Ocean State Libraries

"en though they often knew they would return to civilian lives of limited opportunities and unequal treatment, they served their nation with conviction and distinction. This volume offers inspiring profiles of African American service people, from Crispus Attucks, the first casualty of the American Revolution, and the freedom-seeking Loyalists to the renowned 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry of the Civil War. From Buffalo Soldiers to the twenty-first...

This book examines the African-American troops known as the Buffalo Soldiers, who fought over a hundred battles in the Indian Wars and risked their lives in other ways, including enforcing the law, guarding wagon trains, exploring unknown territory, and building forts, roads, and telegraph lines.

The night broke open in a storm of explosions and fire. The sound of shells whizzing overhead, screeching through the night like wounded pheasants, was terrifying. When the shells exploded prematurely overhead, a rain of shrapnel fell on the men below — better than when the shells exploded in the trenches . . .
In A More Unbending Battle, journalist and author Pete Nelson chronicles the little-known story of the 369th Infantry Regiment —...

"Buffalo Soldiers: Fighting on Two Fronts explores the often-contradictory role played by Black soldiers throughout American history. The film weaves together the testimony of historians, experts and descendants of the Buffalo Soldiers with archival photographs, reenactments, and animation to tell the story of how newly free Black Americans enlisted in the U.S. Army, and in the process helped to both fulfill America's Manifest Destiny and disrupt...