Black men joined the military hoping service would earn them full citizenship.

Evidence

Like many young men, he joined in hopes of escaping poverty. But he went into the military for another reason as well, a reason common to Black men: Dad hoped that if he served his country, his country might finally treat him as an American. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 76

Categorization

• SEED: The tension between military service and denied citizenship is a workable essay thread connecting to veterans’ history and the 1619 project’s citizenship arguments.
• XREF: connects to: Black Civil War service marked blacks as loyal Americans unlike other ‘foreigners’ — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 540