A More Unbending Battle: The Harlem Hellfighters' Struggle for Freedom in WWI and Equality at Home

The 369th Infantry Regiment was the first African-American regiment mustered to fight in World War I. In a war where the vast majority of black soldiers served in the service of supply, unloading ships and building roads and railroads, the men of the 369th trained and fought side-by-side with the French at the front and ultimately spent more days in the trenches than any other American unit. They went to war in defense of a country afflicted by segregation, lynchings, and racial violence, but a country they believed in all the same. In A More Unbending Battle, author Peter Nelson chronicles the little-known story of the 369th. Despite extraordinary odds, the 369th became one of the most successful and feared regiments of the war. The Harlem Hellfighters, as their enemies named them, showed extraordinary valor on the battlefield, with many soldiers winning the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor, and were the first Allied unit to reach the Rhine River.