Sentence:  Who&mdash;what&mdash;were African Americans becoming in relation to political change in America and Africa? Would they simply become <WSD>unhyphenated</WSD> Americans, or, in gaining formal equality, would they enact a transnational American citizenship in solidarity with African peoples and in so doing participate in the democratization of America? 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Of people, belonging to a single ethnicity or nationality: names for multi-ethnic/multi-nationality groups generally require a hyphen to connect the names being combined.