Donaldson on Polk, 'Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948'
Khary Oronde Polk. Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 288 pp. $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4696-5550-5.
Reviewed by Le'Trice D. Donaldson (Texas A and M, Corpus Christi )
Published on H-Diplo (September, 2021)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach (Bronx Community College, The City University of New York)
Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=56340
During my final years as a graduate student, I met with my advisor to look over my cover letter and CV. He suggested that I market myself more as an African American historian, rather than a military historian, the logic being that military history is unpopular and frowned upon within academia. Khary Oronde Polk, in his innovative and theory-driven study of American militarism, Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898–1948, embraces the challenge put forth by Alfred Vagts, historian of militarism, who urged “his fellow colleagues in American Academia to commit to the interdisciplinary study of war” (p. 1).
Polk’s Contagions of Empire tells “the story of America’s military conscription of gender, racial, and sexual difference in the early to mid-twentieth century” (p. 4). The author seeks to address the paradoxical position of African Americans within US militarism as both subjects and agents of American imperialism. It examines the “use of Black military workers in the U.S. imperial wars abroad” and “establishes the scientifically racist origins of Black employment in imperial warfare” (pp. 4, 6). Contagions of Empire is not your traditional military history text.
The author meticulously researched and navigated the archives to bring forth a fresh and insightful analysis of African American military service. Contagions of Empire successfully “demonstrates how African American military service abroad produced new ideas of racial affiliation, sexual belonging, and global citizenship” (p. 4). The spotlight is not on the battlefield performance but rather on the long-ignored policing and surveilling of Black bodies in the service of the American military.
Contagions of Empire provides a necessary “counternarrative to canonical histories of U.S. military service that oscillate between the exclusion of Black military workers altogether and an understandable need to recover and celebrate them as American heroes and heroines” (p. 7). The author takes on the monumental task of unpacking in their eyes “the longstanding paradox of Black military service” (p. 7). Though admirably attempted by the author, this question of why African Americans serve is too ambitious to be fully answered by Polk in this study.
The text is firmly rooted in theory and is successful as an interdisciplinary study. Polk weaves together the fields of gender and sexuality studies, military history, citizenship studies, and African American studies. The book is divided into five chapters with an introduction and an epilogue, which is an analysis of William Gardner Smith’s novel Last of the Conquerors (1948). Each chapter follows a specific theme and military campaign. There are several fascinating aspects of Polk’s study; however, it is his analysis and discussions of the long-neglected Black nurses of the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino conflict that stands out.
Polk shines a much-needed spotlight on the trailblazing work of Namahyoka Curtis, the woman of mystery. Mrs. A. M. Curtis is introduced to the audience as the Black woman responsible for recruiting the most white and Black nurses to serve in America’s first war on foreign soil. Curtis toured the country at the behest of President William McKinley to recruit “Immune Nurses” for military service in Cuba and eventually the Philippines. The author masterfully weaves together the brutal reality of scientific racism and how it shaped American military policy toward recruiting and preying on the patriotism of the African American community. Black nurses, according to one high-ranking white officer, were described as “a hardy lot of female nurses—I do not mean lady nurses” (p. 60). Black women, in the minds of many white military leaders, could not possess “true womanhood” (p. 60). It was the belief in supposed Black immunity to “tropical diseases” that drove the recruitment of African Americans for the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino conflict.
The author artfully highlights the overlooked intellectual and literary acumen of brigadier general Charles Young, the most well-known Black officer of the early twentieth century. Polk’s analysis of how Young agonized over his unpublished five-act play about his hero, Toussaint Louverture, provides a much-needed and refreshing portrait of Young as a military intellectual as well as an officer.
Polk’s innovative analysis of the records on “Negro subversion” during WWI sheds new light on how thoroughly the scientific racism of white military leaders permeated the recruitment and treatment of Black soldiers. White military leaders labeled most Black soldiers as “venereals” and sexually aggressive. Major Walter Loving, the Military Intelligence Division’s top Black domestic spy, was forced to write reports encouraging Army officials to recruit more Black doctors because the white doctors at the segregated campus were treating Black soldiers with venereal diseases incorrectly and it was affecting the morale and performance of the soldiers. Rather than change their policies, the military brass decided to isolate, quarantine, and exile Black soldiers because they paradoxically believed them to be both contagious and immune.
The author attempts to be inclusive and, in some ways, provocative in his use of the term “military worker,” which does double duty. Polk states, “I employ the term … to highlight both the labor Black men and women did while stationed overseas and their subaltern statuses in the segregated American military hierarchy of power” (p. 4). Yet to label Black soldiers military workers does a disservice and discounts how these men and women saw themselves. Black soldiers took great pride in their service. The African American community took great pride in their service and before President Harry Truman’s desegregation of the military, protecting and advocating for the rights of Black soldiers was a key part of the early civil rights movement. The Black community may not have always supported the imperialist policies of the American government; however, they did overwhelmingly support Black soldiers. Calling them military workers also ignores the long tradition of the warrior class within the African American community.
Overall, Contagions of Empire is a thought-provoking, powerful new approach to Black military history that will spark new debates and narratives. This monograph is a positive addition to gender and sexuality studies, citizenship studies, and the history of militarism, and a must-read for students of those disciplines.
Le’Trice Donaldson is an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. She is the author of Duty beyond the Battlefield: African American Soldiers Fight for Racial Uplift, Citizenship, and Manhood, 1870-1920 (2020) and A Voyage through the African American Experience (2018). You can follow her on Twitter @eboninerd.
Citation:
Le'Trice D. Donaldson. Review of Polk, Khary Oronde, Contagions of Empire: Scientific Racism, Sexuality, and Black Military Workers Abroad, 1898-1948.
H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2021.
URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=56340
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