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

By Gail Buckley adapted for young people by Tonya Bolden

From the Dust Jacket

They fought on Lexington Green the first morning of the Revolution and stormed the Confederate stronghold at Fort Wagner. They charged San Juan Hill with Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and manned an anti-aircraft gun at Pearl Harbor. They are the black Americans who fought, often in foreign lands, for freedoms they did not enjoy at home.

This award-winning bestseller, now adapted for young readers [by Tonya Bolden], captures one of the greatest untold stories in American history. Inspired by her own family history, Gail Buckley, daughter of revered singer/actress Lena Horne, interviewed hundreds of veterans of every war since World War I to bring to life her vibrant chronicle of America’s black military heroes, from Crispus Attucks to Colin Powell.

You will meet people such as Henry Ossian Flipper, West Point’s first black graduate; Colonel Charles Young, a pathbreaking Buffalo Soldier; Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., the leader of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen in World War II; and Charity Adams, the first black officer in the Women’s Army Corps. And you will meet a family who has served in every war since the Revolution.

Paring away the footnotes, considerable background detail, and many individual anecdotes Bolden cuts Buckley’s monumental same-titled history (2001) by about a half.  What remains it still a sweeping account of heroism on two fronts, as the African-Americans who fought in each of this country’s wars have done so in the face of more than two centuries of overt racial prejudice, both inside and outside the services.  The author(s) begin with Crispus Attucks, end with Colin Powell, and in between track the exploits of dozens of soldiers and units . . . intent on chronicling the slow, hard-won integration of the armed forces.  [American Patriots] will serve equally well as an update for older histories, and a gateway to the many adult-level titles on the topic.   —Kirkus Reviews