An Army Afire
How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era
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By the late 1960s, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in US history was descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged without end. Morale was tanking. AWOL rates were rising. And in August 1968, a group of Black soldiers seized control of the infamous Long Binh Jail, burned buildings, and beat a white inmate to death with a shovel. The days of “same mud, same blood” were over, and a new generation of Black GIs had decisively rejected the slights and institutional racism their forefathers had endured.
As Black and white soldiers fought in barracks and bars, with violence spilling into surrounding towns within the US and in West Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, army leaders grew convinced that the growing racial crisis undermined the army’s ability to defend the nation. Acclaimed military historian Beth Bailey shows how the US Army tried to solve that racial crisis (in army terms, “the problem of race”). Army leaders were surprisingly creative in confronting demands for racial justice, even willing to challenge fundamental army principles of discipline, order, hierarchy, and authority. Bailey traces a frustrating yet fascinating story, as a massive, conservative institution came to terms with demands for change.
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University of Kansas historian Bailey (America's Army) offers a detailed examination of the U.S. Army's efforts to address "the problem of race" in the late 1960s and early '70s. In straightforward prose, she catalogs myriad racial incidents; profiles soldiers who "demanded attention to their status as Black men and to the problems they faced within the U.S. Army" and leaders who were primarily concerned about racial conflict because it "disrupted military efficiency"; analyses the Army's frequent attempts to redress racism in its ranks; and examines pervasive racial inequities on and off military bases (primarily in the South) and in Vietnam. In doing so, she covers the well-known—including the August 1968 uprising by Black soldiers at the Long Binh Jail near Saigon—and the obscure, such as Richard Nixon's politically motivated demand in the spring of 1971 to erect a monument at West Point to graduates who died serving in the Confederate Army. Though Bailey all but ignores significant racial disparities in the other military branches at the time, her in-depth reporting on the Army's attempts to "assess and address Black soldiers' complaints" sheds light on what was accomplished, as well as how far there is left to go. It's a valuable study of the challenges to institutional reform.
