I museum. And i also was one of the consultants on the vietnam exhibit that began at the New York Historical society and has traveled here. And it was a real pleasure to work on that. And i hope that you all get a chance to see it. Its an interesting exhibit. Today im going to talk a bit about my current research, which as camille said is how the u. S. Army as an institution was trying to manage a crisis that its leaders perceived during the war in vietnam, a crisis around race. And as i imagine almost all of you know the u. S. War in vietnam was the first major conflict at the United States fought from the beginning with an integrated armed force, with racially integrated armed force. And for much of that war that process was treated as a Great Success and in combat it almost was 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. So my research right now is trying to think about how this massive institutions tried to manage a racial crisis. And i look at the series of actions that the army took, a whole variety of acs that range from the predictable actions of education and training to an emphasis on cultural sensitivity to visible leadership and affirmative action. But most fundamentally what im 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 race conscience and embracing different kinds of policies and practices that acknowledge the significance of racial identity. Im not going to go through that argument for you tonight, but instead what i want to do is to tell you to two stories drawn from 1968 for the armys perception of a turning point in the war, and 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 midoctober of 1968 when major Lavell Meritt strolled in and passed out copies of a statement in which he asserted, quote, the American Military services are the strongest citadels of racism on the face of the earth. And his claims made newspapers throughout the United States. And the most powerful coverage showed up in the New York Times although it was all over the place. And thats not because it made headlines but because merritts complaints appeared aas a confirmation of a heart wrenching story the times placed adjacent to it. Here a 21yearold soldier who is being awarded post humusly the bronze star learned he say 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 just inches away on the page offered a broader lesson. The article quoted him as saying the American People for years had been told the military leads the nation in breaking down and eliminating all vestiges of segregation and discriminary treatment of minority groups. This, he wrote, is a blatant lie. Now, none of this was good news for the army which had actually gotten a fair amount of mileage from the relative calm of its integrated sources as violence was erupting in the civilian world. Whether the murderous attacks on those who sought their full rights or the black nights of the 1960s. When Frederick Davidson was promoted to be brig dare general in 1968 becoming the third black man to reach this not only of the army but of the u. S. Milita milita military as a whole he praised the army. This was the story the army wanted to tell and it was one a lot of officers black and white endures, not perfection but progress. This had been just 20 years since president truman had ended official race segregation in the u. S. Armed forces and even fewer since that segregation had ended. In fact, how could one not applaud what had been accomplished . How not to recognize the positive changes the army was making. Okay, certainly there were problems, a scarcity of black faces in positions of leadership and command true, but they couldnt 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 cohort of black leaders to move past its poor decisions of the past. That would take time, but it would happen. And also housing that was a perpetual issue most particularly in the American South and in germany. President kennedys commission had highlighted the problem back in 1961. The surrounding communities were not under military control, and relationships were particularly tricky in host nations. Civilian discrimination was one of the problems, but they were working on solutions. And outrage of the racial epithet that was in common use, the casual racism in the daily life of the enlisted man. Many whites never registered it or they paid it no heed. They saw them really as no different than the labels in a sergeants vocabulary of abuse and countering such lapses were tales of the, quote, notable camaraderie between the races at fortt bragg, the insistence from vietnam that, quote, we dont think about race out here. We depend on each other too much. I see only one color, and thats od. Now such interpretations seem often selfserving especially in retrospect, and its striking how much they were in keeping with the official language of the time. A socialiologist spent years studying the issue and he concluded in 166 the army was, quote, an example of integration success. Time magazine told its close to 20 million readers despite its blemishes it remained the model u. S. Society looks forward to. And here an nbc special in 1967 concluded same mud, same blood. Whats striking is how many black readers 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 didnt 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 soldiers morale, and he heard about marijuana and narcotics. He heard about the black market. He heard about Courts Martial rates. He didnt hear a single word about race. It wasnt an issue. And 2 years later by the summer of 1969 both the armys chief and his 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 theres only one color and its olive dram, a model that had been praised in contrast to civilian society, that would continue as an ideal and as a failed ideal, but it was increasingly challenged by those who embrace black power and black pride. People who rejected patience and slow progress and who in the wake of violence that reached back the hulls of slave ships and forged the assassination of Martin Luther king who were willing to begin seeking freedom by any means necessary. And the army did not and could not stand fully apart from the society it served. It had been increasingly impossible by this point in the war to construct and to enforce boundaries between civilian and military because the war in vietnam demanded men. U. S. Army strength how did that happen . Yes, okay. U. S. Army strength increased by more than 700,000 men and women between 1961 and 1968. And obviously not all those troops were in vietnam. There were 25 nations that had more than 1,000 u. S. Military personnel during that era. But the wartime demand for men changed the shape and to some extent the character of the army because it was young men who were raised in the turmoil of the 60s revolt that were going to swell the armys ranks. Whether draftees or volunteers, many of them drafted and motivated, it great majority of them didnt plan an army career and their lungterm allegiance was not to the ipsitutinstituti culture and practices. For many of them their tie tuesday home and the way their civilian identities were less fully equipped for the three years of the volunteers the mill required of them, but had been the case for men who had joined before the war. And the practice of rotating individuals rather than units to yearlong tourism in vietnam tended to leave men tightly bound to their brothers in arms especially outside combat units. Ill 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 that it did. Was it not likely the army as an institution became suddenly more racist in the space of a year. But as the nature of the struggles over race changed in the civilian world those changes couldnt fail to touch those who served in uniform even if only a few. In 1968 the army for the first time directly confronted the emerging racial crisis, and that one claim unknowingly denies Racial Discrimination had prevaded the army before that day even if it was less generally powerful 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. And thus it was in 1968 that the army as an institution began in a stuttering and incomplete fashion to perceive race as a problem. Two very different events in that year. One, a minor battle of words with one 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. And the first thing were going to talk about is major lavells briefing and the other is the uprising of black prisoners in the stockade northeast of saigon. In each case the armys responses to the actions of black servicemen sensed 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 as i said from proudly though often falsely colorblind to an official position of race consciousness as the secretary of the Army Stanley Reeser claimed in 1969 a negro in uniform does not cease to be a negro and become a soldier instead. He becomes a negro soldier. Treating them as pivot points for the armys acknowledgement that it did in fact have a problem. The third day in early 1968 was it day major merritt took up a new assignment as deputy Senior Advisor on don dong National Trading center near vietnam. Some of the housing had been destroyed and so the training teams Senior Advisor a man named Lieutenant Colonel bradley invited merritt to share his room and the two evidently got very friendly. According to bradley they stayed up at night discussing everything in the world including merritts belief hed been passed over for a promotion because he was black. And bradley received his next assignment he pushed merritt. And even though bradleys supervisors says he was weary of giving merritt this job bradley insisted merritt did a great job for him and he made that claim official of giving him on his efficiency report without a single word of criticism constructive or otherwise. Dont know whether it was bradleys recommendation but meritt got the job and he took command on may 1st the day bradley departed. And what happened next isnt completely clear despite the fact the army has mountains of records on this case. But bradley had second thoughts and he contacted the training director in june and told them that things were going to pot. The director took bradleys claims seriously and they told merritts newly assigned deputy to keep an eye. And merrit in his 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. The captain who was white was eating dinner and major meritt walked by the table and dropped a copy of the report in front of him. The report detailed and analyzed the recent race rebellions in the u. S. And he asked him what he thought about it, and he said i havent read it, i dont know. And merritt said, okay, youve got to stay and im going to educate you. And the education lasted until well after midnight. A conversation with a sergeant who became in the sergeants words quite heated asthy condemned quote the burning and protesting so forth that was going on back in the states. Major merritt the next day brought in a Magazine Article that told him how Living Conditions for negro personnel back home were insufficient. His accounts and consciousness raising werent welcome. He said later, quote, once he started on this civil rights thing he went, kind of, well, like a man fighting for a cause and he tried to push it on everybody. And he said because merritt was so knowledgeable, quote, he would always have the facts to back up his particular field and he made us all feel like we were kind of inferior. There was a consensus building in the allwhite team 5 that merritt was too preoccupied with questions of race. So things came to a head on the night of august 22nd. Its not clear whether merritt had a little too much to drink that night and stopped filtering his thoughts or whether the men who shared the open bar and mess with him just got tired of his intensity of his focus on race. That night in the course of downing, quote, numerous ma martinis merritt, quote, got on the racial kick. He wandered from person to person and he referred to white enlisted men as honky, hunky, cr and white trash. He spoke to sexually charged language of late sixties racial pride, claiming not only that blacks were the sons of kings but that once a white woman had been with a black man she would never want a white man again. At one point, merritt exercise propelled a chair toward the bar door though accounts will vary as to whether the chair was thrown, slammed, or given an underhanded toss. So a White Sergeant in the bar fell things were getting out of hand so he went looking for major irving, the deputy Senior Adviser, but irving and the other three ranking officers all were hanging out together in the same room and they said they were not going to intervene he said he is the Senior Adviser. And 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 just did not want this to appear to be a racial issue. Irving, whether he was prejudiced or not, had shown really no indication that he was, had been paralyzed by his discomfort over. Race as he said later, he hadnt been trains to manage a situation like this. Okay, the next morning major merritt apologized, hung over and he left donggala early for some scheduled are and our. The next morning major merritt and two white officers called saigon they, were not conducting an official investigation but they did collect witness testimony. One captain complaint, quote, during my assignment to team five major merritt has continually cajoled and harassed some of the officers and Non Commissioned Officers about racial problems in the states and the fact that he is a knee grow officer, he stopped people in the lounge in the mess or other places on the compound and he tried to bait them to learn of their prejudices and to get them to admit that they are prejudiced against me grows. Major merritt, in the first meantime, knows nothing about this investigation and the senior officer that came up from saigon told everybody there to keep mom. The officer while he was there also decided he was going to replace major merritt as Senior Adviser and he did not keep that decision to himself. So when merritt returned, merger a ring let slip the news not of the investigation but of the pending replacement so in other words, merritt was informed by subordinate that he was losing his position of command. Within days, merritt gets an official notice from saigon that hes being transferred and now we have sufficient officers of appropriate rank and it assured merit that the saigon office was going to benefit from his considerable experience. Merritt reported to saigon and the first day he got there he was summons to the office of the investigator general, read his rights and told that he was being investigated. The next day, merritt receives a poor efficiency report and, feeling bitter and betrayed, he sedan a typewriter and started to compose a statement, an eightpage statement that was going to guarantee not only the attention of the of the command, but a lot of the American Public as well. The investigator general investigation found that major merit 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 merritt physical safety and instead focused on evidence that merritt had verbally denied the armies progress on race. It ignored major merritts claims of Racial Discrimination investigating instead how his discussions about race affected is white subordinates. Within the space of a monthly staff attorney general had compiled charges to be preferred against major merritt. He had engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer and the gentlemen that night of august 22nd arguing about racial matters, contemptuously referring to lieutenant benjamin oh davis junior of the u. S. Air force that should be Lieutenant General as an uncle tom and insisting that once a white woman hadnt eager 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 needle officers in the army. The attorney general was furious about these actions on merritt and he was confident that he was going to be found guilty but he immediately offered a caution, he said such a trial would be time consuming and expensive and while it might possibly discredits merritt with the press, it would also give him a platform, but try would give merritt more publicity. And stated was the more significant point, it would also bring publicity to the army and its problems with race. So the attorney general staff attorney general, made a recommendation that went against his own desires. He wrote although it hurts me to say this for the all good of the command, i recommend that major merritt be removed from the command and retired as soon as possible. Thus, merritt retired from the army in february of 1969 at the end of his 20 years of service. After that, he maintained his commitment to racial change in his capacity for a grand ideas, but his focus was no longer on the u. S. Army. So this case illustrates how poorly the army as an institution was prepared to deal with issues of race. Whatever failures accrued to major merritt and the entirety of his record suggests that sometimes he was a difficult man, the failure of the institution were far more significant. Officers had no training in managing issues that were difficult to address. The official investigation betrays a level of sense of insensitivity and sometimes racial prejudice that was going to come to haunt the Inspector Generals Office in the years to come. And this tactic of silence, which worked briefly, partially in the case of one increasingly bitter black major in 1968, would soon become not much more than coal on the flames. First story. Second story. It was a week later almost to the hour, from the time that major merit had tossed both that fateful chair and his career in the open mess bar in donggala that a small group of inmates had long been jailed in new inuit non the u. S. Army stockade unleashed a storm of uncontrolled violence and systemic destruction by morning, one inmate was dead, the stockade was a smoldering wreck and prisoners remained in control of one of its three compounds. The American Press didnt pay much attention, but that was probably due to the timing. This corresponded with the Democratic National convention of 1968. And if you think the country is divided right now look back a few decades. A minor prison right on the other side of the world could not compete with live coverage of tanks in the streets of chicago. And as far as violence in vietnam went, for perspective, 537 American Service members had been killed in action in that month alone. So in many ways it is not surprising that the uprising did not did not draw much notice from the American Press, and army leaders were generally pretty grateful for that small advantage. But long been was the headquarters and people in power was paying attention even if the New York Times is not. As the days turned into weeks, with prisoners still controlling the portion of the stockade, the lbj right became one of the armys earliest experiments in managing the problem of race. Because thats what it was, it was a problem of race. The violence at long been in jail was a racial uprising it was an explosion of violence in rage black men began the uprising black men joined by a hand full of mexicans burned buildings and chanted kill the chucks, black men used improvised weapons to attack guards and inmates and in the aftermath of the violence blackmon occupied compound be not only by taking physical control of it but by improvising an African Space with makeshift dashikis spears and drums these mens actions were like major merits borne of anger and frustration, but in many ways thats where the similarity ends merit was a 40 year old officer with almost 20 years of experience hard about the role of black men in the United States and why merit was undeniably prone to hyperbole the eight page document that he released and understand what i meant he also commended the persuasive of the 60s air a Civil Rights Movement and he had a case to make, he was seeking specific forms of change, the men who rioted at long binh jail were enlisted men, almost all of them were young many of them were still teenagers. They were some investigators theater argued that inflamed by their own experiences by vietnam in the stockade, the were inspired by racial uprisings in American Cities and they were according to investigators, encouraged by black panther literature. But this groups men made no demands. They did not offer any specific critique of racism, oh or of oppression, or even of their own immediate conditions. The language this group commanded was violence and that language honestly, was not without power. The stockade at long binh was known to all as lbj, a play on the initials of the president who had fully committed his nation to this difficult war. And lbj was notorious throughout the u. S. Army in vietnam, a place that was hated and feared. Its only historian to date called it host, a brooding presence in the lives and consciousness of young soldiers. As the United States had moved more and more deeply into war, as the number of u. S. Troops grew and their morale declined in the months following ket, lbj was stretched well beyond capacity this jail had been built to house 400 men by mid 1968, it housed 719 inmates the. Space allotted to each man had been cut almost in half from an original 70 square feet, not very much, to 36. 5 square feet. Army regulations specify that 282 trained guards should be present for an inmate population of that size but lbj had only 153 and fewer adequately trained. Stories of the brutality of the guards abounded and the guards in claimed their jobs were impossible because they were moving without weapons among inmates of any stocks or not even a night stick. The men who were incarcerated in lbj were mixed bunch. Some had gone a wall or refused a lawful order, whether that lawful order was to advance into combat or cut their hair lbj secondincommand leader called them at least some of them scared kids in a war zone. Nonetheless another stockade official in 1968 noted that almost none of the those prisoners were first or even second time offenders. Officers by that point was so reluctant to take men out of the field that it calmly took several offensives before a man was sent from his unit to serve time in the stockade. Sometimes those defenses were being seen as being to militant. No matter how many scared kids got themselves crosswise in authorities and ended up in lbj, the also jill also housed murderers and rapists and soldiers were convicted of war crimes. Some of the prisoners were men who when the words of the commander of the 18th brigade, had committed crimes against the population against their own unit, guys who shot and killed vietnamese on a whim. Youve got to understand said the officer who took command of lbj in late 1968, they had psychotics in there. These werent average black people off the streets, they werent average white people off the streets, the fellas we had were social paths. Ill come back to that officer in a minute. Now it is critical to understand that during the year of 1968 and every month except one, black prisoners outnumbered whites in lbj even black soldiers accounted for only 11 of army troops in vietnam. Some estimates have truly inflated, but it appeared that way to many, put the black population that lbj at 70 even as high as 90 . As a matter of policy at that point, because the army was officially color blind, it did not keep racial statistics, so it is not possible to know for sure. But whatever the actual numbers, the imbalance was obvious and it was worse once one got to the maximum security block. Prisoners were housed in six by seven by eight and a half square foot metal connects containers that were referred to collectively as the box. Many black inmates saw that imbalance as evidence that they had been treated unfairly by prejudiced officers and and ceos and a biased system of military justice and in fact there would be a Major Investigation and internal investigation pushed by the black congressional caucus of the prejudice that existed within the military just Justice System during his. Period so the officer who took over lbj on july 5th 1968 Lieutenant Colonel vernon johnson, puts the military courts attempt to solve the obvious crisis at the stockade at least as they understood it in 1968. Johnson had a ph. D. And pin all edgy and in keeping with the field of the moment people believe strongly in her beloved taste in the officer believe so johnson is part of the part of the problem he believed in fonddesblancs again that there was no such thing as a bad boy, he was trying to rehabilitate them, he emphasized the role of social workers and psychologists he even sometimes supporting them he urged the guards to get to know the prisoners, spend time talking to them during their basket games. He also attempted to stem the flow of Illegal Drugs into the jail, and for many prisoners, this likely outweighed the positives roles that he tried to play especially as he became a pile he started a highly unpopular practice of strip searching inmates who were returning from work details, such as collecting and burning latrine raced that took them outside the stockade, johnson was doing what the people who assigned him to this position had intended, he was implementing modern penal practices but these practices didnt really solve the problem of the growing racial anger and conflict in within lbj, even compared to the standard practices he was replacing. The riot that erupted on the night of august 29th wasnt spontaneous. It was orchestrated by a well organized group of black inmates who called themselves the syndicate and who had been controlling the flow of drugs and the stockade its possible that colonel johnsons attempts to stop the flow of drugs precipitated action but its also the Syndicate Numbers have been talking for a while about putting the place down, there were plenty of reasons to be angry the immediate conditions of the overcrowded, jails the racial prejudice they saw the pervading system of military justice, the general oppression of black men in american society, they had clandestine meetings in the developed plants, they assigned tasks. One inmate was supposed to smuggle kerosene into the jail another was supposed to obtain a supply of gun the cult chadwick as a training for quail ooze which was men marijuana which was gonna be distributed before the uprising they were not closely guarded they were rumored that deep trouble was coming and white inmates have started to tell the chapel that they were scared and black inmates went quiet and the tension was becoming palpable at the signal a designated group of prisoners overpowered to gate guards taking their keys but they werent looking to escape. This was instead about general retribution black inmates not all of them but a group tour apart bunks to create weapons pulled boards from buildings to Service Clubs liberated knives from the mess hall kitchen prisoners black and white reenter the bank gate trying to get out of the violence guards fled for their lives climbed the fence and wedging themselves through wire drag mattresses into piles and set them on fire ignited tents and buildings men attacked the guards black and white some rally the white prisoners some bound their hands and feet and let loose with their fists and feet and makeshift weapons on known assailants beat to death one Young Private edward haspel of st. Petersburg florida they beat him to death with a shovel. And in the midst of the violence a frustrated black man paced angrily back and forth yelling you stupid flocking fools, youre doing it all wrong. Colonel jackson banking on the good well he thought he had earned went unarmed into the stockade in an attempt to try and calm things down and its not clear what happened, the next time he was seen was near the stockade gate staggering and stumbling covered in blood. When the stocky chaplain later found colonel johnson in the hospital awaiting surgery on the deep gash in his head, johnson, agitated, told the chaplain we did it to them. I dont blame any of them, we did it to them. At the stockade the chaos was gradually subside. In the inmates who fled had been herded into a nearby field and they spent the rest of the night surrounded by armed. Guards with a medium security compound remained under a group of inmates control and it would for more than three weeks. Don broke on smoldering ruins and as the days passed this group of inmates about 200, made no advance. No spokesman emerged. There were no negotiations. Instead as i said, some of them and created alternative space for themselves, they created what they can to called the soul brother compound, one participant remembered, we used the blankets to make african robes and the tent spot pulse for spears. Thats where our head was at the time. The man continued to receive food and water. Those people in charge had decided what they were going to do is wait it out. But the person who had come into control also had the fence surrounded and covered with burlap so nobody could see the men. Then the chaplain, who wrote an extensive report on this and head mixed sympathies none of the chaplain characterizes the hardcore black power continued to quote shout to their complaints against the world but there were no demands and there was no clear way forward other inmates started to pull away from the instigators of the riot, one man who violently curse the chaplain appeal the next day to appeal for help to get out of the compound. He said i thought these were my people but theyre not my people they are all in saying, theyre going to start killing each other before long and i want out before they kill me. Perhaps self interest. As chaplain vessel wrote to the armys chief of chaplains on september 9th, the segregated compound is still not under control, we dare not use force, because of the publicity, we dare not fire one bullet because of the publicity, what we will do what the final outcome will be, i do not have any idea. Fog nonetheless, the days passed in heat and in boredom, and the commanders for bearings held, the remaining inmates resolve started to fade. A small group continue to hold out, but when their numbers dwindled down from 200 to 13, general milled run sent in troops with loaded weapons and according to the chaplain enough tear gas to fill new york city, they met no resistance. So for the army, this tactic of confronting anger with patients had from the armies perspective worked, without confrontation it was more difficult for the inmates to maintain a core of committed an angry resistance, and without confrontation the story had no purchase in the american media. And for the army it had no significant cost, inmates had burned the stockade buildings in the first hour of the uprising well before they could have mobilized any kind of reaction force. After that the tour of some sheets and blankets all u. S. Government property in the days that followed but in terms of destruction of property that was pretty minor. The men whos health of the storm brothers competent to the 21st of september hadnt harmed anyone else after those initial hours of violence. In the end the uprising left one young prisoner dead, 26 inmates were hospitalized for serious injury 63 mps were injured, and 23 badly enough to be hospitalized. And colonel johnson never recovered from his head wound. And much of the stockades physical plan had been destroyed. It was replaced quickly. Of the approximately 200 men who had planned or joined the violent uprising on august 29th, 129 of them were individually courtmartial on charges that include murder, mutiny, aggravated assault and willful destruction of government property. What the stockade fully reclaimed army leaders rejected the enlightened approaches of colonel johnson, the new commander was described as a quote patent type kicker who had earned the nickname of ivan the terrible, but colonel ivan nelson crack down on the guards on the prisoner, he tightened up the ship. The army takes pride in being a learning institution and events on the scale of the uprising at lbj almost without exception demanded an accounting of Lessons Learned. And the armys key takeaway was most clear in the appointment of colonel nelson, who dialed back the enlightened approach. But the commander of the 18th military Police Brigade laid out his Lessons Learned in more detail. Maintenance of discipline is crucial. Idleness contributes to unrest. Drugs must be kept from the stop it. There must be enough properly trained custodial personnel for the, actual number of inmates and overcrowding increases prisoner dissatisfaction. Okay, all makes sense. Appropriate Lessons Learned, even as the devil really lies in the details, there is one combat idleness with basketball courts or with details . How does one maintain discipline . Most striking is what is missing. In his recommendations for ways to prevent future racial uprising this commander mp never once mentioned race. So as in the case of major merritt, army leaders that lbj tried to deflect the problem of race. And avoidance was not going to be any more a solution in the stockade than it was in the public eye. Rachel anger continue to fester at lbj as especially as people more and more understood the military Justice System to not be racially blind. Strict discipline tamped down the violence for a while, but the underlying problems would resurface and feed broader complaints about Racial Injustice in the vietnam era army. Over the following years, a great many soldiers and their allies would offer compelling critiques of army racial practices and policies and the uprising it lbj was simply a taste of what was to come over the following years, racial violence exploded throughout the army not only in the stockades and not only in vietnam, but in the barracks, and the mess halls and the bars and in the communities surrounding the army post in the United States and throughout much of the world from the perspective of august 1968, however its hard not to have sympathy for chaplain vessels who frankly admitted that the answers were beyond him concluding in his report on the lbj uprising and he might as well have been describing the crisis is a whole he wrote, thank god its not my job to solve the dilemma. That task would faults army leaders who would subsequently have no choice but to confront the problem of race. Thanks. applause folks you are welcome to ask a question either out of my core you can raise your hand and i will come to you. Hi. Hi. How would you describe what events happened in the sixties with lets say today, between back then it was with people of African American descent but now a lot of the times there is the issue of those of them immigrant dissent in the military and do you think theres another kind of discussion about how the military confronts not just race but the ethnicity and religion . Thats a very good question and i think i think that the parallels dont fit neatly, i think what happened at this moment was that the nation was going through an upheaval overt race and a transition or a development of a move away from Civil Rights Movement that was largely oriented toward integration and inclusion to a movement that was embracing identity and the army was struggling with how to deal with that transition and what people were demanding as well as trying to figure out how to deal with the anger that it was seeing the resistance and the racist and that it saw on behalf of many whites in the military. In terms of immigrants today, but we see so frequently is changing status, official status in treatment of the military so its not so much how did they contend with the violence against young men and women serving as the question of what status those who are immigrants and are serving in the military, that is where the army has most directly been addressing. But they do take some of the lessons they learned from this period in terms of trying to more directly address those problems, do you have an incident in mind . You look like im not answering your question. My mind was traveling to a different point about sexuality and gender. Sexuality and gender, part of what im arguing in this work is that despite the fact that the military has for a long time insisted that its mission is not to be a sight of social experimentation, it often is, whether it wants to be or not, its often because its directed to do something by civilian authorities, but in terms of race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality, the army becomes a sight of social experimentation and once order to do something it has to figure out how to do it so what i see in terms of ethnicity, in terms of gender, in terms of sexuality, is the hard earned lessons and incompletely learned lessons from this period of racial struggle have informed some of the approaches that the army takes as it tries to figure out how its going to implement issues such as ending dont ask dont tell, accepting transgender members, thinking about ethnicity much more broadly in the u. S. Military. Our next question comes from the back of the auditorium. Hi, the warden who hid the progressive policies, i dont remember his name im sorry thats why were frightened that, way you said that he was injured and he was bloody when they brought him out, when he came out of the stockade, did you say that he never recovered from his injuries . He never fully recovered, he had a head wound and never fully recovered there are multiple stories about what happened to him none of them seem without controversy, he was attacked by someone during that period when he was trying to put it into the. It was just moving that his response was rather than to be angry or upset, he was aggrieved over their situation, what was his name . His name was vernon johnson. Vernon johnson. Thank you, i appreciate that. I want to defend some of my black soldiers from vietnam. I entered the army in 1968, retired in 1997, and back in the sixties there were some racial problems, obviously, as you mentioned. But i there are two isolated incidents and both of them very severe, but being in vietnam, i know i was in a unit that we had black soldiers, white soldiers, hispanic soldiers. And every so often a black soldier would come up who would be militant and try to create problems and it wasnt to the white soldiers saying stop that, it was the other black soldiers in the unit saying we are a cohesive unit we fight together, we live together and we dont do that here, stop it. And so i almost took us a little bit as an indictment of black soldiers back in the sixties and i think thats a at least as i heard it a bad evaluation, its almost like looking today and saying all muslims are bed because we have isis and that is not the case, and its the same thing. Lbj you have a riot, but you had a lot of the, rest of vietnam where you didnt have the right. You may have some issues there and you work them out. But it wasnt all like the major or like lbj. Okay, i am not indicting black soldiers in vietnam and i apologize if you heard it that way. What i am trying to look at, and i also dont see major merritt talking about the ways in which black servicemen couldnt get adequate housing, something thats egregious, what i saw is egregious is the way he was treated by the army officials. But what i am trying to look at is outside of combat in many units there was a growing frustration and anger that the army tried to ignore and often ignored at the expense of black serviceman there were lots of black servicemen who were not angry there were black servicemen who were committed to their future in the army, there were white servicemen who were not angry, who were committed to their future in the army, but there was a racial crisis that was by 1969 defined by the secretary the army is the second most important thing the army had to Pay Attention to. So what i was trying to do today was to say look, these are two moments that forced the army to Pay Attention to something that it was trying to ignore. I will absolutely give you that there was much racial brotherhood in the army during this period, especially in combat units but there was also a rising crisis and at this point this is a pivot point where the army started having to Pay Attention to it. And at one point, i think another back to you could look at, and you mention this, idleness. Idleness is where we found we had the problem, whether youre white, whether youre black. A unit that was idle thousands of miles away from home stuck in vietnam and im not doing anything g lets, get in trouble to drugs or what have you saw the idleness is a vector that his home on problems regardless of the race. Absolutely. You see it all over the world, and command leadership makes a huge difference as well. Units that had reasonable morale and good leadership were much less likely to have racial tensions. I just want to reiterate im not indicting black servicemen in vietnam, im much more indicting the u. S. Army for not adequate attention to the ways in which discrimination often inadvertent even, functioned during this time. Im going to take our next question from the audience. Do you have any comments on the changes that have been made in the army that show that lessons have been learned . And they have actually mitigated some of the effects of the system of racism in our culture . Thats a great question. And i think that what i can point to is a willingness to discuss systemic racism and education that emphasizes the ways in which institutional and individual racism function in the army going back to the late 1960s. And what im looking at or the different techniques that the army attempted to use to mitigate the problems that it faced and some of it was investigating military justice and such, but what was the most effective was race conscious process ease of assignments and promotion, and an attempt to foster visible leadership by people of color. And also by women and im affirmative action case michigan came forward to the Supreme Court it was a whole crew of retired Army Generals not army but military generals who were friends of the court brief supporting. It and saying that this is been enormously effective in the u. S. Military and that is something we should be paying attention to. Yes there were Lessons Learned, no place is perfect and there are still elements of institutional racism and individual racism that exists. I still think that the military did seriously learn some lessons during this period. Last question on the left. Hi. I spent 35 years in very Large Production manufacturing plants, mainly and baltimore and kansas city. I started working in 1966 and retired a while ago. We had at the time in every place i worked, very elaborate affirmative action programs and the thing i remember most about that experience was that when we first started in the sixties and seventies we had what we called heart for unemployed programs to bring in folks in baltimore at the time, was probably about 50 minority in the community. We were trying to match that in the plant and our population. I remember, when we first started the idea was to try to bring minorities into the white club. Make them white people. They acted like white people, and they therefore would end up being employees and we actually found that did not work very well. Black people did not want to become white people. I think we had a lot more success and it took a while to learn all this, by recognizing and honoring black hispanic communities and religions, churches, their customs and things like that, and sensitizing our own leaders in the company to be able to take that on the floor in a production plant on a daytoday basis. I remember one of the experiences i had that i will never forget was we had a very senior black employee who died after about 40 years with the company. We had several of our white managers go to the church where his wake and funeral were held. We were among the few in the church at the time and some of us got up to speak about it. Of course he was a wonderful employee. We gained so much credit in the plant for recognizing him and for recognizing their culture at the time, that was worth millions of points in terms of our relation to the plant overtime but the one thing i remember most though, was the switch from trying to make people who were not white, white and moving to recognizing their culture, the things that were important to them, being able to talk to them about those, including family and everything else. We just made more much more progress. The places ran much better. Production wise, efficiency wise, cost wise as a result of that. I do not know if the army has ever kind of taken on that type of direction rather than just saying, we are all going to be disciplined, all going to be part of the same gang. Let us recognize what makes these people tick and respond to that and help that and help them bring it out. That is the fundamental argument i am making here, is that in this period, the army moved from claiming to be colourblind to the extent of not keeping records about race, to being race conscious. With some serious missteps, but one example of that during this period is, many young black men wanted to be able to wear afroz just as young white men wanted to wear long hair. The slang term for standard haircut was white wall which shows you the extent to which institutional racism functions because the presumption that the norm is white. So there was also some negotiation about what kind of haircuts people could have, but simply confronting the fact that a standard haircut presumes whiteness was again, a step forward, and in many cases, they were African American men and women who were saying, you are ignoring our background, our culture, our variety of identities and we are not simply ever going to be we all come from different backgrounds. There was limited success in doing that. It is a very good question and there are a lot of interesting parallels with civilian society, but the army has more power. Internally. Thank you doctor. On behalf of the National World War One Museum oriole, thank you for being here, thank you for your questions. We hope you come back soon. Another round of applause for doctor beth bailey. applause this is American History tv featuring events, interviews, archival films and visits to college classrooms. At the end of world war ii millions of servicemen return to the United States after an experience of a lifetime. Next on real america, from 1945, welcome home, a War Department film designed to share with the public with the veterans have been through. How it may have changed them, and how their newly acquired skills will be useful in the post war economy
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