Act in Relation to the Organization of a Colored Regiment in the City of New York

Questions for Further Study

• 1.: Compare this document with Thomas Morris Chester’s Civil War Dispatches (1864). What do you think Chester’s reaction to the new law would have been?
• 2.: Using this document in conjunction with Chester’s Civil War Dispatches and Harry Truman’s Executive Order 9981 desegregating the military in 1948, trace the history of African American involvement in the military and efforts to desegregate it.
• 3.: Describe the role that the Harlem Hell Fighters played in World War I.
• 4.: What role did local politics have in the formation of the Colored Regiment of Infantry Act and in delays in its implementation?
• 5.: In the twentieth century numerous African American leaders called on black men to resist the military draft. See, for example, Stokely Carmichael’s “Black Power” (1966). What changed in attitudes toward the military between the early twentieth century and the later decades of the century?