Its leaders perceived during the war in vietnam, a crisis around race. As i imagined almost all of you know, the u. S. War in vietnam was the first major conflict that the United States thoughts from the beginning was a racially integrated armed force. Through much of the war, the process was treated as a great success. In combat, it almost without exception was. But by the end of the 1960s, army leaders were talking about the war within the war and trying to figure out how to manage a racial crisis that they saw as starting to tear the army apart. My research right now is trying to think about how this massive institution tried to manage a racial crisis. I look at the series of actions the army took, a whole variety of actions that range from the predictable actions of education and training, to an emphasis on cultural sensitivity, to visible leadership and affirmative action. Most fundamentally what i am arguing in this larger project is that the army shifted from thinking of itself as proudly race blind, as colorblind, to thinking of itself as a race conscious, and embracing different kinds of policies and practices that acknowledge the significance of racial identity. I am going to go through that argument for you tonight, but instead what i want to do is tell you two stories drawn from 1968 to give you a sense of the armys perception of a turning point in the war. Im emphasizing that what im talking about are not so much the struggles of individuals or groups for Racial Justice within the army, but how the army as an institution tried to acknowledge, contend with, manage the demands that were being made. All right, so, it was a humid afternoon in mid october of 1968 when major meritt strode into a press briefing in saigon and passed out copies of a statement in which he asserted that the American Military services are the strongest citadels of racism on the face of the earth. The next day, his claims made newspapers throughout the United States. The most powerful coverage showed up in the New York Times, although it was all over the place. Thats not because it made headlines, but because merritts complaints appeared confirmation of a story, a heart wrenching story, that the times editors placed adjacent to it. Here, the parents of a 21yearold soldier who is being awarded the bronze star had learned that he was missing in action the very same day they got a letter from another sons wife in germany that they had been unable to get housing because of their race. And major merritt offered a broader lesson just inches away on the same page. The article quoted him as saying , the American People have been years told that the military leads the nation in breaking down and eliminating all vestiges of segregation and discriminatory treatment of minority groups. This, he wrote, is a blatant lie. None of this is good news for the army, which had actually gotten a fair amount of mileage from the relative calm of its integrated forces as violence was erupting in the civilian world, whether it was murderous attacks on those who sought their full rights for black ghettos in flames during the hot summers of the 1960s. But when frederick alice davison. Was promoted to be a Brigadier General in 1968, becoming the third black man to reach this rank in history of not only the army but the u. S. Military as a whole, he praised the armys unbelievable progress in race relations. This was a story the army wanted to tell, and it is one one that a lot of officers and ncos endorsed. Not perfection, but progress. It had been just 20 years since president truman had ended official racial segregation in the u. S. Armed forces, and even fewer since that segregation had ended. How could one not applaud what had been accomplished . How not to recognize the positive changes the army was making . Certainly there were problems, a scarcity of black faces in positions of leadership and command. Thats true, but they could not pull generals out of nowhere. No possibility of lateral hires. No fast track from Second Lieutenant to Brigadier General. The army was starting to grow a carport of black leaders to move past its poor decisions of the past. That would take time, but it would happen. And housing, that was a perpetual issue, particularly in the American South and in germany. President kennedys commission had highlighted the problem in 1961. The surrounding communities were not under military control, and relationships were particularly tricky in host nations. Civilian discrimination was a problem and they were working on solutions. What is the indignity of boy, the outrage of the epithet in common use, the casual racism in the daily life of the unlisted man . Many whites never registered it, or they paid it no heed. When suchome of age words were common or they thought no different than labels like polack or wop or kike. The sergeants of abuse. Countering such lapses were tales of the notable. maraderie between the races we dont think about race out here. We depend on each other too much. I see only one color. That is odd, meaning all of drab. Olive drab. Such interpretations seem awfully selfserving, especially in retrospect. It is striking how much they were in keeping with the official language of the time. We have a sociologist for years studying the issue, and he concluded in 1966 that the army was an example of integration success. Time magazine pulled its 20 million readers that despite a few blemishes, the armed forces remain a model of the integrated society the u. S. Looks forward to in the new generation. And here, an nbc special in 1967 concluded same mud, same blood, something that for combat was not unreasonable to say. What was striking is how many black leaders agreed, praising the military for its progress and endorsing it as a model for the nation. Where it might have mattered most within the army, race did not make the list of command concerns in 1967. When the secretary of defense was visiting vietnam in 1967, he got a top secret briefing about soldier morale, and he heard about marijuana and narcotics. He heard about the black market. He did not hear a single bird word about race. It wasnt an issue. Two years later, by the summer of 1969, both the armys chief and its secretary would put race second only to the war in vietnam on its list of concerns. So in this shift, as in so much in the United States 1968 marked , a turning point in the army. This notion of there is only one color and its olive drab, which had been praised, that would continue as a failed ideal. Both as an ideal and a failed ideal. But it was increasingly challenged by those who embraced black power and pride. People who rejected patients and slow progress, and who, in the wake of violence that reached back to the hold ships that , forced the assassination of Martin Luther king, were willing to begin seeking freedom by any means necessary. The army did not and could not stand fully apart from the society it served. It had been increasingly impossible by this point of the war to construct and enforce boundaries between civilian and military. Because the war in vietnam demanded men. U. S. Army strengths how did that happen . Yes, ok. U. S. Army strength increased by more than 700,000 men and women between 1961 and 1968. Not all those troops were in vietnam. 25 nations had more than a thousand u. S. Military personnel in that era. But the wartime demands for men changed the shape and size and to some extent the character of the army, because it was young men who were raised in the turmoil of 1960s revolts that were going to swell the armys ranks. Whether draftees or volunteers, many of them draft motivated, the great majority of them did not plan an army career, and their longterm allegiance was not to the institution and its culture and practices. For many of them, their ties to home and the weight of their civilian identities were left fully eclipsed in the two years for draftees and three years for volunteers that the military required of him than had been the case for the men who joined them before the war. And the practice of rotating individuals rather than units through yearlong tours in vietnam tended to leave men less tightly bound to their brothers in arms, especially outside of combat units. I will say it again, for those in combat, race rarely provided a major divide, but the majority of men in vietnam were not serving in combat. Maybe the armys racial problems came from outside. Army leaders repeatedly insisted it did. Its not likely that the army as an institution became suddenly much more racist in the space of a year. But as the nature of the struggles over race changed in the civilian world, those could not fail to touch those in uniform, even if only a few. In 1968, the army for the first time directly confronted the thating racial crisis, and one claim in no way denies that racism and Racial Discrimination had pervaded the army before that day, even if it was generally less powerful than in civilian life, but it was in 1968 that the reactions to racism began to change, and it was in 1968 that race began to trouble the stability of the Nations Armed forces. Thus it was in 1968 that the army as an institution began in a stuttering an incomplete fashion to perceive race as a problem. Two very different events that year. One, a minor battle of words, a chair being tossed, and the other, a violent conflict that left smoldering ruins and a Young Private dead at the hands of his fellow soldiers, forced the army to start dealing with this problem of race. The first thing i will talk about is major merritts venture into the press Briefing Room in saigon, and the investigations that surrounded it, and the other is the uprising of black prisoners in the stockade of the armys sprawling long bin post northeast of saigon. In each case, the armys responses to the actions of black serviceman gave a sense of how terribly reluctantly the army as an institution began to confront this emerging crisis. These events pushed the army to confront the crisis of race, moving by 1969 from proudly though often falsely colorblind to an official position of race consciousness as the secretary of the army claimed in address to the address and consisting nine, a negro uniform does not cease to be a negro and become a soldier instead, he becomes a negro soldier. For the rest of the talk today, i will tell those two stories. Treating them as pivot points for the armys acknowledgment that it did have a problem. The third day of the offenses in of the tet offensive in early was the day that major merritt 1968 took up a new assignment as a deputy Senior Advisor at a training center. Some of the housing had been destroyed in the attack so the Training TeamSenior Advisor, a man named lt. Col. Bradley, invited merritt to share his room. The two evidently got very friendly. They stayed up late at night discussing everything in the world including merritts belief that he had been passed over for promotion because he was black. When bradley received his nectar assignment, he pushed merritt for his replacement. The spot was for lt. Col. There was a shortage of those in rank. Even though bradleys supersize was leery of him getting the job, bradley insisted merritt did a great job for him, and he made that official by giving merritt 96 points out of 100 on his report without a single word of criticism, constructive or otherwise. Merritt got the job. He took command on may 1, the day bradley departed. What happened next is not completely clear, despite the fact that the army has mountains of records on this case. But bradley had second thoughts. He contacted the training director in june and said that things were going to pot. The director had took bradleys claims seriously and told merritts newly assigned deputy to keep an eye on merritt. He is the only black officer at this post. In the meantime, merritt, in his new command, had begun talking a lot about race, about the situation of black americans in the United States and of black soldiers in the army. A white captain was eating dinner in the mess soon after he arrived at the camp, and the major dropped a copy of the colonel report in front of him, a report that detailed and analyzed the recent race rebellions in the u. S. He asked the captain what he thought of it. He said he had not read it. Merritt said, you are going to stay and im going to educate you. The education lasted until after midnight. A conversation with a White Sergeant who became, in the sergeants words, quite heated. He condemned the burning and protesting going on back in the states. Major merritt brought him a Magazine Article that told him how Living Conditions for negro personnel back home were insufficient. In general, merritts attempts consciousness raising were not welcome. It was later said, once he started talking on this civil rights thing, he was like a man pushing for a cause and tried to push it on everybody. Because merritt was so knowledgeable, quote, he made us all feel like we were kind of inferior. There was a consensus building in the allwhite team five that merritt was too preoccupied with questions of race. Things came to a head the night of august 27. August 22. Its not clear whether merritt had too much to drink that night, or whether the men who shared the mess with him got tired of his intensity and his focus on race. Course of in the downing numerous martinis, mer ritt quote, got on the racial kick. He was loud and opinionated and wandered from persontoperson. Merritt referred to white enlisted men as honky and white trash. He spoke the language of 1960s racial pride, claiming that not blackss were the sons of kings but once a white woman , had been with a black man, she would never want a white man again. At one point, merritts exercise propelled a cheer toward the bar door, but it is unknown whether the chair was thrown, slammed, or given an underhanded toss. A White Sergeant felt things were getting out of hand, so he went looking for major irving, the deputy Senior Advisor. They were hanging out together in the same room and said they were not going to intervene. Asked later why he had not gone to the bar to calm things down as requested major irving said , he had been reluctant to get involved because quote, me being from alabama, i did not want this to appear to be a racial issue. Irving, prejudiced or not, had was, hadindication he been paralyzed by his discomfort over race. As he said later, he had not been trained to manage a situation like that. The next morning, major merritt apologized, hung over, and he left donggala early for scheduled r r. That same morning, major merritt and two white officers called saigon. Not long after, two Senior Officers showed up. They were not conducting an official investigation, but they did collect witness testimony. One captain complained, during my assignment to team five, major merritt has continually cajoled and harassed officers about racial problems in the states and the fact that he is a negro officer. He stopped people in the lounge and other places on the compound and he tried to bait men to learn of their prejudices and get them to admit they are prejudiced against negroes. Major merritt, in the meantime, knows nothing about this investigation, and the senior officer that came from saigon told everybody there to keep mum. The officer also decided he was going to replace major merritt as Senior Advisor, and he did not keep that decision to himself. So when merritt returned, major irving let slip the news of the pending replacement. In other words, merritt was informed by a subordinate that he was losing his position of command. Within days, merritt gets an official notice from saigon that hes being transferred. The notification said now we have sufficient officers of appropriate rank, and it assured merritt the saigon office would benefit from his experience. Merritt reported to saigon, and first thing when he got there, he was summoned to the office of the investigator general and told he was being investigated. The next day, merritt receives a poor efficiency report and, feeling bitter and betrayed, he sat down at a typewriter and started to compose a statement, an eight page statement that was going to guarantee not only the attention of the command, but a lot of the American Public as well. The investigator general investigation found that major merritt was obsessed with race. It ignored the failures of leadership on the part of those people who found themselves uncomfortable talking about race and contributed to the problem, major irving. It equated his discussions of Racial Discrimination with militancy and potential violence. It failed to follow up on alleged threats against major merritts safety and instead focused on evidence that merritt had verbally denied the armys progress on race. It ignored major merritts claims of discrimination, investigating instead how his discussions about race affected his white subordinates. The staff attorney general had compiled charges to be conferred against major merritt. He had engaged in conduct unbecoming of an officer and a gentleman that night of august 22, arguing about racial matters, contemptuously referring to lieutenant davis junior that should be Lieutenant General as an uncle tom, insisting that once a white woman had a negro, she would never go back to a white man. He had released an eightpage news article to the press without proper review, and he had dismissed the many successful negro officers in the army. The attorney general was furious about these actions of merritt, and he was confident he was going to be found guilty, but he immediately offered a caution. He said such a trial would be timeconsuming and expensive, and while it might possibly discredit merritt with the press, it would also give him a platform. A trial would give merritt more publicity. The more significant point, it would also bring publicity to the army and its problem with race. So, the attorney general made a recommendation that went against his own desires. He wrote, although it hurts me to say this, for the overall good of the command, i recommend that major merritt be removed f