Close Ranks: On Three New Books Exploring African Americans, Patriotism, and the US Armed Forces
Randal Maurice Jelks reviews three books about the African American experience in war: Beth Bailey’s “An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era,” Matthew F. Delmont’s “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad,“ and Chad L. Williams’s “The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War.”...