In order to win the Cold War, American presidents embraced the mantra of equality of opportunity to justify racial reform efforts within the US military. The problem was that equality of opportunity never guaranteed acceptance-nor was it designed to. In The Racial Integration of the American Armed Forces, Geoffrey W. Jensen clarifies our understanding of the political processes that fundamentally altered the racial composition of the American military.Jensen examines nearly thirty years of military integration that unfolded during the Cold War. America's racial woes were grist for the propaganda mills in Moscow and their integration effort was intended to curb this assault and protect the nation's image during this largely ideological struggle. But integration of the armed forces needed more than just Cold War justification. It also required the willingness of the president to lead. Military integration occurred as the result of the longstanding tradition of Congress to allow the executive branch to control the staffing and composition of the military. While past accounts of the integration of the armed forces have focused on the critical roles played by the burgeoning leadership of the civil rights movement and the Black population, Jensen is the first to emphasize the importance of presidential leadership and their staffs. Jensen contends that understanding the action-and inaction-of Cold War presidents and their administrations matters just as much as understanding the efforts of those outside of Washington and the West Wing, as it was the presidents who were the ones dictating the pace at which reform was carried out. Jensen has carefully situated this story within the milieu of the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and, looming over it all, the emergence of Southern resistance to desegregation in the United States. Desperately committed to upholding and expanding their vision of white supremacy, the South recoiled in horror at the prospect of racially integrating the armed forces. From this vantage point, Jensen shows how the use of Black military personnel during the Cold War, and throughout all American history, was not born solely out of humanistic beliefs or desires to improve the social status of the Black community, but out of the strategic necessity of winning the war at hand.
Geoffrey W. Jensen is associate professor of history at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments 1. A Faustian Bargain: White Presidents, Wartime Necessity, and the Black Pursuit of Civil Rights, 1770 to 1945 2. "It Was Good Trouble, It Was Necessary Trouble": Truman and Reform 3. Born out of the Necessity of War: The Korean War and Reform 4. The Frustration of the Middle Way: Eisenhower and Reform 5. From Image to Action: Kennedy, Johnson, and Reform 6. The Decrescendo of Cold War Racial Reform: Vietnam, Johnson, and Nixon Conclusion Epilogue Notes Index
"Geoffrey Jensen makes a strong case for re-examining the integration of the US military through the lens of the Cold War, an important perspective that is generally absent from the scholarship on the topic. Jensen argues military integration was born out of the necessity of war-the Cold War-and contends the process of military reform waxed and waned according to the threats communist forces posed to US interests. His emphasis on the international concerns of presidential administrations corrects a tendency of scholars of military integration to limit their analysis to domestic concerns and the politics of civil rights."-Douglas Walter Bristol, Jr., coeditor, Integrating the US Military: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation since World War II Geoffrey W. Jensen's investigation of the intentions, processes, and outcomes of racial integration in the United States Armed Forces is as searing as it is engaging. For a topic as central to a military's history-not to mention efficacy-racial integration has been sorely omitted by the historical record. In today's current climate, Born out of the Necessity of War could not be more timely or more prescient."-Lorissa Rinehart, author of First to the Front, The Untold Story of Dickey Chapelle
