Loyalty in Time of Trial: The African American Experience During World War I

Add this title to the expanding number of books now studying the African American experience in World War I, in which almost 370,000 African Americans served in combat. ― Library Journal

This book is recommended to CAMP members who are interested in the story of African American participation in World War I. ― Journal of America’s Military Past

Nina Mjagkij painstakingly describes the frustration, sometimes anger, and frequent courage demonstrated by southern and northern African Americans in their attempts to include themselves in the national crusade of making the world safe for democracy. Although interested generalists will know the outline of the story, they, as well as specialists, will gain from the clarity and detail of the writing….Loyalty in Time of Trial is one of the most comprehensive treatments of the race issue in the early twentieth century that this reader has seen. I highly recommend it. ― Journal of Southern History

Thoroughly researched and carefully crafted, this balanced and eminently readable work is replete with enough facts and figures to satisfy the more pernickety Great War buff. It is aimed at a general audience as a timely reminder of how and where the great Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s got its start. ― The Western Front Association

Nina Mjagkij’s Loyalty in Time of Trial deftly demonstrates that for African Americans, U.S. history has been anything but a linear story of progress toward greater and greater freedom. This brief (147 pages of text) and nicely written overview. … Loyalty in Time of Trial covers familiar territory. It examines how discrimination, segregation, economic exploitation, political disfranchisement, legal oppression, government neglect, petty humiliations, and violence shaped the lives of African Americans in all regions of the country. At the same time, it also describes unrelenting efforts by black elites, the influential black middle class, black self-help organizations, black newspapers, black professionals, and black colleges to design and sustain pragmatic programs to effect racial advancement in spite of President Woodrow Wilson’s callous indifference to entrenched racism in American society. ― Journal of American Ethnic History

Loyalty in Time of Trial is an excellent overview of the African American experience, ‘over there’ and on the home front, during World War I. It is a well-written, thoughtful, and balanced account, making good use of the proliferating scholarship on the U.S. role in the war and on the efforts of African Americans to redeem the conflict’s democratic promise. Nina Mjagkij has produced a book that is both accessible to students and general readers and a contribution to the scholarly literature. — Robert H. Zieger, University of Florida, author of America’s Great War: The American Experience in World War I

Dealing as much with life on the home front as on the battlefield, Loyalty in Time of Trial succinctly and imaginatively explores the many ways in which World War I impacted African Americans. Placing the wartime experience in the broad context of black aspirations for equality and the changed racial circumstances resulting from urbanization, Mjagkij’s study provides a comprehensive overview of an important turning point in African American history. — Kenneth L. Kusmer, Temple University, author of Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless in American History