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African American leaders such as Frederick Douglass long advocated
military service as an avenue to equal citizenship for black
Americans. Yet segregation in the U.S. armed forces did not
officially end until President Harry Truman issued an executive
order in 1948. What followed, at home and in the field, is the
subject of Brotherhood in Combat, the first full-length,
interdisciplinary study of the integration of the American military
during the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Using a wealth of oral
histories from black and white soldiers and marines who served in
one or both conflicts, Jeremy P. Maxwell explores racial tension -
pervasive in rear units, but relatively rare on the front lines.
His work reveals that in initially proving their worth to their
white brethren on the battlefield, African Americans changed the
prevailing attitudes of those ranking officials who could bring
about changes in policy. Brotherhood in Combat also illustrates the
schism over attitudes toward civil-military relations that
developed between blacks who had entered the service prior to
Vietnam and those who were drafted and thus brought revolutionary
ideas from the continental United States to the war zone. More
important, Maxwell demonstrates how even at the height of civil
rights unrest at home, black and white soldiers found a sense of
brotherhood in the jungles of Vietnam. Incorporating military,
diplomatic, social, racial, and ethnic topics and perspectives,
Brotherhood in Combat presents a remarkably thorough and finely
textured account of integration as it was experienced and
understood in mid-twentieth-century America.
Fusing riveting testimony from African American veterans with the
most incisive research of current military scholars, Black
Veterans, Politics, and Civil Rights in 20th-Century America:
Closing Ranks explores the intersecting characteristics of civil
rights struggle and political activism that was reflected in the
lives of ex-GIs throughout Twentieth Century American history. The
volume examines black veterans’ social and political activities
throughout the 20th Century, from the World Wars, through the
Korean and Vietnam War, and ends with the Persian Gulf War.
Presenting the full flesh and blood experiences of black veterans
who came from backgrounds and from all walks of life, each essay
captures how race, gender, ethnic, class, disability, generation,
and region shaped their experiences in the nation’s military
during times of war and how these issues profoundly affected the
postwar politics they embraced while trying to realize the true
meaning of equality in America. With original essays by emerging
scholars in the field of study, Closing Ranks is a foundational
text for reassessing the relationship between the ex-GI and the
modern nation state and providing readers with a vivid window into
the harsh realities that black citizen-soldiers have faced during
war and its aftermath for nearly a century.
Fusing riveting testimony from African American veterans with the
most incisive research of current military scholars, Black
Veterans, Politics, and Civil Rights in 20th-Century America:
Closing Ranks explores the intersecting characteristics of civil
rights struggle and political activism that was reflected in the
lives of ex-GIs throughout Twentieth Century American history. The
volume examines black veterans' social and political activities
throughout the 20th Century, from the World Wars, through the
Korean and Vietnam War, and ends with the Persian Gulf War.
Presenting the full flesh and blood experiences of black veterans
who came from backgrounds and from all walks of life, each essay
captures how race, gender, ethnic, class, disability, generation,
and region shaped their experiences in the nation's military during
times of war and how these issues profoundly affected the postwar
politics they embraced while trying to realize the true meaning of
equality in America. With original essays by emerging scholars in
the field of study, Closing Ranks is a foundational text for
reassessing the relationship between the ex-GI and the modern
nation state and providing readers with a vivid window into the
harsh realities that black citizen-soldiers have faced during war
and its aftermath for nearly a century.
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