The Color Line

AN EPIC SAGA OF WORLD WAR I AND THE HARLEM RENAISSANCE Among the heroic American "dough boys" of World War I were hundreds of young Black men from Harlem who joined the US Army in 1918. They weren't after glory, just respect-despite the prospect of menial work in a segregated army. But mounting casualties on the Western Front and a twist of fate had them reassigned to French command. There they forever distinguished themselves as "The Harlem Hellfighters." After surviving the horrors of war, one of those men-Serval Rivard-returns to his bride and a community on the rise. It is the Golden Age of Harlem-DuBois, Langston Hughes, Garvey's Back to Africa Movement, and the glamour of the Cotton Club. But as reports pour into Harlem of Black soldiers lynched in the uniforms of their country, it becomes clear that despite Black progress and military accomplishments, America's racial divide remains immutably in place. For Rivard and his family, the Great War has ended, but a new war has begun -- the war of the American Color Line.