Transcripts For CSPAN3 Race The Vietnam War 20240713

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 Team Senior 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 from the command and retired as soon as possible. Thus, merritt retired from the army in february of 1969. After that, he maintained his commitment to racial change and his capacity for grand ideas, but his focus was no longer on the u. S. Army. 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 his record suggested sometimes he was a difficult man, the failures 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 sensitivity and sometimes racial prejudice that was going to come to haunt the Inspector Generals Office in the years to come. This tactic of silence, which worked briefly, partially in the case of one black major 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 merritt had tossed both that fateful chair and his career in the open mess bar that a small group of inmates that had long been jailed in vietnam, the u. S. Army stockade, unleashed a storm of systemic destruction. By morning, one inmate was dead, and prisoners remained in control of one of its three compounds. The American Press did not pay much attention, but that was probably due to the timing. This corresponded with the Democratic National convention of 1968. If you think the country is divided right now, look back a few decades. A minor prison riot on the other side of the world could not complete with coverage of the streets of chicago. As far as violence in vietnam went, for perspective, 537 American Service members had been killed in action in that month alone. It is not surprising that the uprising did not draw much notice from the American Press, and army leaders were generally pretty grateful for that small advantage. But the people in power were paying attention, even if the New York Times was not. As the days turned into weeks, with prisoners still controlling a portion of the stockade, the lbj riot became one of the armys earliest experiments in managing the problem of race. That is what i was. It was a pro what it was. It was a problem of race. The violence at the jail was a racial uprising. It was an explosion of violence inspired by rage. Black men began the uprising. Black men, joined by a handful of, quote, mexicans, chanted , killed the chucks. The violenceath of black men occupied compound b , not only by taking physical control of it, but by improvising on African Space with makeshift spears and drums. These actions were born of anger and frustration, but in many ways, thats where the similarity ends. Merritt was a 40yearold officer with almost 20 years of experience. If i had read to you the eightpage document, he also commanded the persuasive language of the 1960s era Civil Rights Movement, and he had a case to make. He was seeking specific forms of change. The men who rioted at the jail were enlisted men. Many of them were still teenagers. Some investigators argued they were inflamed by their experience in vietnam and in the stockade. They were inspired by racial uprisings in American Cities and they were encouraged by black panther literature. But this groups men made no demands. They did not offer any specific critique of racism, oppression, or even of their own immediate conditions. The language this group commanded was violence, and that language was not without power. The stockade was known to all as lbj, a play on the initials of the president who had fully committed his nation to this difficult war. Lbj was notorious as a place that was hated and feared. Its only historian today called it 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 tet, lbj was stretched well beyond capacity. This jail had been built to house 400 men. By mid1968, 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 specified the 282 trained guards should be present for an inmate population of that size, but lbj had only 153, and few were adequately trained. Stories of the brutality of the guards abounded. The guards in turn claimed their jobs were impossible because among inmatesng without weapons of any sort, not even a nightstick. The men incarcerated in lbj were a mixed bunch. Some had refused a lawful order, whether that order was to advance into combat or cut their hair. Lbjs secondincommand later called them scared kids in a war zone. Nonetheless, another stockade official in 1968 noted that almost none of those prisoners were first or even secondtime offenders. Officers by that point were so reluctant to take men out of the field that it commonly took several offenses before a man could serve in the stockade. Sometimes that was seen as being too militant. No matter how many scared kids got themselves in lbj, the jail also housed murderers and rapists and soldiers convicted of war crimes. Some of the prisoners were men who 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. They were not average people off the streets. The fellas we had were sociopaths. I will come back to that officer in a minute. It is critical to understand that during the year of 1968 and every month except one, black prisoners outnumbered whites in lbj, even as black soldiers accounted for only about 11 of army troops in vietnam. Some estimates put the black population at lbj at 70 , even as high as 90 . As a matter of policy at that point because the army was officially colorblind, 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 6x7x8. 5 squarefoot metal 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 ncos in a biased system of military justice. There would be an investigation pushed by the black congressional caucus of the injustices that existed during this period. Who took over lbj, lt. Col. Vernon johnson, attempted to solve the obvious crisis at the stockade, at least as they understood it in 1968. P knologyd a phd in gy. In penalog he believed strongly in rehabilitation. The officer who insisted lbj was populated by sociopaths, johnson believed there was no such thing as a bad boy. But johnson wasted no time putting his principles into practice. He was trying to rehabilitate them. He listened to prisoners complaints, sometimes supporting them against his guards. He urged the guards to get to know the prisoners, spend time talking with them, join their basketball games. He also attempted to stem the flow of Illegal Drugs into the jail. For many prisoners, this outweighed the positive roles he tried to play, especially as he became started a highly unpopular practice of strip searching inmates returning from work details. Johnson was doing with the people who assigned him to his position had intended. He was implementing modern penal practices, but these did not solve the problem of the growing racial anger and conflict in lbj, even compared to the standard practices he was replacing. The riot that erupted on the night of august 29 was not spontaneous. It was orchestrated by a wellorganized group of black inmates who called themselves the syndicate and who had been controlling the flow of drugs in the stockade. It is possible that colonel johnsons attempts to stop the flow of drugs precipitated action, but its also true that Syndicate Members had talked a while about burning the place down. And there were plenty of reasons for them to be angry. The overcrowding, the racial prejudice, the pervading system of military justice, the general oppression of black men in american society. They had clandestine meetings and developed plans. They assigned tasks. One inmate was supposed to obtain a supply of quaaludes and marijuana, which was going to be distributed before the uprising. The plans were not closely guarded. There were rumors circulating that deep trouble was coming, and one inmate started to tell of the shackle were scared. Black inmates went quiet. The tension was becoming palpable. At a signal, a designated group of prisoners overpowered two gate guards, taking their keys. But they were not looking to escape. This was instead about general retribution. Black inmates, not all of them but a group, tore apart bunks to create weapons, pulled boards from buildings to serve as clubs, liberated knives from the mess hall kitchen. Prisoners, black and white, ran for the gate, trying to get out of the violence, climbing the fence and wedging themselves through wire. Groups of men set mattresses on fire, ignited tents and buildings. Men attacked the guards, black and white. Some rounded up white prisoners. Some bound their hands and feet. Unknown assailants beat to death. One Young Private of same but is paired, florida of st. Petersburg, florida they beat to , death with a shovel. In the midst of the violence, a frustrated black man paced back and forth, yelling, you stupid fucking fools, you are doing it all wrong. Colonel johnson went unarmed into the stockade and attempted to try to calm things down, and it is not clear what happened. The next time he was seeing was near the stockade gate, covered in blood. What the stockade chaplain later found colonel johnson in the hospital, awaiting surgery on a deep gash in his head, johnson, agitated, told the chaplain, we did it to them. I do not blame any of them. We did it to them. At the stockade, the chaos was subsiding. The inmates who fled had been herded into a nearby field and spent the rest of the night surrounded by armed guards. The medium security compound remained under a group of inmates control, and it would for more than three weeks. Dawn broke on smoldering ruins, and as the days passed, this group of inmates, about made no 200, demands. No spokesman emerged. There were no negotiations. Some of the men created an alternative space for themselves. They created what they came to call the soul brother compound. One participant remembered, we used the blankets to make african robes and the tent for spears. That is where our head was at the time. The men continued to receive food and water. Those people in charge had decided to wait it out. 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 had mixed sympathies, men of the chaplain, characterized as the hardcore of black power, continued to shout 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 one day violently cursed the chaplain, appealed the next day for helping get out of the compound. He said, i thought these guys were my people, but they are all insane. I went out before they i want out before they kill me. Perhaps selfinterested. It was written to the army chief of staff on september 9, 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 the final outcome will be, i did not have any idea. Nonetheless, the days passed and he and the commanders, the remaining inmates resolve started to fade. A small Group Continued to hold up. But when their numbers dwindled down from 200 to 13, troops were sent with weapons and were met with no resistance. For the army, this tactic of confronting eger with patients had from the armys perspective worked. It was more difficult for inmates to retain a core of angry resistance, and without confrontation, this story had no purchase in the american media. For the army, it had no significant cost. Inmates had burned the stockade buildings in the first hour of the uprising before the army could have mobilized in reaction force. After that, they tore the sheets and blankets, but that was minor. The men who held the soul brothers compound had not harmed anyone else after the initial hours of violence. In the end, the uprising left one young prisoner dead, 26 inmates hospitalized for serious industry serious injury. 63 mps were injured, 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 joined the uprising, 129 of them were individually courtmartialed on charges that included murder, unique, aggravated assault and destruction of government property. Leaders rejected the approaches of colonel johnson. The new commander was described as an ass kicker who earned the nickname of ivan the terrible. Colonel ivan nelson cracked down , on the prisoners. He tightened up the ship. The army takes pride in being a the army takes pride in being a learning institution and events on the scale of uprising almost without exception demanded an accounting of lessons learned. 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 in more detail. Maintenance of discipline is crucial. Idleness contributes to unrest. Drugs must be kept from the stockade. There must be enough properly trained custodial personnel for the actual number of inmates and overcrowding increases prisoner dissatisfaction. Ok, all makes sense. Appropriate lessons learned. Even if the devil lies in the details, does combat idleness one with basketball courts or work details . How does one maintain discipline . But most striking is what is missing. In his recommendations for ways to prevent future racial uprising, this commander never once mentioned race. As in the case of major merit, army leaders at lbj tried to deflect the problem of race. And avoidance was not going to be any more of a solution in stockade than it was in the public eye. Racial anger continue to fester at lbj as more and more people understood the military Justice System to not be racially blind. Down strictt down thingsamped for a while, but the underlying problems would resurface. Over the following year, a great many soldiers and their allies would offer critiques of army racial practices and policies. And the uprising at lbj was 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 mess halls and bars and communities surrounding army posts in the United States and throughout much of the world. From the perspective of august 1968, it is hard not to have sympathy with the chaplain who admitted that the answers were beyond him, concluding his report on the lbj uprising, he might as well have been describing the crises as a whole, he wrote thank god it is not my job to solve them. That task would fall to 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 at either mic or raise your hand and i will come to you. Hi. How would you describe what transpired in the 1960s with lets say today, between back it was with people of African American descent. Now a lot of times, theres the issue of those of immigrant descent in the military. Do you think theres another discussion about how the military confronts race, ethnicity, and religion . Ms. Bailey that is a very good question. I think the parallels dont fit neatly. I think what happened at this moment is that the nation was going through an upheaval over race. And a transition or development of a move away from a 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 it was seeing, the anger and resistance of many whites in the military. In terms of immigrants today, what we see frequently is changing status. Official status. And treatment in the military. It is not so much how 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 have. That is where the army has been directly addressing it. They do take some of the lessons they learn from this period in terms of trying to more directly address those problems. Do you have an incident in mind . You look like i am not answering your question. My mind was going to a different point about sexuality and gender. Ms. Bailey sexuality and gender . Part of what i am arguing is despite the fact the military has for a long time insisted its mission is not to be a site of social experimentation, it often is, whether it wants to be or not. Because it is directed to do something by civilian authorities. In terms of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, the army becomes a site of social experimentation and once ordered to do something, it has to figure out how to do it. What i see in terms of ethnicity and gender and sexuality is the hardlearned and incompletely learned lessons from this period of racial struggle have informed some of the approaches the army takes as it tries to figure out how it is going to implement issues such as ending dont ask, and more broadly in the military. Our next question comes from the back of the auditorium. The warden that had the progressive policies. I did not remember his name. I am sorry. That is why i am referring to him that way. You said he was injured and he was bloody when they brought him out, when he came out of the stockade. Did you say he never recovered from his injuries . Ms. Bailey 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. Someoneas attacked by when he was trying to put an end to the violence. It was moving, his response, rather than be angry or upset, he was grieved over their situation. What was his name . Ms. Bailey his name was vernon johnson. Vernon johnson. Thank you. I appreciate it. I wanted to defend some of my black soldiers from vietnam. I entered the army in 1968. Retired in 1997. Back in the 1960s, there were some racial problems, obviously. But there are two isolated both of them very severe. Being in vietnam, i know i was in a unit, 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. It wasnt 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 took this almost as an indictment of black soldiers back in the 1960s. And i think that is, as i heard it, a bad evaluation of it. It is almost like looking today and saying all muslims are bad because we have isis. That is not the case. It is the same thing. Lbj, you have a riot. But you had a lot of the rest of vietnam where you did not. You may have some issues and you work them out. But it wasnt all like the major or lbj. Ms. Bailey ok, 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 merit talking about the ways in which black servicemen could not get adequate housing as something egregious. What i saw as a 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 servicemen. There were lots of black servicemen who were not angry. There were black servicemen committed to their future in the army. There were white servicemen who were angry who were committed to their future in the army. There was a racial crisis that was, by 1969, defined as the second most important thing the army had to Pay Attention to. What i was trying to do today is to say these are two moments that forced the army to Pay Attention to something it was trying to ignore. I will absolutely give you that there was much racial brotherhood in the army, especially in combat units. But there was also a rising crisis. And at this point, this is a where the army had to start paying attention to it. Another vector you could look at, and you mentioned it, idleness. Idleness is where we found we had the problem. Whether you are white or black, a unit that was idle, thousands of miles from home, i am stuck in vietnam not doing anything. Lets get in trouble. The drugs or what have you. The idleness is a vector that i think hits home on problems regardless of the race. Ms. Bailey absolutely. And 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 less likely to have racial tension. I want to reiterate, i am not indicting black servicemen in vietnam. I am much more indicting the u. S. Army for not paying 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 lessons have been learned and they have mitigated some of the effects of the systemic racism in our culture . Ms. Bailey that is a great question. I think 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 i am looking at are the different techniques the army attempted to use to mitigate the problems it faced. And some of it was investigating military justice and such. But what was the most effective was race conscious processes of assignments and promotion and an attempt to foster visible leadership by people of color and by women. When the affirmative action case in michigan came to the supreme court, it was a crew of retired military generals who wrote a friends of the court brief supporting it, saying this has been enormously effective in the u. S. Military and that it is something we should be paying attention to. There were lessons learned. No place is perfect. There are still elements of institutional racism and individual racism that exist. But i still think the military did seriously learn some lessons during this period. Last question on the left. I spent 35 years in large very Large Production manufacturing plants in 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. The thing i remember most about that experience was when we first started in the 1960s and 1970s, we had what we called hardcore unemployed programs to bring in folks in baltimore. At the time, probably 50 minority in the community. We were trying to match that in the plant in our population. I remember when we first started that 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 good employees. We 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 this, by recognizing and honoring black, hispanic, communities, religions, churches, customs, and things like that. And sensitizing our own leaders in the company to be able to talk 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. And we were among the few in the church at the time and some of us got up to speak about him. He was a wonderful employee. I think 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 relations in the plant over time. But the one thing i remember most was the switch from trying to make people who were not white, white, and moving to recognizing their culture, the things important to them, being able to talk to them about those, including family and everything else. We just made much more progress. The places ran much better production wise, efficiency wise, cost wise, as a result of that. I dont know if the army has ever taken on that type of direction rather than just saying we are all going to be disciplined and part of the same gang. Lets recognize what makes these people tick and respond to that and help that and help them bring it out. Ms. Bailey that is the fundamental argument i am making. In this period, the army moved from claiming to be colorblind to being race conscious. With some serious missteps. One example of that is many young black men wanted to wear afros, just as young white men wanted to wear long hair. The slang term for the standard haircut was white wall which shows the extent to which institutional racism functions because the presumption is the norm was white. There was also some negotiation over what kind of haircuts people could have. Simply confronting the fact the standard haircut presumes whiteness was a step forward. And in many cases, there were African American men and women who were saying you are ignoring our background and culture and variety of identities. And we are not ever going to be simply o. D. We all come from different backgrounds. There was a limited success in doing that. Its a really good question. There are lots of interesting parallels to civilian society. But the army has more power. Internally. Thank you, dr. Bailey. On behalf of the National World war i museum and memorial, thank you for being here. Thank you for your questions. We hope you come back soon and another round of applause for dr. Beth bailey. 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