BLACKS IN U.S. MILITARY.   Term Paper ID:26687 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: History from Revolutionary War through Vietnam. Racism, examples, roles, laws, heroism, opportunities, reasons for blacks' service.... More...

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Paper Abstract: History from Revolutionary War through Vietnam. Racism, examples, roles, laws, heroism, opportunities, reasons for blacks' service. Paper Introduction: The great tragedy for many blacks who have served the United States in the military was not what happened to them on the battlefield or in the cockpit or on a destroyer, but what happened to them when they returned from battle. It was not that they were met with violence when they returned, or even that things were very much different for them when they returned. But that was what was terrible, for many blacks (and maybe even for the majority of them) one of the primary reasons that they had gone to war – from the 18th through the 20th centuries – was to improve their lives. They looked around at the racist society that had denied them opportunities all of their lives and they thought that just maybe, if they could fight for their country, then finally people would realize that blacks were real Americans too and deserved all the accol Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. Quick to praise blacks for their bravery in the hear of battle, whites discovered the same men were cowards the day after peace was declared (Berry and Blassingame, 1982, p. It should be noted that despite the discrimination that blacks havefaced in the military, they have at least sometimes been formallyrecognized for their service. Theylooked around at the racist society that had denied them opportunities allof their lives and they thought that just maybe, if they could fight fortheir country, then finally people would realize that blacks were realAmericans too and deserved all the accolades and elements of the AmericanDream. Such absolute equality of compensation is rare in the civilianworld, and must surely be one of the reasons that the armed forces remainattractive to blacks seeking a way to improve their lives and those oftheir families. Attucks was thus one of the first men to die for thecause of American nationhood and the first black man to die in theRevolutionary War. Army at the beginningof the Civil War (McPherson, 1964, p. 31). 192). More than 38, black soldiers lost their lives during the Civil War- a mortality rate almost 4 percent higher than that of white troops(Binkin and Eitelberg, 1982, p. The result of his death has been that he has been heldup for generations to admire as a man not only courageous enough to die ina fight for the long-dead idea of democracy and republican rule but a manforgiving enough to die for a country that considered his complexionsufficient reason to enslave him. Some whites considered blacks to be inherently inferior and sonot capable of making good soldiers while others considered it to bemorally inappropriate to ask slaves and former slaves to share in theburden of defending the country that had sanctioned their enslavement.These objections, taken together, prompted General Washington in 1775 toissue an order prohibiting any new enlistment of blacks, although blacksalready in the army were allowed to remain (Binkin and Eitelberg, 1982, p.12). W.E.B. But it is also true that little is actuallyknown of Attucks's life prior to the Boston Massacre. 192). It maybe harder for a black soldier to rise in rank still, but once he or shedoes, then that officer will be paid the same as any white holding thatoffice. The years before World War II saw American blacks increasinglyconcerned about the country's racial policies, and they carried theirconcerns with them into the armed forces, although the armed forcesremained segregated on the grounds that integration would cause frictionand reduce efficiency and doubts about the ability of blacks to make goodsoldiers remained (Binkin and Eitelberg, 1982, p. New York: Oxford University.Binkin, M. Clearly blacks have been more than willing to serve the United States,even when the United States seemed less than willing to be served.Sometimes their service has been well rewarded within the services, butusually it has not. he could later present a bill forpayment due to a grateful white America (Binkin and Eitelberg, 1982, p.17). Attucks was participating in a demonstration forgreater rights that ended by harassing a squad of British soldiers; thesoldiers responded by firing into the crowd. Most blacks were draftees since few were allowed to enlist, a factthat lowered their status in the eyes of society in general. Some because they wantedto be heroes, some because they were foolish, some because they were brave,some because they wanted to live up to the dreams of their parents, somebecause they had something to prove to themselves. Is thisstory as apocryphal as George Washington's wooden teeth or that littleepisode with the cherry tree? 246), which isno small accomplishment and must have been a source of great personal pridefor black men who would have had so few options in civilian life. As the patriotic ardor of whites waned with mounting casualties, they turned to blacks to fill the ranks. It was not that they were met with violence when they returned, oreven that things were very much different for them when they returned. 295), blacks have fought inevery war the United States has entered. Seeing no other reasonable way to raise their ownstatus or that of their families within civilian society, they took achance on the potency of the symbol and reality of military service as away to make their way towards full citizenship and equality. But few blacks were given the chance to fight:Beginning in 1792 blacks had been barred by federal law from the statemilitias and there were no blacks in the regular U.S. and Blassingame, J. 295). Hope isalways a virtue, and it is never foolish to hope that people will actaccording to the best in their natures rather than the worst (although itis probably foolish to expect them to do so.) Moreover, most black soldiershad few other options. African American generals and flag officers. 15). Long memory: The black experience in America. (1993). And so one must ask why has this been so? Their participation was limited bythe fears of a possible insurrection by (armed) blacks and by theobjections of politically powerful slaveholders who objected to recruitmentpolicies that offered runaways a refuge and other slaves a possible pathwayto freedom. Before a further discussion of the social and cultural issues thathave existed in American history to place blacks on the battlefield fortheir country's honor, a brief summary of the ways in which blacks haveserved in the armed forces will be useful. ReferencesBerry, M. armedforces from Revolutionary times through the wars of the 2 th century,looking especially at both their chances for advancement in the militaryand what they came home to when they left the services. Although it was "the rare period in American history when the blackman had enough of a stake in the society to justify his fighting for itssurvival" (Berry and Blassingame, 1982, p. As Berry and Blassingame (1982, p. Some blacks have gone to war to escape poverty at home, some toleave families they no longer loved, some to prove themselves as fullAmericans, some because they believed fervently in the Constitution andfelt that it was a piece of paper worth dying for. Princeton: Princeton University. The fact that this was not so, that blacks returned to find thesociety that had treated them so badly to be essentially unchanged, isexplored in this paper, which examines the role of blacks in the U.S. And pay by rankis absolutely even for soldiers and officers with no regard to race. Blacks and the military. At the outbreak of World War I, blacks made up almost 11 percent ofthe general population and the Selective Service draft ensured that theyconstituted an approximately equal percentage of the population as a whole.And, just as in the Civil War, many blacks hoped that their willingness tofight and die for their country would improve their overall status oncepeace came again. (1986). (1982). Nearly every schoolchild growing up in America knows the story ofCrispus Attucks, the leader of a group of American colonists who was killedwhen the group was fired upon by British troops in the 177 event known asthe Boston Massacre. However, blacks were not given as many opportunities to serve thecountry or improve their own status as they would have liked during thewar. Blacks became cannon fodder again and again to prove their loyalty to a nation which disowned them. But was he really the man that schoolchildren learn about? 15). and Eitelberg, M. This did not entirely keep blacks from fighting for the United States.For example, New Orleans blacks helped Andrew Jackson defend the cityagainst the British in 1815. Many historians believe that he was a runawayslave, but no one knows this for certain, and his blackness may well be aconstruction used to encourage black men to join in defending the UnitedStates against foreign enemies even as they have faced discrimination andviolence at home. Why haveblacks, facing racism and often racist violence at home, been willing tofight for their country? The passage ofthe 14th and 15th Amendments, which both improved the position of black menwhile degrading the position of women (for both amendments for the firsttime in the country's history defined the status of citizenship to be apurview of men) were aided in their passage at least in some measure by theparticipation of blacks in the war effort (McPherson, 1964, pp. With the outbreak of war in 1861, many blacks along with manyabolitionists believed and hoped that the war would compel the Union statesto lay aside racism and accept regiments of black volunteers. Allgroups who have been treated as being less than full citizens (in either alegal or more amorphous cultural sense) have at some point tried to provetheir worth to American society through military service. The decision to go towar is a complex one for any thoughtful person, and the nature of racerelations in the United States has always made that decision even morecomplex for blacks than for whites. John Pershing's forays against PanchoVilla (Binkin and Eitelberg, 1982, p. Dubois, for example, argued for the importance of blackparticipation in the war effort, writing in 1917 that "If the black mancould fight to defeat the Kaiser ... Douglass himself supported this belief: Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States (McPherson, 1964, p. Whites, insisting on the inferiority and natural cowardice of blacks, usually entered wars by prohibiting or limiting black participation. Afro-Americans greeted such tasks with ambivalence (Berry and Blassingame, 1982, p. The answer to this question is of course not uniform from soldier tosoldier, any more than it would be for any other subset of soldiers definedby race. However, that war would begin to see real integration inthe services - although it would deliver soldiers back to a world in whichthey could hardly see themselves as equal citizens. Attucks was the first mankilled that day and by the end of the encounter four other Americans alsodied in the incident. Moreover, mostblacks in the services were assigned to menial occupations in peripheralunits such as supply, stevedore, engineering ad labor crews ((Binkin andEitelberg, 1982, p. The history of black military service is filled with paradoxes. After the Civil War, a congressional authority created six blackregiments in the regular army (although this was later reduced to a pair ofinfantry and a pair of cavalry regiments) and these units - led by whiteofficers - fought Indians and filled outposts in the Western territories(Binkin and Eitelberg, 1982, p. Generally anti-imperialistic and opposed to American oppression of colored peoples, blacks often found themselves being called upon to crush the legitimate aspirations of native Americans and Asians for freedom. If no Crispus Attucks had existed, it would have beenvery useful indeed to invent one. It would be all too easy to think of the black soldiers of the 18th,19th and 2 th centuries as deluded and even foolish in their beliefs thatwartime service would translate to peacetime equity, but this would be totake a far-too-harsh view of black soldiers of generations past. Butthat was what was terrible, for many blacks (and maybe even for themajority of them) one of the primary reasons that they had gone to war -from the 18th through the 2 th centuries - was to improve their lives. During the latter decades of the 19th century and into the beginningof the 2 th century, blacks made up about 1 percent of total Army strengthand participated in the Mexican Punitive Expedition of 1916-17 and thecharge up San Juan Hill and in Gen. By the 196 s, the Pentagon was working with black soldiers to helpthem fight off-base discrimination and it was during this decade thatblacks began to receive something like whole-hearted support both withinthe structures of the military and in society at large as the anti-wareffort, the Civil Rights movement, federal anti-racist legislation and theWar on Poverty began to reshape American society (Binkin and Eitelberg,1982, p. New York: The Free Press.McPherson, J. 18). Berry and Blassingame correctlynote that the service of black men (and later black women) is replete withironies. The great tragedy for many blacks who have served the United States inthe military was not what happened to them on the battlefield or in thecockpit or on a destroyer, but what happened to them when they returnedfrom battle. The willingness of blacks to fight alongside other Union troops notonly helped the union effort, but also did help the push for more equalrights for black men in society (although not black women). The struggle for equality. (1982). For example, black soldiers are now positioned during wartime so thatthey will not be killed in greater (proportional) numbers than whites sothat they will not be seen as being used as cannon fodder. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company.Nalty, B. Nalty (1986) summarizes this position: The Revolutionary War thus lent credence to the belief, which would later become almost an article of faith among blacks, that military service in wartime represented a path toward freedom and greater postwar opportunity. Much of the reason that so many blacks were willing to fight for acountry that had enslaved them and, even when it ceased to enslave themkept them segregated goes back to Crispus Attucks, or at least to the yearsof the Revolutionary War. (1964). Blacks had fought in the Revolutionary War, although not in largenumbers, although they did participate in the battles at Lexington,Concord, Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill. It is uncertain evenwhether he was black, of mixed black and white descent, or of both Africanand Native American ancestry. 219-22 ). He continues to stand as a symbol both ofbravery and of forgiveness. Nearly a dozen black men achieved the rank ofgeneral in the 19th century, for example (Hawkins, 1993, p. The belief among many blacks at the time wasthat an overt dedication to the union cause would aid their requests forfull citizenship. 19). Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution.Hawkins, W. 15). FrederickDouglass was one of the forces behind urging blacks to enlist, and within36 hours of Lincoln's first call for troops, blacks in Boston met and beganto organize militia companies. 295) note, military service hashistorically served as a critical test for the status of blacks in Americansociety, although the same might also be said of Native Americans as wellas of Asian Americans and Latinos and even to some extent for women. Certainly, at some level, the story is true, for a man by that namewas killed in the Boston Massacre and he has no doubt inspired many blackmen to sign up to serve their country in ways that have exposed them to therisk of death or terrible injury. Strength for the fight. The armed forces of the post-Vietnam era have struggled (sometimesmore valiantly than at other times and more so in some branches than inothers) to provide equal opportunities to blacks as well as equal risks tothem. Surely the blacks in these units wouldhave been aware of the irony of such an assignment, as Berry andBlassingame succinctly describe it. 295). However, in 1958,President Truman issued an executive order barring discrimination in thearmed services - although the outbreak of the Korean War found a still-segregated army. Unfortunately, the conflict also set the patterns, followed for more than a century and a half, by which the American government used blacks in time of crisis and ignored them afterward (p. 17). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.