Lexington Books
Pages: 146
Trim: 6¼ x 9
978-1-4985-8631-3 • Hardback • January 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)
978-1-4985-8633-7 • Paperback • April 2023 • $39.99 • (£30.00)
978-1-4985-8632-0 • eBook • January 2019 • $38.00 • (£30.00)
Robert F. Jefferson Jr. is associate professor of history at the University of New Mexico.
Foreword: Looking Back and Looking Ahead, by Hal M. Friedman
Introduction: Recovering the Scions of Jericho: America’s Wars, Black Veterans’ Politics, and Civil Rights in Twentieth Century American History, by Robert F. Jefferson, Jr.
Chapter 1: “We Never Get to Be Men:” Big Bill Broonzy, Black Consciousness, and WWI’s Returning Black Veterans, by Kevin Greene
Chapter 2: “Frames Refocused: Blinded Black and White Ex-GIs and the Social Re-Orientation of Self in World War Two America,” by Robert F. Jefferson, Jr.
Chapter 3: “Have Gun, Will Travel: The Deacons for Defense and Justice, Armed Self Defense and the Long Black Power Movement,” by Selika M. Ducksworth-Lawton
Chapter 4: “The Military No More: Vietnam, Civil Rights, and Attitudes Toward Change,” by Jeremy P. Maxwell
Chapter 5: “African American Leadership’s Tug of War with Black Military Service Members: Rhetorical Situation Strategies in the Face of the Persian Gulf War,” by Elizabeth Desnoyers-Colas
Afterword: How to Place These Fine Essays into Larger Contexts, by Peter Karsten
Robert F. Jefferson Jr.’s Black Veterans, Politics, and Civil Rights in Twentieth-Century America: Closing Ranks is a crucial contribution to a more nuanced understanding of the dynamic, contested, and sometimes uneven relationship between military service and civil rights. In this fine volume, Jefferson assembles an impressive collection of insightful essays by a diverse range of accomplished scholars. The result is a concise and cogent analysis of how black veterans have grappled with their military service and leveraged it in the broader struggle for civil rights. This noteworthy anthology should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand the vital linkages between military service, black veterans, and civil rights in American society during the twentieth century. Students, scholars, and general readers alike will benefit from reading it.
— William A. Taylor, Angelo State University