Conventional accounts of the origins of the Civil Rights movement generally concentrate on black colleges and churches as touchstones of collective protest. No doubt, there is much truth in this view. At the same time, some research has pointed to the involvement of black veterans in the development of the Civil Rights struggle. However, either most previous studies have not explored this thesis in significant detail or they have been case studies focused on particular southern states or localities and therefore lacking in broader generalizability. By contrast, Christopher S. Parker's Fighting for Democracy brings to this topic an extraordinary combination of theoretical sophistication and empirical sweep. Readable and engaging, Parker's book presents a compelling analysis of how the sacrifices of southern African American men in World War II and the Korean War left them with the confidence and ideological capabilities to challenge the racism of the Jim Crow South. It sets an exemplary standard for subsequent research.

Indeed, Parker's methodological eclecticism—combining interviews with black veterans and careful statistical analysis of contemporaneous survey research—moves well beyond prior studies, furnishing a sturdy foundation for his arguments. On the basis of his interviews, Parker documents the development of “black republicanism,” a term he coins to describe a distinctive black political ideology resting on the notion that the rights of full citizens should accrue to those who were willing to make the ultimate sacrifice., Drawing on relevant academic literatures, he delineates in meticulous detail the ways in which military service left a profound impression upon black soldiers. Further, his rich historical narrative of black participation in American war mobilization, and of the differences in the treatment of black servicemen during and after the conflicts, supports a nuanced account of the relationship between military participation and racial progress. This book makes an exceedingly valuable contribution to studies of black political ideologies, the influence of military service on soldiers, and the relationship between war mobilization and changes in racial inequality.

Beginning with a theoretical overview, the book unfolds in four main sections. First, Parker presents a historical survey of black military service, describing how many black veterans across American history have regularly challenged racism in the military as well as resisted Jim Crow at home. Here, he argues suggestively that African American soldiers pioneered racial militancy during World War II and in the postwar period prior to sustained Civil Rights movement agitation, often appearing in leadership positions within the NAACP. Second, Parker demonstrates persuasively that black republicanism should be regarded as a distinctive egalitarian ideology, basing his account on a subtle deconstruction of the symbolic meaning of military service for participants. He shows that black military service contributed to pride, self-confidence, a sense of manhood, and an intense desire to see the citizenship rights—for which the soldiers fought—fully secured. Third, he uses interviews conducted with 19 black veterans of either or both World War II and the Korean War to test his argument. Not only does he find strong support for the prevalence of black republicanism and challenges to Jim Crow among his interviewees, but their personal stories also vividly bring to life the more abstract points of his thesis.

Finally, to bolster the more impressionistic interview data, Parker draws upon survey research on issue attitudes and political participation among southern blacks that was conducted in the early 1960s, and which fortuitously included a question about military service. In these quantitative chapters, he demonstrates that his propositions about the association between military service and attitudinal differences, as well as the commitment to political activism, applied not only to his interviewees but also to veterans more generally. He shows that despite the introduction of multiple controls conventionally associated with black political activism (e.g., education, church membership, etc.), veteran status continues to exert an independent positive influence.

Overall, this is an impressive piece of scholarship, mandatory reading for those interested in the history and politics of Civil Rights in the United States. At the same time, some interpretive and methodological questions persist.

Certainly, the conventional view of the Civil Rights era is that black challenges to Jim Crow centered on the organization of marches, sit-ins, and other protests. Yet these forms of insurgent activity are not documented in Parker's analysis; rather, the systematic survey data on which he draws focuses solely on voting and other forms of conventional political participation (such as contributing to political campaigns). While it is true that black voting in the South often threatened white dominance and was fiercely resisted in many localities, such acts of political participation were more than individual assertions of self-worth only when clearly connected to a broader collective assault on Jim Crow. (It is, of course, possible that these conventional forms of political action occurred in the context of voter registration drives. Parker's data, however, cannot establish if this was the case.)

Such interpretive ambiguities bring me to the sometimes hazy relationship between the black veterans and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Although Parker indicates that two-thirds of his 19 interviewees participated in insurgent behavior of some kind, the precise form is oddly unspecified. Most engaged in personal acts of defiance against Jim Crow, such as refusing to move to the back of the bus, and this strongly supports his thesis, but most were uninvolved in coordinated protest activities. By my count, only three are described as having joined Civil Rights protests. This suggests to me a keen willingness to personally buck racial orthodoxy, but less interest in participating in collective efforts to undermine white supremacy. Whereas the analysis sometimes describes black veterans as critical instigators of broader social change, it is unclear if they operated contemporaneously but independently of the Civil Rights movement.

I also wonder if sufficient controls were introduced in the statistical analysis of political participation and voting of black veterans. Specifically, I wanted to see Parker give more attention to whether black veterans were geographically dispersed in a manner that might have affected their degree of political engagement. If, for instance, black veterans were more likely to reside in places that were relatively less hostile to black voting (in particular cities with military bases or other forms of significant federal presence), then the statistical association that Parker detects might be less robust. He does introduce statistical controls for certain geographic differences, such as variables for whether the survey respondent resided in a rural county, and whether African Americans comprised greater than 50% of the local population. Yet despite their ostensible appropriateness, there are reasons to doubt that these controls are sufficient or entirely satisfactory. To my surprise, the analysis included no control for total population or percentage black. Since Parker only considers whether blacks amounted to a majority in a respondent's county, this variable does not capture the degree to which white opposition to black voter registration rose in tandem with the relative proportion of the African American population.

Such an omission is particularly striking because it is one of the most thoroughly documented factors affecting variation in black voter registration. (Further, despite Parker's suggestion that whites resisted black voting as African Americans achieved local majorities, other research finds that the figure at which white opposition mounts is much lower, at around 30%.) Although I am convinced that Parker's survey data picks up real attitudinal and behavioral differences, a more fitting array of statistical controls would have strengthened his findings.

Overall, this is a beautifully crafted piece of scholarship. Parker persuasively makes his case that military service shaped the ideological views of African American men and made them much less willing to bow to the dictates of white supremacy. The analysis is lucid, speaks to multiple theoretical domains, and smartly combines textured qualitative research with rigorous quantitative data. Although certain methodological complaints might be raised, the principal findings of the research are well substantiated and provocative. Fighting for Democracy deserves to be avidly read by all those interested in the nexus of military socialization, political participation, and the struggle for racial equality.