Amherst College

You may touch upon any topic in your letter really, as long as you DO NOT write about politics, religion, death, or killing. Remember to put your return address on the back of the envelope.

The most common type of letters to veterans is the standard "Thank you for your service" letter. An example of one such letter is below:

Dear Service Member,

By William Sweet

Robert Romer ’52 knows what an odd thing it is to be a historian. It may lead you to stroll in a cemetery, looking for people you never knew, as if they were old friends. In Romer’s case, a cemetery stroll inspired him to correct an inadvertent slight against some black soldiers from the Town of Amherst who fought in the Civil War.

By William Sweet

Khary Polk, the Robert E. Keiter 1957 Postdoctoral Fellow and visiting assistant professor of black studies at Amherst completed his doctoral dissertation on the African-American soldier at New York University last summer and is currently adapting the dissertation into book form. We recently spoke with Polk about the upcoming work, which he said will examine “how discourses of race and sexuality intersected within the figure of the African American soldier in the 20^th century, and how black soldiers, in particular, found senses of embattled agency through their military travels outside of the United States.”