This dissertation examines the deployment of a predominantly African American army force to Liberia during the Second World War. It specifically analyzes how the racial make-up of US Army Forces in Liberia (USAFIL) collided with the unique socio-racial landscape of the historic Black republic to unsettle contemporary norms and hierarchies in the army unit and country. This clash created what USAFIL's white leadership called "an exceptional situation." Using the notion of "exceptionalism" as a heuristic, this dissertation demonstrates how competing imperial logics of race, as well as gender and sexuality, shaped interactions between Black and white American soldiers (commonly referred to as "GIs") and Liberian men and women during the war. It particularly examines how these interactions affected GIs' cultural constructions of Liberia and Liberians, segregation and racial violence within the US Army force, the training and employment of Liberian men by USAFIL, sexual liaisons between GIs and women in Liberia, and US Army policies to control these. This dissertation ultimately does two things. First, it argues that the "exceptional situation" identified by USAFIL's white minority was in fact the unique challenges the deployment of the Black US Army force to the Black republic posed to white supremacy. This rendered the traditional logics and mechanisms used to manage American soldiers-African American soldiers specifically-and their interactions with local civilians untenable. This necessitated "exceptional measures" on the part of USAFIL's white minority to not only control Black GIs, but uphold their white military authority in the Black US Army force in the Black-governed country. Second, it illuminates the different impulses at odds for African American soldiers and officers in Liberia during the world war. While they perceived their wartime military service in the historic Black republic as integral to the global fight against racial oppression and fostering a broader Black transnationalism, many came to evince a condescension toward Liberians that resembled the very racism they resented in the US Army and United States more generally. These Black American troops did not adopt white American imperialism wholesale though. Rather, they developed a unique logic of Black kinship without equality driven by their desires to achieve racial equality within their own formation and society.