Recently purchased a 1954 First Printing copy of this book. It is very interesting with so much info on military race relations that was rarely published during that era of segregation. I initially purchased it for a teenage nephew who is interested in American History. However, I am hesitant to gift him it due to the fact our military is currently caught in the clutches of leaders taking orders from a commander-in-chief who is demonstrating racist, segregation-era tendencies. The gift will have to wait for a cleansing in political leadership as not to frustrate the hopes and aspirations of an already disillusioned young man of color.
"We feel that in publishing this report, Random House is making a contribution to national defense through solidarity." --James C. Evans, Civilian Assistant, Office of the Assistant, Secretary of Defense.
February 14, 1954
By S. L. A. MARSHALL
BY producing a first-class study of a major problem in American race relationships Lee Nichols, who works the night desk for The United Press in Washington, has demonstrated that any time a good report- er aspires to write a book he will find rich material kicking around underfoot. Some months ago, he read a casual press release from the Pentagon which put him on the trail of what he calls "one of the biggest stories of the twentieth century." Potentially it warrants no lesser description. He followed it through the bureaus, reading staff papers and interviewing hundreds of officials until he had collected most of the main facts. His book tells how, under the pressures of the Korean war, the United States armed establishment, almost unnoticed, achieved the long-awaited reform and made an end to military race segregation.
Also, to measure the significance of this unheralded victory, the reporter turned historian. How things stand today and except for a few marginal discriminations which will shortly pass the services now adhere to a standard of equal treatment is profiled against the prolonged struggle toward that object.
Mr. Nichols traces the long story of the Negro's participation in the American armed forces from that day in 1770 when the Negro Crispus At- tucks was the first person shot and one of five killed at the Boston Massacre that preceded the Revolution. Negroes fought in all our wars, he reminds us— the Revolution, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American and both world wars. And he shows how in these conflicts and the peacetime years be- tween Negroes made slow but steady progress toward full integration in Army, Navy and Air Force. An important factor in the advance was President Truman's Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services.
BY 1953, Mr. Nichols says. "The racial barrier had been virtually wiped out in the Air Force and in the Navy outside the almost entirely Negro Steward's Branch. The Army was far along the road to elimination of its all-Negro units * * * There were no longer any all- Negro Marine units."
To most Americans that part of the Nichols story which is newsworthy will come as a heartening revelation. Couple it with the announcement from Tuskegee Institute that it has quit publishing the Lynch Let- ter because lynchings are no longer an index to race relations in the United States; the two together suggest that we may be doing much better than we know. Neither item is likely of publication in the Soviet press. But since the pivotal events of which Nichols writes occurred three years ago, and until now the nation has had only small bites of the story, there is room for remark that on the home front we are extravagantly wasteful of our own successes.
It is in the backward glance that Mr. Nichols, though ardent toward his subject and exceptionally sympathetic toward the services, fails somewhat of objectivity in relating why things did not move faster. There is insufficient recognition that the problem was vast indeed, that time itself had to provide part of the solution, and that the retarded pace was due less to mean prejudice within the military structure than to the mountainous social obstacles which lay without. Because my name and role find mention in the book, some personal reflection should be pardonable. In minor capacities, I have had some experience with race problems within the services, first as commander of a Negro company in World War I, next as writer of the policy which formed the 442d (American-Japanese) Combat Team in World War II and, last, as an analyst of the integrated units in Korea. I would simply bear witness that I always found goodwill toward the object among my superiors and associates in the Army, and that where action was slowed it was because of reasonable doubt that А valid opportunity existed.
In calling the Army the mule of the service team prior to Korea, Nichols would seem to imply that it was least willing to undertake social reform. That discounts wholly the great difference between Army relationships with the people and those of other services. It is a much more sensitive body because of size and propinquity; its relative social inertia is inherent in its role.
In Korea success was made possible by failure. There was a critical shortage of white rifle replacements. Integration was mothered by necessity. Once it had proved good under ordeal by fire, all concerned rallied to the opportunity, though some were slower to see it than others. Had there not been abundant goodwill, the Far East Command would not have reformed its policy, nor could its example have inspired like action elsewhere. True progress within a General Staff is possible only when a case can be made on the basis of superior data; then all doors swing open. But it is a truly felicitous thing that a nation can change its ways because of the deathless courage of a few mixed rifle squads in the name- less ridges north of Parallel 38.
