The Roughest Riders takes a closer look at common historical legend and balances the record. It is the inspiring story of the first African American soldiers to serve during the post-slavery era, first in the West and later in Cuba, when full equality, legally at least, was still a distant dream.

The remarkable tale of Herman Perry, a native of North Carolina who wound up going native in the Indo-Burmese jungle. Perry was shipped in a segregated labor battalion to South Asia in 1943, one of thousands of black soldiers dispatched to build the Ledo Road, from the mountains of northeast India across the tiger-infested vales of Burma. Perry could not endure the jungle's brutality, nor the racism of his white officers. Finally, in emotional collapse,...

Traces the legal, political, and moral campaign for equality that led to Harry Truman's 1948 desegregation of the U.S. military, documenting the contributions of black troops since the Revolutionary War and their efforts to counter racism on the fields and on military bases.