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Kerry Eleved of The Advocate, in her piece View From Washington: Integration, and Think Progress in EXCLUSIVE: New Docs Show Truman Integrated Forces, Despite Military Objections discuss a historic perspective of surveys similar to the DADT survey. Specifically, discussing survey’s regarding about African-Americans and Jews integration in the military services prior to the 1948 decision by Truman to integrate the military services.
Such as, over 80% of Air Force officers and enlisted were against mixing “negroes” and whites in training situations and in the barracks.
Rachel Maddow summed it up in her piece last video piece night (July 23, 2010). If you haven’t seen her piece, it’s well worth the watch.
9 Comments
AmazingI saw this last night. I read all of the survey on Think Progress this morning. It blows my mind, but it’s all right there in the documents. I need to read more about the history of ending segregation and why it took about 6 years for the law to change.
sidebar, LCR trialArguments are complete in the DADT trial in Riverside.
http://blogs.pe.com/news/diges…
FWIW.
Can we please lay to rest,once and for all, Tom Brokaw’s whimsical meme that people in the military in the ’40s were in some mysterious way “the greatest generation”? Yes,they fought WWII, and yes a great many of them showed uncommon bravery. But it is equally true that, like most of America at the time, as a group they were narrow-mind, parochial and bigoted. Racist, sexist, antisemitic and, last but hardly least, homophobic. If that’s the “greatest” we’re capable of, we might as well throw in the towel right now.
I would just love to hear how supporters of DADT will say how this isn’t at all even a little bit similar to racial segregation.
This isn’t even an “over-whelming majority.” This is almost ALL!
Can you belive it?7% were for desegregating the armed forces and yet Harry Truman did it against objections by the Joint Cheifs of Staff.
Currently, it’s felt that about 60+% of the active duty are FOR allowing Gay and Lesbian citizens to serve openly.
Yet the current president (who insists on saying the Truman hallmark phrase of ‘the buck stops here’) drags his feet and does nothing and allows the JCoS to play games.
Can someone plese dig up Give’em Hell Harry and stick his ass back in the oval office please so we can get something done on this issue?
not to mention imperialist and anti-leftist!WWII isn’t the only war that generation approved of and voted for; Korea and many of the unsung conflicts of the cold war around the globe took place on their watch too. mccarthyism hurt millions of left leaning americans of all races, genders and classes, too. but the HUAC didn’t official end until the 60s iirc. people who say they want to go back to the “good old days” always seem to be white straight folks, in my experience. the rest of us are glad for progress since then.
Black voters in Illinois, New Jersey, and Californiawere a significant factor in Truman’s integration of the armed forces in 1948.
When Truman did this, he took an issue away from Thomas Dewey. The Republicans actually put racial desegregation of the Armed Forces into their 1948 platform (it may have been in the Republican 1944 political platform).
I’m not trying to take anything away from Harry Truman’s heroic actions but remember, there were a lot of factors in Truman drawing up EO 9981.
Please let’s not forget the decade long battle fought by A. Philip Randolph and the NAACP in seeing this through (their attempts with FDR failed in 1942).
Let’s not forget that A. Philip Randolph got on the floor of the Senate Armed Service Committee and threatened mass CD if the Truman Administration failed to desegregate the Armed Forces.
This wasn’t just Truman’s work.
I’m saying this because…it seems as if the black civil rights struggles of the 1940′s NEVER come up and are never recognized (even by black folks…of course, this is what happens when you don’t teach history in schools).
There were actually more race riots in the 1940′s than in the 1950′s; the struggles and court cases of the 1940′s (including a court case involving the racial desegregation of the military) provided the foundation for EVERYTHING that went on in the 1950′s.
Yup.