“Scattering Like a Pool of Animals”

One of the greatest research challenges we faced while writing Now the Hell Will Start was the paucity of primary source material describing day-to-day life for African-American GIs. Enlisted men were discouraged from keeping diaries, literacy rates were low, and post-war archivists too often ignored black contributions to the Great Cause—an unholy trifecta for historians working today. So you can only imagine our joy upon discovering Phillip McGuire’s Taps for a Jim Crow Army, a compendium of l