Transcripts For CSPAN3 Race The Vietnam War 20240713

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 about 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 that the United States fought from the beginning with an integrated armed force, with a racially integrated armed force. And for much of that war, that process was treated as a great success. And 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. So, my research right now is trying to think about how this massive institution tried to manage a racial crisis. And i look at the series of actions that the army took, a whole variety of actions, that ranged from the predictable actions of education and training to an emphasis on cultural sensitivity to visible leadership and affirmative action. The but most fundamentally, what im arguing in this larger project is that the army shifted from thinking of itself as proudly raceblind, as colorblind, to thinking of itself as raceconscious and embracing different kinds of policies and practices that acknowledge the significant 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 two stories drawn from 1968 to give you a sense 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 Merritt strode into the official press briefing in saigon, the 5 00 follies, and passed out copies of a statement in which he asserted that, quote, 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. 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 as confirmation of a story, a heartwrenching story that the times editors placed adjacent to it. Here, the parents of a 21yearold soldier who is being awarded posthumously 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, just inches away on the page, offered a broader lesson. The article quoted him as saying, the American People have been for 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. 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 forces as violence was erupting in the civilian world, whether the murderous attacks on those who sought their full rights or black ghettos in flames during the long, hot summers of the 1960s. But when Frederick Ellis davison was promoted to be Brigadier General in september 1968, becoming the third black man to reach this blank in the history, not only of the army, but of the u. S. Military as a whole, he praised the armys, quote, unbelievable progress in race relations. Now, this was the story that the army wanted to tell. And it was one that a lot of officers and ncos, black and white alike, 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 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 offpost housing . That was a perpetual issue, most particularly in the American South and in germany. President kennedys guessel commission had highlighted the problem back in 1961. But surrounding communities were not under military control and relationships were particularly tricky in host nations. Civilian discrimination, it was a problem, but they were working on solutions. And what are the indignities of boy . The outrage of the racial epithet in common urks the casual racism in the daily life of the enlisted man . Many whites never registered it, or they paid it no heed. Many had come of age where such words were common or they saw them really as no different than the labels of pollack or whop or kike in a sergeants use of abuse. And the lapses were tales of the, quote, notable comradery between the races at ft. 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 o. D. , or olive drab. Now, such interpretations seem awfully selfserving, especially in retrospect. And its striking how much they were in keeping with the official language of the time. We have sociologist carlos moscos who spent a year studying the issue and said the army was, quote, an example of integration success. Time mad told its close to 20 million readers that, despite a few blemishes, the armed forces remain the model of the reasonably integrated society that 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 an unreasonable thing to say. Whats 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 didnt make the list of command concerns in 1967. When the secretary of defense was visiting vietnam in 1967, he got a topsecret briefing about soldiers morale, and he heard about marijuana and narcotics. He heard about the black market. He heard about courtsmartial raids. He didnt hear a single word about race. It wasnt an issue. And two 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 drab, a model that had been praised, in contrast to civilian society, that would continue both 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 to the hulls of slave ships and forged the assassination of Martin Luther king, 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 milita military, because the war in vietnam demanded men. U. S. Armys strength oh, how did that happen . Yes, okay. U. S. Armys 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 in that era. But the wartime demand from 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 60s revolt that were going to swell the armys ranks, whether drafties or volunteers. Many of them draftmotivated. The great majority of them didnt plan an army career, and their longterm allegiance was not to the constitution and its culture and practices. For many of them, their ties to home and the weight of their civilian identities were less fully eclipsed in the two years for draftees or the three years for volunteers, that the military required of them, than had been the case for men who had joined 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. 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, because 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 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 blunt 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 begin 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 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. So, the first thing im going to talk about is major Lavell Merritts venture into that press Briefing Room in saigon and the investigations that surrounded it. And the other is the uprising of black prisoners in the stockade at the armys sprawling long bin post just northeast of saigon. In each case, the armys responses to the actions of black servicemen gave a sense for 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 Resor claimed in an address to the ausa in 1969 a negro in uniform does not cease to be a negro and become a soldier instead. He becomes a negro soldier. So, for the rest of the talk today, im going to tell those two stories. And im treating them as pivot points for the armys acknowledgment that it did, in fact, have a problem. The third day of the defensive in early 1968 was the day that major merritt took up a new assignment as deputy Senior Adviser at dong da National Training sister near da nang in vietnam. Some of the housing had been destroyed, and so this Training Team Senior Adviser, 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 late at night discussing everything in the world, including merritts belief that he had been passed over for promotion because he was black. And when bradley received his next assignment, he pushed merritt for his replacement. The slot was meant for a Lieutenant Colonel, but there was a shortage of those in rank, and even though bradleys supervisor said he was a bit leery of giving merritt this job, bradley insisted that merritt had done a great job for him, and he made that claim official by giving merritt 96 points out of 100 on his oer, his officer efficiency report, with not a single word of criticism, constructive or otherwise. Dont know whether it was bradleys recommendation or just the shortage of Lieutenant Colonels, but merritt got the job. He took command on may 1st, the day that bradley departed. And what happened next isnt completely clear, despite the fact that the army has mountains of records on this case. But bradley had second thoughts. And he contacted the training directorate in june and told him that things were going to pot in dong da. The director took the claims seriously and told merritts newly assigned deputy, major irving, to keep an eye on merritt. Merritts the only black officer at this post. In the meantime, merritt, in his new command, had been talking begun talking a lot about race, about the situation of black americans in the United States and of black soldiers in the army. Captain hurrow, who was white, was eating dinner in the mess soon after arriving and mr. Merritt dropped a copy of the kerner report in front of him, the report that detailed the race rebellions in the u. S. And he asked him what he thought of it, and he said, well, i havent read it, i dont know. And merritt said, okay, you guys stay and im going to educate you. And the education lasted until after midnight. A conversation with a White Sergeant who became in the sergeants words, quite heated as he condemned, quote, the burning and the protesting and so forth that was going on back in the states. Major merritt the next day brought him a Magazine Article that told about how Living Conditions for negro personnel back home were insufficient. In general, merritts attempts at education and consciousnessraising werent welcome. Nk urrow said later, once he started talking on this civil rights thing, he went kind of, well, like a man who was really 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 five that merritt was too preoccupied with questions of race. So, things came to a head 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 bar, the open mess with him, just got tired of his intensity of his focus on race. That night in the course of downing, quote, numerous martinis, merritt, quote, got on the racial kick. He was loud and opinionated and he dominated the room. He wandered from person to person, holding forth. Merritt referred to white enlisted men as honky, cracker, and white trash, and he spoke the sexually charged language of late 60s racial pride, spoke tf rational pride, claiming not only the blacks were sons of kings but once a white woman had been with a black man shed never want a white man again. At one point merritt propelled a chair toward a door, though accounts vary whether the chair was thrown, slammed, or given an underhanded toss. So a White Sergeant in the bar thought things were getting out of hand so he went looking for deputy irving, but they were all hanging out together in the same room and said they werent going to intervene. He said, hes the Senior Adviser. Asked later why he hadnt 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 didnt want to let this appear to be a racial issue. Irving, whether it was prejudice 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 trained to manage a situation like that. Okay, the next morning major merritt apologized, hung over, and left dong ha early for some scheduled r r that same morning manageme major merritt and two other officers called headquarters. One captain complained, quote, during my assignment to team 5, major merritt has continually koe joeled and harassed some of the officers about racial problems in the states and the fact that he is a negro 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 negros. Major merritt, in the meantime, knows nothing about this investigation. And the senior officer that came up from saigon told everybody there to keep mum. The officer, while he was there, also decided he was going to replace major merritt as Senior Adviser and he didnt keep that decision to himself. So when merritt returned, major irving let slip the news, not about the investigation but of the pending replacement. So 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. Notification said we have officers of appropriate rank and assured merritt the saigon office was going to benefit from his considerable experience. Merritt reported to saigon as on ordered and the first day he got there he was summoned to the office of the investigator general and told he was being investigated. Feeling bitter and betrayed he sat down at a typewriter and started to compose an eightpage statement that was going to demand the attention of the command and the American Public as well. The investigation found that major merritt was obsessed with race. It ignored the failures of leadership on the part of the people who felt uncomfortable talking about race and so contributed to the problem, major irving. It equated his discussions of Racial Discrimination with militancy and potential violence. It failed to followup on alleged threats against major merritts physical safety and instead focussed on evidence that merritt had verbally denied the armys progress on race. It ignored major merritts claim of Racial Discrimination, investigating instead how his discussions of race affected his white sub board nates. And within the space of a month, they compiled potential charges to be referred against marriajo merritt. He had engaged in conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman that night of august 22nd, arguing about racial matters, referring to lieutenant benjamin o. Davis as an uncle tom and insisting once a white woman had a negro she would never go back to a white man. He released an eightpage news article to the press without proper review, and he had dismissed the many successful negro officers in the army. Now the attorney general was furious about these actions on r merritt and felt he was going to be found guilty but he offered a caution, he said such a trial would be time consuming and expensive and while it might discredit merritt with the press it would also give him a platform, a trial would give merritt publicity. Unstated was the significant point, it would also bring publicity to the army and its problem with race. So the attorney, staff 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 at the end of 1969, at the end of his 20 years of service. 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. 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 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 insensitivity and sometimes racial prejudice that was going to come to haunt the Inspector Generals Office in the years to come. And the 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 merritt had tossed both that fateful chair and his career in the open mess bar in dong ha. That a small group of inmates at longdon jail in vietnam, 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. Now, 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 riot on the other side of the world couldnt compete with tanks in chicago. As far as violence in vietnam went, for perspective, 537 American Service members had been killed in action that month alone. So in many ways its not surprising that the uprising at longdon jail didnt get much notice from the American Press and army leaders, white army leaders were grateful for that small advantage. But longdon was the headquarters and people in power were paying attention, even if the nooinewk times was not. As the days turned into weeks with prisoners still controlling a portion of the stockade, the lbg riot became one of the armys earliest experiments in managing the problem of race. Because thats what it was, a problem of race. The problem at the jail was a racial uprising. It was an explosion of violence that was fed by assorted rage, black men began the uprising, black men joined by a handful of, quote, mexicans, burned buildings and chanted kill the chucks. Black men used improvised weapons to attack guards and white inmates. And in the aftermath of the violence, black men occupied compound b not only by taking physical control of it but by improvising an african space. These actions were like major merritts, borne of anger and frustration. In many ways thats where the similarity ends. Merritt was a 40yearold officer with almost 20 years of army experience. He thought hard about the role of black men in the military and while he was prone to hyperbole, he also commanded the persuasive language of the 60s era Civil Rights Movement. He had a case to make, he was looking for specific change. The men who rioted at the jail were enlisted men, many young, some still teenagers, they were inflated by their own experiences both in vietnam and the stockade, they were inspired by racial uprisings in American Cities and encouraged by black panther literature, according to the investigation. But they didnt offer any specific kree tecritique of rac. The language this group commanded was violence, and that language, honestly, was not without power. The stockade was known to all as lbj, a play on the initials of the president who 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, the only historian to date called it, quote, 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 mid 1968 it housed 719 inmates. The space allotted to each man had been cut almost in half from an original 70 feet square feet, not very much. To 36. 5 square feet. Army regulations specified that 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 by the guard abounded. And the guards said they were moving throughout the inmates without anything, even a night stick. Whether the lawful order was to advance into combat or cut their hair, lbjs second in command later called some of them scared kids in a war zone. Another stockade official in 1968 noted that almost none of those prisoners were first or even second time offenders. Officers by that point were so reluctant to take men out of the field it commonly took several offenses before a man was took from his community to serve time in the stockade. Sometimes those offenses were seen as being too militant. No matter how many scared kids got themselves crosswise with authority and ended up in lbj, the jail also housed murderers and rapist and those convicted of war crimes. The commander of the brigade had committed crimes against the population, their own unit, guys who shot and killed vietnamese on a whim. You have to understand, said the officer who took command of lbj in 68, they had sigh cot jiks in there. They werent average black or white people off the streets. The fellas we had were socioowe paths. Ill come back to that officer in a minute. During the year of 1968 every month except one, black prisoners outnumbered whites in lbj, even as black soldiers accounted for only 11 of army troops in vietnam. Some estimates put the black population of lbj at 70 or as high as 90 . As a matter of policy at that point because the army was colorblind it didnt keep racial statistics so its not possible to know for sure. But whatever the actual numbers, the imbalance was obvious. It was worse once got to the maximum security block. Prisoners were housed by 6 by 7 by 8 1 2 square foot containers that were referred to as the box collectively. And many black inmates saw that imbalance as evidence theyve been treated unfairly by prejudiced officers and ncos and a biassed system of military justice. In fact, there would be a major internal investigation pushed by the black congressional caucus of the prejudice that existed within the military Justice System during this period. So the officer who took over lbj on july 5, 1968, Lieutenant Colonel Vernon Johnson was the attempt to solve the obvious crisis of the stockade, at least as they understood the crisis in 1968. Johnson had a ph. D. And in keeping with the field he believed strongly in rehabilitation. The officer who insisted that lbj was populated by sociopaths but johnson wasted no time in putting his principles into practice, he was trying to rehabilitate the men. He emphasized the role of social workers and psychologists, listened to prisoners complaints, sometimes supporting them against the guards. He urged the guards to get to know the prisoners, spend time talking to 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 started an unpopular practice of strip searching inmates as they were coming back from work release. He was implemented a modern penal practices, but these practi practices didnt solve the problem of the growing racial anger and conflict within lbj, even compared to the standard practices that 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 cin syndicate and who had been controlling the flow of drugs into the stockade. Its possible that stopping the control of drugs precip indicated the problem. There were many reasons for them to be angry, the racial prejudice, the prevading system of military justice, the general oppression of black men in society, they had meetings and they developed plans. They assigned tasks. One inmate was supposed to smuggle kerosene into the jail, another was to get quaaludes and marijuana, which was going to be distributed before the uprising. The plans werent closely guarded. There were rumors circulating that trouble was coming. And white inmates started to tell the chaplain they were scared and black inmates went quiet, the tension was palpable. At the signal, the designated group of prisoners overpowered two gate guards taking their keys. But they werent looking to escape. This was general retribution. Black inmates, not all of them but a group, tore apart bunks to create weapons, liberated knives from the mess hall kitchen, prisoners, black and white, ran for the main gate trying to get out of the violence. Guards fled for their lives climbing the fence and wedging themselves through wire. Groups of men dragged mattresses into piles and set them fire, ignited tents and buildings. Men attacked the guards black and white. Some rounded up white prisoners, bound them and let loose with fists and weapons. One Young Private, edward haskel of florida, they beat him to death with a shovel. And in the midst of the violence, a frustrated black man paced black and forth yelling, you stupid fools youre doing it all wrong. Colonel johnson banking on the goodwill he thought he earned went unarmed into the stockade, and its not sure what happened. The next time he was seen was he was staggering covered in blood. And when a pastor saw him at the hospital, johnson agoty at a timed told the chap lan, we did it to them, i dont blame any of them, we did it to them. The inmates who fled had been herded into a nearby field and spent the rest of the night surrounded by armed guards. But the 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 200, made no demands, no spokesman emerged, no negotiations. Some of the men created an alternative space for themselves. They created what they claim what they came to call the soul brother compound. One participant remembered, we used the blankets to make african robes and the tent poles for spears, thats where our head was at the time. The men continued to receive food and water. The people in charge decided what they were going to do is wait it out. But the person who had come in to 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 the chaplain characterized as the hard core black power continued to, quote, 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 help getting out of the compound saying i thought these were my people, theyre not the people, theyre insane. Theyre going to kill each other, i want out before they kill me. As the chaplain wrote to the armys chief of chaplains on september 9th. The segregated compound is 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. Nonetheless, the days passed in heat and in bore dom and the commanders forbearance held. The remaining inmates resolve started to fade. A small group held out. But when their numbers dwindled down from 200 to 13, the general sent in troops with loaded weapons and enough tear gas to filled new york city and they met no resistance. So for the army, this tactic of confronting anger with patience had, from the armys perspective, worked. Without confrontation it was more difficult for the inmates to maintain a core of committed angry resistance and without confrontation, the story had no purchase in the american media. And for the army, the wait had no significant cost. Inmates burned the stockades in the first hour of the uprising long before the army could have mobilized any reaction. After that they tore up some sheets and blankets in the days that followed but in terms of destruction of property that was minor. The men who held the soul brothers compound hadnt harmed anyone else after the initial hours of violence. In the end the uprising left one young prisoner dead, 26 inmates hospitalized for serious injury, 63 mps injured, 23 badly enough to be hospitalized and colonel johnson never recovered from his head wound and the stockades Physical Plant had been destroyed it was replaced quickly. Of the approximately 200 men who planned or joined the uprising on august 29th, 129 of them were individually court marbled on charges including murder and muti mutiny. With the stockade fully reclaimed, army leaders rejected the approaches of colonel johnson. The new commander was described as a, quote, pattontype ass kicker who earned the nickname of ivan the terrible. Colonel nelson cracked down on the guards, the prisoners, he tightened up the ship. The army takes pride in being a learning institution. Andan 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 dialled back the enlightened approach. But the commander of the 18th military Police Brigade laid out his Lessons Learned in more details. 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. Okay. All makes sense. Appropriate Lessons Learned, even as the devil really lies in the details does one combat idleness with basketball courts or work details. How does one maintain discipline . But whats striking is whats missing. In his recommendations for ways to prevent future racial uprising this mp commander never once mentioned race. So as in the case of major merritt, army leaders at 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. Racial anger continued to fester at lbj, 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 at 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 baracks, in the mess halls and community surrounding army posts in the United States and throughout much of the world. From the perspective of august 1968, however, its hard not to have sympathy with chaplain vessels who frankly admitted that the answers were beyond him. Concluding his report on the lbj uprising and he might as well have been describing the crisis as a whole, he wrote, thank god its not my job to solve the dilemma. The task would fall to army leaders who would subsequently have no choice but to confront the problem of race. Thanks. You are welcome to ask a question at either mic or you can raise your hand and i will come to you. Hi. Hi. How would you describe what events happened in the 60s with right behind you. With, lets say, today between with back then it was with people of africanamerican decent but now a lot of times theres the issue of those of xgen immigrant decent in the military. Do you think theres a discussion avenue about how the military confronts not just race but ethnicity and religion . Thats a very good question. I think i think that the parallels dont fit neatly. I think, though, what happened at this moment is that the nation was going through an upheaval over race. And 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 how to try to figure out how to deal with the anger that it was seeing, the resistance and the racism it saw on behalf of many whites in the military. In terms of immigrants today, what we see so frequently is changing status, official status and treatment in the military. So its not so much how do they contend with the violence against young men and women serving as the question of what status those who are immigrants and serving in the military, thats where the army has most directly been addressing it. 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 going going to a different point about what sexual assaulty a sexuality and gender. Part of what im arguing in this work is despite the fact the military has for a long time insisted its not to be social experimentati experimentation, it often is, because its directed to do something by civilian authorities. But in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, the army becomes experimentation and once ordered how to do something it has to figure out how to do it. What i see in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, is the hard learned lessons and incompletely learned lessons of this period has informed the struggle that the army takes it tries to figure out how to implement issues such as ending dont ask, dont tell, thinking about ethnicity more broadly in the u. S. Military. Our next question comes from the back of the auditorium. Hi. The warden who had the progressive policies, i didnt remember his name and im sorry, thats why im referring to him that way. You said he was injured and bloods dy when they brought him out, when he came out of the stockade. Did you say 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, you know, without controvers but he was attacked by someone when trying to put an end to the violence. It was moving that his response rather than to be angry or upset, he was agrieved by 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 60s, there were some racial problems, obviously, as you mentioned. But i take these there are two incidents and both of them very severe. But being in the 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 the white soldiers saying, im 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 sort of took this almost as a little bit of an indictment of black soldiers back in the 60s, and i think thats a at least as i heard it, a bad evaluation of it. Its almost like looking today saying all muslims are bad because we have isis. And thats 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 riot. 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 i also dont see major merritt talking about, you know, the ways in which black servicemen couldnt get adequate housing as something thats egregious. What i saw as egregious was the way he was treated by army officials. But what im 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 black6 c÷ 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 of the army as the second most important thing the army had to Pay Attention to. So what i was trying to do today is 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. Ill add one point. Another vector you can look at, you mentioned it, idleness. Idleness is where we found we had the problem, whether you were white or black, a unit that was idle, thousands of miles away from home, stuck in vietnam and im not doing anything, lets get in trouble, the drugs or what have you. So the idleness, thats a vector that i think hits home on problems regardless of the race. 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 tensions. Thats true. Ill shut up. I just want to reiterate i am not indicting black servicemen in vietnam. Im 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 that lessons have been learned and they have actually mitigated some of the effects of the systemic 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 are the different techniques that the army attempted to use to mitigate the problems that it faced. 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 also by women. And, you know, when the affirmative action case at michigan came forward to the supreme court, it was a whole crew of military generals who wrote a friends of the court brief supporting it saying this has been enormously effective in the military and its something we should be paying attention to. So, yeah, there were Lessons Learned. No place is it perfect and theres still elements of institutional racism and individual racism that exist, but i still think that the military did seriously learn some lessons during this period. Last question on the left. Hi. I spent 35 years inqjn very lar production manufacturing plants mainly in baltimore and kansas city. And i started working in 1966. And retired after a while ago. And we had, at the time, and 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 60s and 70s, we had what we called a hard core unemployment program, baltimore at the time was probably 60 unemployed 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. You know, they acted like the white people and they, therefore, would end up being good employees and we found that didnt work very well. That black people didnt want to become white people. And i think we had a lot more success, and it took a while to learn all this, but recognizing and honoring black, hispanic communities, religions, their churches, their 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 ill never forget is we had a very senior black employee who died after about 40 years with the company. And 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 because he was a wonderful employee and had been for years. And i think we gained so much credit in the plant for recognizing him and for recognizing their culture at the time that was worth of millions of points in terms of our relations in the plant over time. But the one thing i remember most, though, was the switch from trying to make people who werent 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 much more progress, the places ran better, production wise, efficiency wise, cost wise, as a result of that. I dont know if the army has ever kind of taken on that type of direction, rather than saying okay, were all going to be disciplined, were all going to be 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. So thats the fundamental argument im making here is that in this period the army moved from claiming to be colorblind to the extent of not keeping records about race to being race conscious. And with some serious missteps, but one example of that during this period is, many young black men wanted to be able to ware afros, just as many white men wanted to wear long hair. The slander was white wall, because the presumption is the norm is white, right. So there was negotiation about what kind of hair cuts people could have. But confronting the fact that the standard hair cut presumes whiteness was, again, a step forward. And in many cases there were africanamerican men and women who were saying youre ignoring our background, our culture our variety of identities and were not going to be simply od, we all come from different backgrounds and there was a limited success in doing that. Its a really good question. There are a lot of interesting parallels with civilian society but the army has more power internally. Thank you dr. Bailey. On behalf of the National World war i memorial, thank you for being here. We hope you come back soon. Another round of applause for dr. Beth bailey. [ applause ] youre watching American History tv, covering history cspan style withan event coverage, eyewitness accounts, lectures in College Classrooms and visits to museums and Historic Places all weekend, everyone weekend on cspan3. At the end of world war ii millions of servicemen and women returned to the United States after the experience of a lifetime. Next on reel america, from 1945, welcome home a War Department film designed to show the public what 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