ranks were long dominated by Southerners likely to be unsympathetic to civil-rights concerns, but he does not adequately explore how racism in the American military reflected and sometimes departed from racism in the society as a whole. His account is pockmarked by flaws large and small: he overestimates the role of black soldiers in the American Revolution while undervaluing the essential role of"buffalo soldiers" in the Indian Wars; he confines his discussion almost entirely to the US Army, neglecting the other services; and his chapter on the use of slaves in non-American armies, awkwardly sandwiched between analyses of Vietnam and the Gulf War, seems designed to show Edgerton's command of the anthropological literature and contributes little to his thesis. Still, this portrait has its uses, especially because it quotes liberally from overlooked documents implicating the American military and political leadership in overtly racist policies. Better works on the subject are readily available.