from the book i'm going to read a little here and there and explain what happened in the book. .. >> does anyone know how to do a split screen? >> i apologize. >> put it under the window. >> there? there you go. [inaudible conversations] >> the war started in 1914. the fascination of ferdinand of austria. austria declared war on serbia. germany was austria's ally. the germans were hoping to surround paris quickly. in about a week, the casualties equaled the number of characters in the civil war, the american civil war. both sides met, dug in tried to outflank each other, until there was a trench line. about 400 miles along. originally they thought the war would be over in a few months. in the battlefield there were sort of out of date combat strategies. they were having cavalry charges into artillery fire and men kicking soccer balls into machine guns. the u.s. sentiment was to stay out of the war. wilson was elected on a campaign slogan saying he kept us out of the war to compare wars, if you estimate the casualties in world war i and ii, 25,000 a day died in world war i, all in france. the germans were described as barbarians and brutes. people of extreme cruelty. it stands in contrast to americans were unable to recognize bar barbarian behavior here at home. >> the argument whether or not to go to war to volunteer, was made in harlem's barbershops. one man said, you have no rights which white men are not bound to protect. the argument was, why protect a democracy that did not protect black citizens. dubai argued, this is not our war. >> one said, volunteered service in such a time as this constitutes the strongest argument and the nobless appeal for political and economic rights which a colored man to present to the nation once the war is over. >> this happened in waco, texas. when jesse washington was tried and taken from city hall by 10,000 texans, people from waco. then william hayward, from nebraska, was in the nebraska national guard. on his right there was arthur little, publisher. the governor whitman wanted hayward to have all white officers but he agreed to have black officers. in the middle is burt williams, vaudeville start. the got as many celebrities as he could to walk in the parades and attract recruit. the best known black man in america was jack johnson. he asked to join the service but he was an exile in paris and they wouldn't waive -- they did name a show after him. jack johnson was the biggest show the u.s. had. this is james reese, one of the best known men in harlem. the ahead of the music union. they wanted to hire musicians for society ball, they called him. some nights he would drive around harlem directing bands five or six different places. he would recruit from the streets of harlem. also the conductor of choice for a dance duo, vernon and irene castle. vernon castle was british citizen. and james muir traveled with them and got famous because of them. vernon castle joined the raf. they served in the 7th and 131st and the recruiting office was around the corner the cigar store. this is the tree of hope people touched for good luck, and they marched around with broomsticks on their shoulders instead of rifles. hayward used his wealthy friends to buy uniforms. they were porters and elevator operators and architects and lawyers, fighting more for an america they believed was possible than for the one they knew. black soldiers had served before in the civil war, but they had been assigned mainly to fight nonwhite enemies. they fought against mexicans. the war department was not in favor of arming black men and training them to kill white men. the first time black citizens were drafted. this is -- there had been trouble with training black troops stationed near white troupes, hostilities surfaced. there had been a riot in houston, texas, in 1917. colonel hayward, that's him on the left --'s a publicist. he was trying to get his men as much attention and acclaim as he could. he wanted permission to march in the rainbow commission, crisis of men from all different states. he was told the men of 15th 15th national guard would not march because black was not a color of the rainbow. he made his men a solemn promise that some day they would have their parade. this is pauls, described as the black ty cobb. his batting average was .437. he was called one of the greatest black athletes in america, like jesse owens. this is george kid cot to one of jack johnson's sparring partners, 6'2", 2 26 pounds. they were sent to camp in spartansberg, south carolina. the mayor of spartansburg wrote a letter to "the new york times" in 1917 in which he said, i am sorry to hear they have been ordered here with their northern ideas before rarity equality. they will proply be expecting to be treated like white men. we shall treat them exactly as we treat our resident negroes. this is like waving a flag in the face of a bug. a -- face of a bull. >> colonel hayward called his men together and asked them to comply with the jim crow laws. they didn't have to agree with enthem but they needed the training if the wanted to see come bat. several incidents where when two soldiers returning from leave got lost and fell asleep in a field and the next day 40 men marched into town because they were afraid they had been arrest there was another incident where two white bullies knocked a young black soldier off the street, and the soldier explained he would fight back but his told his commander he would not. >> this is one of the songs of the day, song called "mammy's chocolate soldier. ." >> training best gas masks there was an incident -- camp was two miles from town. some win walk into town, and james reese wanted to buy a newspaper in a hotel, and the hotel owner knocked his hat off this, the hotel was full of white new yorkers who came to defense of their fellow newarker, and jim muir a had the disease that barbara bush had, and he was one of the football players, one of the officers from harvard, and he heard that some alabamans were going to attack the men of the 15th so he marched into the camp with kid cotton, and he said i will fight any two of you there were no takers. because of all this racial controversy, they received six two weeks of training when six was required in france at this time, the french army was demoralized. massive desertions. 24,000 french soldiers were court martialed for mutiny. they were begging for reinforcements. they new once the americans arrived, the tide would turn. at first the 269th -- they changed from the 15th new york national guard to the 369th 369th and were assigned to supply, meaning they laid railroad tracks and dug ditches. and they said under no circumstances will ill allow american soldiers to fight under a foreign flag but the germans s and the russians made a greaty, and pershing gave them eight regiments, two divisions, and the 369th was one. pershing knew that the potential for racial conflict was high if you tried to have white and black american troops serve together. this is a french helmet. before the war there had been a large population in paris of black citizens from fresh colonies and they didn't understand racial discrimination, didn't understand american biases. the men from harlem had to use the rifle which only held three bullet. they were given french rations. they were given two quarts of wine a day which didn't last. morris pin -- pippin. >> a track star at harvard and the first glad -- graduate of harvard law school. the french were given the americans all the advice they could, and theyso friendly and respectful, the u.s. army was worried that black americans would get the wrong idea. they liked -- the song, how are you going to keep them down on the farm after they have seen gay paree. they issued a document entitled secret information involving black american troops. explaining to his fellow french officers. he said the black man is regarded by the white american as an inferior being with whom relations of business or service only are possible. we may be courteous but we cannot deal with enemy on the same plane as white american officers without deeply offending the latter. he said don't spoil the negroes. he learned his friend had died in a train accident. >> served right about in that area right there. there's only so much you can learn from drills and lectures. you had to learn on the job. they fought side-by-side from the french troop advisors. most of the generals stayed back and never saw the front. this general got involved. the real trenches were different from the ones they practiced on. they learned what could happen when a shell exploded in the trench next to them. the trenches zigzagged to prevent the percussion from traveling down the trench. >> this is what was left of private james topin. can't really make it out. first combat experience without pushing back the german spring offensive which was called at the time and still is the largest single battle in the history of the war. after training side-by-side with the french, colonel hayward took over. who was injured and finished the day on crutches. wear gas masks. this is a new form of warfare. a terror weapon. the germans deployed poison gas shells, and the french told them how to recognize what the shell sounded like. there was a shell called a whiz-bang that made a whizzing sound before it detonated. one of the gasses -- here they are during the day. they had to repair the damage done to at the trenches at night. they would stand to in the morning. if nothing happened, they would fix it up. and at night go on raids across no man's land. they were having grenade practice. the french were impressed how well the americans could throw a grenade because we played baseball. they played a of baseball in their spare time. they caught the moroccoans how to play craps. >> they were really afraid of the gas. if your win was blowing in your face, youyear in trouble. if is what in your back you didn't have anything to worry about. this is the sound of gas shells being launched. strange sounds. mustard gas reacted with water and formed acid. so it formed acid in your eyes and mouth, and in hospital courtyards you would see gee is with bandages on their eyes and their hand on the shoulder of the guy in front of them or being led by a nurse or orderly. there's a gas cloud. another gas smelled like fresh cut hay and you could get a dose of that and feel nothing, but it ate away at the capillaries in your lungs and the next day you started coughing and eventually you would drown from the fluid in your own lungs. james reese got a gassing. wasn't -- bad enough to disable him from combat. finished the war directing the ban in paris and making plans with ubir blake blake -- eubey . some of the guys were heavier than air, and the gas would like into your dugout. men would take shelter in no man's land. sometimes the shell holes were filled with gas, sometimes they were filled with dead bodies, sometimes they were filled with rats. there was a rumor going around on both sides of the trenches that there was a tribe of cannibals that lived in no man's land that were deserters from both sides. more men were killed by artillery fire. with an incoming shell, he would tighten his grip, flinch the deafening noise,, another shell would land, breath held again and the soldier would feel violation and tremendousors and the rain of pebbles and bits of things, and then he would exhale. shells as names, wooly bears and jack johnson, spoutses of blood and black smoke filled the air. sometimes the explosives were so constant the soldier couldn't tell them apart or identify them. shock after shock, called drum fire. sometimes the percussionists could hear patterns in the bombardsment. a roll getting faster and faster until there were no moments of nonshelling. the soldier's brain won't work and he tries to remember and can't. the soldier asks, aim alive or dead? or will it be like you die in your dreams and you wake up and fine it's not but this time you just don't weak up. they estimated the guns fired five shells shells in 45 minutet three per second. this section of the film lasts about a minute but the shelling would last a day. >> when the shelling stopped you could hear the wounded calling out for help but they can't get them until nightfall so sometimes you would hear them all day long. it's easy to get lost in no man's land there were no markers or ways to tell which direction you had come, especially at night or in fog or gas, and men would wander until the fog cleared and find themselves in the center of the enemy camp. >> there are actually still shells being found in the soil, still shells that go off and kill people in what used to be no man's land. actually the british dug mines under the french -- german positions and blew up -- they had three huge, huge piles of explosives that made a crater a thousand feet wide. two went off. one hasn't gone off yet and they don't know where it is. >> afterwards it was hard to identify the remains. >> men from -- this is a painting that was done after the war. the men fought with distinction. they never gave an inch, never lost a prisoner in. williams butler was given an award. the best known member of the recommending meant was a man named henry johnson. there's a statue in albany. he was part of arthur little's first battalion. he was in an observation post and heard a noise at 2:45 in the morning. a german raiding party found them. roberts threw grenades until he was wounded. henry fight with his rifle and then used it with a club, and then finally fought with his knife. afterwards, judging from the footprints and pools of blood they estimated he killed four germans as least and drove off perhaps as many as 24. he was shot 16 times himself. and when he was recovering in the hospital, arthur little asked him how come you're so good with a knife? ever been in a knife fight before? and hen re -- henry johnson just burst out laughing. he came from some very tough neighborhoods. colonel hayward invited a war correspondent irving cobb. called the funniest man in america. the first man to host the academy awards. he has his own brand of cigars named after him. hayward arranged for him to visit, and he wrote a story -- here's the cigars. no one knows where he is. one of the most famous men in 1920 in america. first story for the saturday evening post, national magazine, and the story was cold "young black joe, "o'the first full-length account of what the men from the 369th had been doing. it was published in august 1918. he wrote, at a russell -- as a result of what-under black soldiers are going to do, a word is going to have a new meaning for all of us, north and south, too, and it's -- hear after n-i-g-g-er-r will only be another way of spelling "american." >> the final offensive of the allies came in september. so september 26, 1918. though thought it would last through the next summer. as you can see, this is the forest right here. most of the americans were on the other side. this is a place called bellevue signals, the hill where during the war 200,000 germans and french had been killed. the men from the 369th were down here. they had to work this way and take the town, and the fieldson and the woods and there was a rail station, and they could cut the german resupply line. arthur little's battalion took the town and they were joined by the second and third battalions, what was left of them. his task then was to take the field and the woods north of town which was full of machine guns. he asked for artillery support and he got six shells that fell in the field. the first battalion was down to 300 men, the second down to 100 men, and the third was down to 137 men. so they lost about three-quarters of the company. the german machine guns were there everybody was calling it custer's last stand. at the last minute they were relieved and finished the war on the french-german border. the first american troops to reach the line. that had been everybody's goal. spent christmas eve in a barn. they made their way west, heading home on the train and they would call out and, i who won the wore, the cook won the war, we won the war, and they were heading back, and they expected to be welcomed by their fellow soldiers in arms. and i think they spent so much time with the french they forgot what to expect. what happened was at a train station, a private asked him where bathroom was and the mp cracked his head open with a billy club help said, quote, the niggers were feeling their oats and to take it out of them quickly so not to have trouble later on. arthur little brought charges against the mp. >> they left with 2,000 men. they were wounded -- many were wounded and replaced. i have half the names. i would love to make a web site where you could find out who they were. they were glad to be going home. they had been denied permission towatch in the parade of the rainbow division, so colonel hayward promised them a parade when they got hem. it was the biggest parade in the history of new york city. >> february 12, 1919. new york world -- newspapers said, through scores of thousands of cheering white citizens and then through a greater multitude of its own color, the regiment, the first actual fighting men to parade as a unit. marched in mid-day through harlem to be almost assailed by the colored folk. they start down on 22nd 22nd street, i think. marched up past macy's, and i think it was near the new york p library there was stand where people were waiting. james reese's band supplied the music, and once they got past the dignitaries they jazzed it up a bit. they kept it military to that point. ... flsh >> he had postwar plans twos be 11 a country with his band and summer and here he recorded this. this is one of the officers that helped to found boy scouts of america. months after the parade ended the band played the first concert at the manhattan opera house. they played the boston and at opera house and gave the first jazz concert ever this is them writing in the convertible prevent it they went west to cleveland, indianapolis, chica go where he lived up his old friend hiring castle and had dinner with her. then that a good drummer was asked the teen strange and would walk off in the middle of a song and there is a psychological reason to have a parade it gave a sense of closure a grand memory to blot out the memories they did not want to carry with them many had mental and emotional health but many did not the british army had in newt ailment called it shellshocked a nervous disorder it was a disability discharge it is now called a posttraumatic stress disorder they experienced sleep loss, loss of appetite, phobia, gilts, anxie ty, a disturbing dreams, struggling to push the memories out of their thoughts but the more they struggle the war there we're caught. there would panic at the sound of thunder or they would hear the toenails of the dog on the floor and think it was a wire cutter but ptsd today part of the therapy is talking about it and putting your stories into a narrative that the time they were told not to talk about it they were forbidden. seven men were told to think happy thoughts war they were asked to paint pictures of pretty flowers. it did not help. the physical wounds showed but the emotional wounds did not at least not right away. this is called on patrol of no man's land. ♪ after the parade herman a common henry johnson was giving a lot of interviews with a word at his side. he was asked of what a great time they had had he got tired of lying. he was invited march 1919 to speak at a convention in st. louis at a program commemorating black soldiers. he went on at tour for a while to pay off for debt selling liberty bonds. lascivious this is a song called all of no man's land is ours ♪ i think it, i am not positive. he was a senior for the band so it probably was him, of the wounded soldier. henry johnson went to speak at the convention in the st. louis, he was tired of lying about the war. at the coliseum as he stepped up to the podium got a standing ovation he was famous all over the country and at the end of the parade they had a big deal at the armory. henry johnson gave his speech and said white soldiers refuse to fight beside the blacks because they were cowards the white officers tried to get the black soldiers killed and he heard one white officers say send the niggers to the front so they're not so many of them in new york. it sounds like he may be quoting from another regiment. i don't know but there's a rumor the black troops were being used as cannon fodder a rumor there were put in the worst places but the fact is there was not anybody that was not being used as cannon fodder. and the war department of support for his speed levin then six white marines went to his room and opened the door he was in his bathrobe and he says sergeant john send left and he went home to albany. he was divorced in 1923 he started to drink heavily and use drugs. he moved out he died alone 1929 in a virginia hospital buried in arlington cemetery but the army did not tell the family where he was they did not find his final resting place until 2001. i talk to his son herman on the phone who is dead now but he was then it kansas city he was one of the tuskegee airmen. he died a few years ago. cloris pippen took up painting he was discovered by white who found one in his drawings in a shoe repair store. one a called him the most important negro to appear in shown at the museum of modern art and died in 1946. napoleon marshall resumed his law practice and 1922 became a military liaison in haiti where he worked with the poor and fought in a governing battle he came home and 19292 became a college professor at howard university and died in 1933. scott cable and resumed his baseball career batted 310-1919 and drove 1923 then drove a cab and died they do 62. roberts came home the hero and given his own parade the disabled from his injuries and could not find work arrested in 1924 because he was still wearing his uniform beyond the three months lynette and ultimately committed suicide. they traveled west as far as omaha and returned home to play at mechanics hall and that night herbert was one of the drummers to started to act strange and in the dressing room he felt that he was being persecuted singling him out with their days is and when they tried to find out what was wrong at intermission herbert said you don't treat me right still makes mistakes and you don't say nothing to him they tried to quiet him down but now he took out a knife and said i will kill anybody to disadvantage buddy launched himself in the neck he put a towel on that he did not think that it was the serious he told them to finish this show he went to the hospital where he said he would give a transfusion but he was too late. i am convinced jim boyd is nablus has been as big as in the name in the history of american jazz. the news made national headlines. ♪ you might notice this is a culmination of things happening in france. there is no way to save their herbert right suffered from ptsd does something in france made him crazy. so he joined with blake and became the first wrote the first black musical on broadway duke ellington and cab calloway was a pallbearer at his funeral he died 1975. will be favored become district attorney of new york city and of borden -- paradyne connecticut. he was made honoraria mayor and spoke at the 1936 republican convention ever he was named as a possible vice presidential candidates. elected congressmen from dutchess county new york serve 19231945 bangko rosie advocated for a federal anti-launching a lot and said in his speech to be derelict of those colored soldiers who served under my command who paid the supreme sacrifice of the battlefields of france fighting to make the world safe for democracy by did not raise my voice and everything in my power to help pass federal and chairman she built in order to make america safe for the of table their families and sons. note federal and challenging law was passed. he died in 1991 at the age of 102 this is a graveyard the monument that is there to the 369 we are cowards and jackasses debbie b. dubois roche now that the war is over we did not marshal every ounce to fide more stronger unbending battle against the forces of hell in our own land. harlem resin on started a day of every parade marking the emergence of what was called the time the new negro the old lived in a parallel society practiced accommodation and the new negro was not patient nor accommodating he demanded the full citizenship that his black brothers had died four. after he came home partly instigated by white bigots who felt as a threatened by black impairment texas arkansas chicago and los oklahoma riots occurred in washington d.c. july 19 white servicemen went into a black neighborhood started to beat up blacks citizens at random but this time the black men fought back a black woman said the washington riots gave me a thrill that comes once-in-a-lifetime. at last our men had stood at men no longer leu gibbering cattle naked the longer read from my streaming tears i stood up alone and exclaimed zero thank god. thank god the pent-up humiliation of a lifetime half of a century was being stripped from me. not so much of the black veterans came home and all became militants active in civil-rights what they inspired. the battle of henry johnson gave the black american citizen a new hero of the modern collared soldier just a regular guy. pictures of jim were him in a military uniform not a band uniform. something and did in something new started when the men from harlem the black officers and white officers took up arms and spent the year that change their lives in the course of american history. no one could deny them there rights. their country pessimists were right that the powers and plays were firmly in place and would not be easily defeated by the pessimist underestimated the fight in the men who went away and the pride they would inspire with out which neither battle could be one the one in france or the one back home. ♪ ♪ the french still go to the monument. the tomb of the unknown soldier holds the bones of an unidentified victim of world war i those poseur disinterred from the battlefield from where the men of the 369 have fought so it is possible the actual person was one of the harlem hell fighters ♪ so i have some time now to take questions if you have any. >> i was a little late coming in. did you explain how you gathered this material? >> i did not talk much about that. there was a book written in 1921 by the publisher that was the only primary textile could find then i discovered were arrested been had written diaries that ron microfilm there is a manuscript written called the autobiography of james bias is all and i have spent a lot of time looking at every possible research i could find there official histories of the war and an official black history of the war by m is got to the editor in chief of the chicago defender rotisserie so there was a number of text and i have to say that there were many books would turn not available in my little library that were available on google books published, they have skin books that were published before 1930. you can get them in your house online so why did a lot of research on the internet and had one in turn at the schaumburg looking stuff up for me. as a writer? this is my third military history i wrote a book about a modern air force search and rescue and a book about world war ii and i have been a writer my whole life. this is the first i have written word there was no one alive that i could talk to about it. there is a man living in massachusetts who was 106 and i called his house and his son said he cannot respond to questions. i do not know the was it the he was in paris in 1920 i do know that much. >> is this the only book of the african american history? bernanke's. specifically. >> what was it just the mystique a? i apologize. >> my wife founded on line looking upward parliamentary realize this was a story that no one knew it was the and told part of a relatively forgotten war and the things that they did they spent more days in the trenches than any american troops and because they served with the french army, the french army gave them 171 metals. the u.s. gave them nothing. and the general said very little so i thought it was a great story that no one knew. >> i am familiar with horace pippin his part in this i am totally fascinated. but you have in my 102 meet today and i collect african-american art and have known of him but did not know of this. >> his diary come if i could have a i would have read his diaries at greater length. they were remarkable. he said today there is a sniper i went out and delayed in the mud and snuck out and i ate a sandwich and wish i had cigarettes. you just did something remarkable and you write about food? >> it is worth millions of dollars. >> they are in new york. >> you will find them on 57 street at a gallery, let me think. i am having a moment. the annual african-american exhibits every year in february for probe. >> he lost the use of one of his arms in combat and use the other to support it. >> i will tell you his name. when i can think of the. i am so amazed. >> give me your name when this is over i will give you all of his diaries i a transcribe them and typed them up. >> i am william noble and my cousin was the first female professor at the nyu and i am just in my 10. thank you. >> you are welcome. >> he mentioned suppliers? the tuskegee flyers. and early in the year i think they have of an ongoing exhibit at york college on long island? and they had an exhibit that they said would be ongoing. all of those men that you mentioned something? >> there are three soldiers that fought in world war i. they are british will and is a hundred 11, another is 109. >> roscoe brown? he was one of them. i remember seeing a play about them and i understand they were going to do a documentary? >> they were the 15 the national guard when they got to france they were given the new name 369 there were parts of the 93rd division their birth two divisions each had two divisions the 92nd and of the 93rd. this is the only group from new york. there is one group from chicago. some of the other regiments did not have the same experience where they respected their white officers. when he was marched into the alabama a camp he became a gerry when they supported each other and spartanburg that had the effect of the unintended effect was to form a greater unit cohesion as a lot of other units the officers were from the south and treated black soldiers terribly. >> they still do the same thing in iraq i hate to tell you that is what i hear it is the same sort of thing. >> one black soldier in another unit was accused of hiding in a ditch during a battle. there were all heidi in ditches it was a 400 mile-long ditch. they all did that. it is crazy. somebody else had a question? >> you said they became the 369th in france? the armory at 142nd was not built in 121924 i think. was that constructed to house the 369? and why was the 15th regiment formed in the first place? if it was not designed to become part of the u.s. army? urie of the ninth and tenth calgary. i don't know what happened with the 54 and out of massachusetts where they of parts of the army horror and why was the regiment formed in the first place? to make a good question first of all, about the armory it was designed by an architect who was a soldier that fought with the 369. i think it was built to house of 369 at the time. there have been efforts to form the regiment before william a word stepped in. one man named charles fillmore who was a black soldier in the spanish-american war in 1912 he was probably 42 or 43 or more. he tried to form the regiment and he wanted to have all black officers but you cannot form the regiment without the governor's approval and he would not approve that. i don't know. i did not find exactly what william pay words motivation was to try to form the regiment but he wanted coming he believed in and civil-rights and the cause of democracy and unfortunately when he took over fillmore was a colonel and he was demoted to the rank of captain by served and charles fell more led his men in a gas attack. there were a lot of different reasons they wanted an organization to train the years, military drilling was considered a good exercise. they wanted, they were not really training in the early days, it started the of for the four regiments started before the war even began so there were reasons why the black leadership of harlem wanted a civic organization their own national guard regiment but the governor's twice with two different governors vetoed the the proposal. favored stepped in and had a meeting with black leaders in harlan and they already had in place with black officers and he agreed to keep them he had an argument with the governor who wanted of white officers pleaded not think that was the way to do it. men formed the regiment for patriotic reasons. >> one question i asked specifically because i am trying to understand what was the nature of african-americans participation in the army since the civil war up through growth or one. specifically because you have the ninth and tenth calgary. >> and the 24 negative and 25th. >> exactly. you do not give the presence until the turn of the century's zero was that defeated? moving up to harlem especially with the draft in new york city? what was the motivation? how did that occur cents there was no official stance from the army? >> in fact, the army during world war i did not call it the ninth third 10 calgary but the 24 negative and a 25th state in the american west. there were fighting in the philippines and mexico i think they were 60,000 african americans in harlem in 1914 and the numbers kept increasing their removing north because of the industry to get away from jim crow and wants the war industry kicked and we were supplying the british and french there were more jobs up north side of the population figures but there was a boom in harlem then in hell's kitchen. but i don't know everyone have their own reasons for joining. some thought of it as a good career move to have on the resume after the war was over. >> what i want to know anything about you go into a war to fight for a country that you cannot eat in any restaurant, you have to drink from a separate fountain, people in new york like to think it was not as bad as the south but new york had to grow. it was hidden so the men talk about how they felt going to war for america and knowing when they got back home the america they were fighting for was the idea because america that they lived and was not the ideal american as to everybody else did anybody writes about that? >> horace pippin did not fight about it jim was making plans to be a musician. hero to a little about how he believed in the military as a way to train the use. but nobody, i searched as far as i could for poets are anybody writing their own accounts. there were collections of letters and i contacted a collection of war letters but there were no letters from the 369. i had researchers surgery and france to see if anybody could find anything written in french but they could not find anything. it was very limiting the primary sources i could find. but i believe they can hold the laying neighbor fighting for the idea if i fight you cannot deny i fought for this i gave my blood and you cannot tell me know. they believe that and frederick douglass said that but to put brass buttons and eagles on them and and let him fight for his country and no one can deny him his citizenship and that is what they were thinking i think. . .