The Integrated Society

"He has instilled in us a pride in the Army that I'm ashamed to say we didn't have when we first entered. He first taught each of us to be men. Next, he taught us to accept responsibilities. Then he gave us a gift of priceless value, to be 'men among men.' "

The commanding general of Fort Ord, Calif., was surprised to receive this letter, written last month by 43 members of A Company, 1st Battalion, 3rd Brigade. First, recruits do not often write letters to the commanding general. Second, when they do write, they rarely praise drill instructors, their traditional scourge. But the most significant fact about the letter is that it was composed by white men--all but two of them from Texas--in praise of their drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Joshua Ashley, a Negro. No presidential report could better document the dramatic gains in status and esteem that the Negro has made in the armed forces of the U.S. within the past few years.

The war in Viet Nam is the first war in history that Americans have fought on a truly integrated basis. The proponents of black power have charged that the simple fact that Negroes are in Army combat units in proportionately high numbers--23% of the troops in combat v. 11% of the U.S. population --is a sign of discrimination. But the numbers, far from indicating discrimination, actually add to the evidence that the Negro has found in the armed forces the fair and opportunity-full society that is still rare in most sections of civilian life. Some of the units with the highest percentages of Negroes are all-volunteer, and Negroes re-enlist in the Army at a rate (49%) nearly four times that of whites.

Crispus Attucks. Negroes have fought alongside white Americans since 1638, when Massachusetts settlers battled the Indians. Crispus Attucks, a runaway slave, was the first man shot in the Boston Massacre, the prelude to the Revolutionary War, and some 186,000 Negroes marched with the blue in the Civil War. Yet they were nearly always segregated and distrusted in combat. In World War I, the Navy used them only as messmen, while the Marine Corps excluded them altogether. In World War II, though a few Negro units distinguished themselves in combat, Negroes in all the services were mostly confined to supply, engineering and transportation duties. Though President Truman officially integrated all forces in 1948, there were some segregated units as late as the Korean War.

Integration has marched so fast since then that military posts today are the most integrated communities in the U.S. Negro and white servicemen send their children to the same schools, play golf and swim in the same recreation areas. There still are few Negro officers--less than one-half of 1% in the Navy and Marine Corps, for example--but the Defense Department since 1962 has made a determined effort to find capable Negro leadership among the ranks, has actively recruited talented Negro youths for the service academies and college officer-training programs. As a result, the entering classes at the three service academies this year had more than four times as many Negroes as three years ago.

In combat, the color barrier totally disappears. "When you drink out of the same canteen and eat off the same spoon, you get real tight together," says Specialist Theodore Clark, 22, a Negro from Detroit who is fighting with the 173rd Airborne Brigade at Bien Hoa. "When you sleep in the same foxhole, you're just like brothers." Though many off-duty Negroes in Saigon head for Khanh Hoi, an area south of the Ben Aghe River that they have staked out for themselves, many others join their white buddies in the joints in other parts of town. In August, six months after Danang was declared off limits, built-up tensions led to a mass fist fight between Negroes and whites at the huge Navy base near by, but such incidents have been very rare.

The Model. Why are so many Negroes in combat? Some, because of inequities in schools at home, do not have the skills that are needed for behind-the-lines technicians. Others like the $55 extra a month that members of certain combat outfits command. Many enjoy the prestige of being in an elite unit; about a third of the paratroopers in Viet Nam, volunteers all, are Negroes. Many Negroes that he talked to on a Viet Nam tour in July, says Whitney Young, head of the Urban League, came from communities where they were considered inferiors and wanted combat simply "to show the other guy and themselves that they were men."

In this they have succeeded, smashing forever the myth, which still lingered in the Korean War, that Negroes could not fight as well as whites. Having done this, says Young, they will not be so willing as before to put up with discrimination at home. "They just won't accept it," says Young. "They have already run the greatest risk of all, so they won't mind adding to it." The Urban League plans to help Negro veterans enter an integrated civilian society, next month will start a program to assist them in finding jobs. Yet, tragically, few will find acceptance so easily off the base or battlefield. Despite a few blemishes, the armed forces remain the model of the reasonably integrated society that the U.S. looks forward to achieving in another generation.

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