Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces

Between World War II and the Vietnam War, the American military went through a dramatic social change involving the complete integration of blacks and whites on terms of formal, legal equality. Authors Mershon and Schlossman--both from the Center for History and Policy at Carnegie Mellon--provide the most penetrating and thorough account to date of the policies and tensions associated with this metamorphosis. As the authors make clear, leaders of the armed forces at first tenaciously opposed the full inclusion of blacks in all aspects of military life. Nevertheless, the inherently conservative military soon found itself in the vanguard of fundamental change in American race relations, and wound up surpassing most civilian institutions in the speed and thoroughness with which it adopted integration and race-neutral personnel policies. The book's most important theme, not surprisingly, is leadership. As the authors demonstrate, the active, consistent support of high-ranking civilian officials and uniformed military officers was always essential in securing fundamental alterations in military racial policies. Conversely, difficult and even acrimonious situations arose when leadership was either absent or consciously directed toward resisting change. In the end, however, it was the military's emphasis on order--and its willingness to compel personnel to behave correctly despite the presence of intolerant, hostile racial attitudes--that ultimately led to the successful reordering of the armed services' internal race relations. (Mar.)