A Revolutionary War-era secret sends three soldiers on an epic quest across 1940s Europe to recover a piece of American history. Philadelphia, 1776: George Washington asks Betsy Ross to design the first flag of the future United States of America. Her housemaid, Angela Brown, adds to it a secret tribute to the black community: a black cotton star that she slips under one of the white ones. Dover, 1944: A soldier named Lincoln receives a letter from...

Marty McKidrict and Stuart Brodie are outcasts in the turbulent colonial backcountry of the 1780s. Trying to escape a brutal, sadistic husband, McKidrict disguises herself as a man and reluctantly joins the Patriot cause led by John Sevier and the Overmountain Men. Meanwhile, Brodie, a freedman, joins the Loyalists after Brodie's brother is lynched by a gang of Patriot renegades. In the heat of the American Revolution, fate will bring the two together...

Describes the crucial role played by African-American soldiers in securing victory for the Union in the Civil War.

Describes the experiences of twenty African-American soldiers during the Vietnam War.

Realizing that his future lies in owning land, not just being free, a young man raised as a slave becomes a buffalo soldier--a member of an all-black cavalry regiment formed to protect white settlers from Indians, bandits, and outlaws, and that later fought in the Spanish American War. Includes historical note.

"A regiment of African American soldiers from Harlem journeys across the Atlantic to fight alongside the French in World War I, inspiring a continent with their brand of jazz music"--

During the Civil War, over 180,000 black men fought in volunteer units as part of the United States Colored Troop (USCT), but it was only after the end of it that they were allowed to enlist in the Regular Army. They did so in four segregated regiments, and they colloquially became known as Buffalo Soldiers. The evolution of these black units followed the course of the organization of the peacetime Regular Army. With the end of the Civil War came...

"In the late 1950s, as the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was at last gaining ground, 16 soldiers sat confined in basement cells on death row in the army's Fort Leavenworth maximum security prison in Kansas. Exactly eight were white and eight were black. All of the white soldiers were commuted. Not only were their lives spared, but they all were eventually released and returned to their families. They benefited from powerful Washington powerbrokers,...

"The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without...

Describes the Civil War battle of Morris Island, South Carolina, during which Sargeant William H. Carney became the first African American to earn a Congressional Medal of Honor by preserving the flag.