Here are some African American research sources that I think will be helpful in your research of your military ancestors. African Americans participated in every war that the United States engaged in. When looking for information regarding your ancestors, it is important to locate those military records for ancestors that may have served. Learning what records were used during the Wars is an important resource that can help you find that much needed information. Most people may not realize that people of color fought from the earliest of wars, including during the colonial times. A great site to get started is African American Military History.

• The Black Military Experience by Ira Berlin
• Black Soldier, White Army: the 24th Infantry Regiment in Korea by William T. Bowers
• Compiled records showing service of military units in volunteer Union organization (microform)
• Tennessee Colored Confederate Pension Applications by Pat Spurlock Elder
• 104th Infantry Regiment – USCT: colored Civil War soldier from South Carolina by J. Raymond Gourdin
• Black Courage, 1775-1783: Documentation of Black Participation in the American Revolution by Robert Ewell Greene
• South Carolina’s African American Confederate pensioners, 1923-1925 by Alexia Jones Helsley
• The Roster of Union Soldiers, 1861-1865: United States Colored Troops, vol. 4-5 by Janet B. Hewett
• The Louisiana Native Guards: the Black military experience during the Civil War by James G. Hollandsworth
• The employment of Negro troops by Ulysses Lee
• Taps for a Jim Crow Army: letters from Black soldiers in World War II by Phillip McGuire
• Black Soldiers – Black Sailors – Black ink: research guide on African-Americans in US military history, 1526-1900 by Thomas Truxtun Moebs
• Black Soldiers in the Colonial Militia: Documents from 1639 to 1780 by Edward Sandel
• On the Trail of the Buffalo Soldier by Frank Schubert
• United States, Veterans Administration, Pension Index file (microfilm), Washington, DC
• Slave and Soldier: the military impact of Blacks in the Colonial Americas by Peter Michael Voelz
• African American Patriots in the Southern Campaign of the American Revolution by Bobby G. Moss and Michael C. Scoggins
• Military Pension Law, 1776-1858, from the Journals of the Continental Congress and the United States Statues-at-Large by Christine Rose
• The Negro in the American Revolution by Herbert Aptheker
• Black Defenders of America, 1775-1973 by Robert Ewell Greene
• Patriots of Color: “a peculiar beauty and merit”: African Americans and Native Americans at Battle Road & Bunker Hill by George Quintal
• One Women’s Army by Charity Adams Earley
• The Photographic History of the Civil War in Ten Volumes by Francis Trevelyan Miller