Black People in the Us Army

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Black People in the US Army In the short story ,,The Homecoming’’ by Frank Yerby the Protagonist Willie, a highly decorated soldier, gets back home. He served in the Second World War and has experienced a lot of horrible things. Willie has seen how people, no matter what skin colour they had, were treated equally. He can’t stand the unfair situation in the southern states for black people and now he want to leave. Because of this story I asked myself some questions. What was the social position of dark-skinned persons during the times in the US Army? How and when did it change? In the following text I’m going to try to answer these questions. Hardly anyone knows that there were already black people in North America before the USA even existed. In 1652 5000 black soldiers fought against the British forces, slaves and freemen. The first important event for the status of black people was the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. At the beginning there weren’t any Afro-Americans in the northern forces, but as the war went on and the battles got more loss-making the Union decided to create Coloured Regiments. The fact that there were enough white men to arrange a northern army without any black people can be irritating but don’t forget that a huge anti-slavery movement already existed. So it’s possible to say that this decision was more a political considerateness than credo. During the war this general opinion changed a lot. Many black soldiers showed what they’re able to do. Supervisor of coloured regiments started to respect the black people. There were some considerations about letting dark-skinned people in the confederate army but until the end of the war no serious regiments were deployed. Even thou the Union won and slavery was abolished the black’s situation didn’t change that much. Prejudice and dislike still existed. The respect that the black soldiers
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