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