Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.

[Lot of photographs documenting the Korean War service of African Americans.]

Seoul, Korea, and other Korean locales, [ca. 1950]. 33 silverprint photographs, 2.75” x 4.5”. CONDITION: Overall very good with rich tonality, minor discoloration, light creasing, or minor edgewear to several images.

Thirty-three photos documenting a mixed-race unit of U.S. soldiers, including many African Americans, on the front lines of the Korean War. 

The Korean War (1950–53) was the first overseas war following President Harry Truman’s 1948 Executive Order desegregating the U.S. military. Some 600,000 African Americans served, and nearly ten percent of Americans who died in the war were Black.

Multiple group shots show Black soldiers in front of Korean buildings, holding rifles and posing with artillery and measurement devices, and some show them posed alongside white and Asian American service members. A few photos—in which soldiers conduct drills or line up for roll call—show Black soldiers with their white officers. Black soldiers are pictured holding radios, stringing a barbed-wire fence in a field, manning automatic guns in machine gun nests, tying the ends of a makeshift arm sling around a comrade’s neck, and so on. In one photo, a white American soldier stands over a slain Korean soldier with a terrible head wound. Camp images show soldiers drilling while dozens of Korean civilians look on; an elevated view of a U.S. Army camp in a field; and various scenes of Black troops socializing. Several photos document U.S. soldiers on the move, walking alongside army vehicles and crossing a river in paddle boats.

Other images show a Korean singer performing with a backing band on a stage; views of the Korean countryside and a waterside town; rural Korean street scenes in which a bicycle-riding civilian approaches a tank on the side of the road; and the gate Namdaemun leading into Seoul. Namdaemun was extensively damaged later in the war, which suggests that this group of photos was taken early in the conflict—perhaps in 1950.

REFERENCES: “Buffalo Soldiers in the Korean War” at National Park Service online.

Item #8884

Price: $950.00

Add to Wish List