Eugene DeFriest Bétit – 1944-2023

Eugene DeFriest Bétit – 1944-2023 It is with deep sadness that the family of Gene Betit announce the death of their husband, father and grandfather. He experienced a stroke on November 4th and subsequently received both hospice and rehabilitation care but he joined those who have gone before on December 15th, peacefully and surrounded by…

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No More Military Posts Named after Confederates

No More Military Posts Named after Confederates. A commission mandated by Congress recently spent a year traveling to military installations, meeting with interested groups, and sifting through thousands of suggestions to rename posts, ships, buildings, streets, and anything else the Defense Department has named in honor of the Confederacy. Nine Army Posts to be Renamed In…

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The South “Won” the Civil War by their “Lost Cause” Theory

  The South “Won” the Civil War by their “Lost Cause” Theory. The Southern account of the Civil War developed nearly as soon as the guns went silent. In an amazing achievement, Edward Pollard, wartime editor of the Richmond Examiner, published a 752-page study, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of…

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Black Confederate Presentation at Lake of the Woods

Black Confederate Presentation at Lake of the Woods. Last Friday, I had the pleasure of presenting a talk on African Americans serving in the Confederate army to the Lake of the Woods Civil War Study Group. The following is a summary of this fascinating topic: Neo-Confederates Neo-Confederates began to spin stories of African American units…

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Unsung Patriots: African Americans in America’s Wars

WebTalkRadio Interview by J. T. Crowley Gene Bétit’s comprehensive study of America’s troubled past relative to Africa Americans over the past four hundred years, Collective Amnesia: American Apartheid, African Americans’ 400 Years in North America, 1919 – 2019, was enlightening, informative, and quite simply mesmerizing. The research behind this book took Dr. Betit five years.…

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Forbidden, Forgotten, Formidable Presentation

I recently presented a PowerPoint lecture, part of The Village’s Life-Long Learning series covereing African Americans’ arms-bearing history from early colonial times to the present. Revolutionary War During our War for Independence, slave owners were reluctant to arm their enslaved chattel, but two factors permitted about 7,000 blacks to serve during the Revolutionary War: insufficient…

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What’s in the Hopper??

The injustice that African Americans have received in the US preoccupies me! I pretty much research, read and write nonstop, and I have completed two books in addition to Forbidden, Forgotten, Formidable: Blacks in America’s Wars. The first in order of importance (to me) is a book for youth, African Americans in American History, which…

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The Search is over; two publishers and an agent!!

In my last post, I shared that I was getting “antsy” in my search for a publisher for Forbidden, Forgotten, Formidable: Blacks in America’s Wars. Lo and behold, less than two weeks later not one but two publishers expressed interest in the book. Not only that, but a fellow author shared the name of his…

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Forbidden, Forgotten, Formidable Cover

I’m getting a tad antsy waiting to hear from “traditional” publishers regarding my current work of love, so I whipped up a potential cover for the book. I hope to find a publishing house that will do this study justice because African Americans have stood by America in most of our darkest hours in the…

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Reflection on Black Veterans’ Service

Forbidden In colonial times, blacks’ military service was generally resisted unless necessary to offset the threat from Native Americans, or later, the British recruitment of blacks. Both George Washington and the Continental Congress initially forbade the recruitment of African Americans. When too few whites enlisted and British forces welcomed threatening numbers of blacks into their…

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