Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • Chapter 11 - African American Literature, Citizenship, and War, 1863–1932

  • from Part II - Cultural Moments and the American Literary Imagination
  • Edited by Jennifer Haytock, State University College, Brockport, New York
  • Book:
    War and American Literature
    Published online:
    20 January 2021
    Print publication:
    04 February 2021, pp 166-179

  • Summary

    Examining the evolving representation of military service in African American literature reveals how African American writers illustrate the possibility and the disillusionment of military service between the Civil War and World War I, adding individual perspective to the historical record. In The Negro in the American Rebellion (1867), William Wells Brown expresses hope that African Americans would receive citizenship after fighting for their freedom. After Reconstruction, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper wrote Iola Leroy (1893) and Paul Laurence Dunbar published The Fanatics (1901), works that reimagine the consequences of the Civil War in light of the nation’s institutionalized racism. Later, Victor Daly portrayed the experience of an African American soldier in a segregated army in Not Only War (1932). These books demonstrate that the complicated questions about African American military service and citizenship would take generations to resolve.