Smoked Yankees and the Struggle for Empire: Letters from Negro Soldiers 1898-1902

Dust jacket notes: "...Black soldiers (called 'Smoked Yankees' by the Spaniards) hoped to ease Negro oppression in the United States by serving in the regular and volunteer armies during the Spanish-American War and fighting for the white man in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Selected from hundreds printed in the Negro press, these letters constitute a remarkably complete and hitherto undisclosed record of the black man's role (and attitudes) in America's struggle for empire at the turn of the century. Together they provide a wholly new prespective on the Spanish-American War and the Filipino Insurrection."