The Angry Black Soldiers

...This problem has been particularly acute overseas, especially in Germany...

...Nationwide, an increase from sixty-one per cent to eighty-three per cent was announced by Clifford in 1968...

...It was started at Camranh Bay, Vietnam, by black sailors after whites burned a six-foot wooden cross and flew a makeshift Confederate banner from the base's flagpole the day Martin Luther King Jr...

...The unit involved in the Camp Le-jeune violence was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel H. L. Maxwell, the only black Marine ever to head a combat battalion...

...These include the establishment of a base human relations council, with officers and enlisted men, both black and white...

...There were reports some men were taking guns to bed at night...

...Many of them feel that the military places penalties on those Negroes who openly identify with the black identity movement...

...There is a connection between the revolutions in the Third World and the struggle for black freedom in America, they claim...

...Williams of the NAACP says the black veteran is "meeting with prejudice in the administration of the Veterans Administration...

...In an interview with the Associated Press late in November, Maxwell attributed the racial violence to the Corps' inability to deal with "the desires and feelings" of young black Marines...

...Militant organizations like the Black Muslims have long maintained that black men should not serve in the armed forces until discrimination was ended in America...

...But it is also true that usually a candidate for promotion must appear in person before a promotions board...

...Joseph Burgess of the Urban League says the program for assisting returned Vietnam veterans is reaching only forty per cent of the total...

...Unfair application of the code of military justice...

...The blacks are fighting supposedly to bring freedom to a country 8,000 miles away at a time when they feel they do not have freedom at home...

...General Chapman's orders have led to confusion on Marine bases...

...The other armed forces repeat the Corps pattern, but to a lesser degree...

...If he complies, Seamans will be following a precedent set during the summer of 1967 when Defense Secretary Robert McNamara put off-limits on all housing in the Washington suburbs whose landlords would not rent to black servicemen...

...Blacks therefore are in the" forefront of the war effort...

...was assassinated...

...Exact figures for the number of black servicemen's organizations have never been compiled, but one black naval officer says that "formation of black organizations is as much a trend as the Afro haircut, quite widespread...

...Racial discrimination in hiring is widespread...

...New recruits and draftees, on the other hand, tend to view the military as irrevocably racist...

...Military officers, such as Captain Hay at Quonset Point, maintain that the limited numbers of black officers result from the service's inability to recruit qualified Negroes...

...Some observers feel the Moormen will prove a constructive channel for frustrations that might otherwise erupt into violence...

...Their purpose is to negotiate black grievances, such as the absence of soul music on base record players, with the base commander...

...In rare cases, organizations become highly sophisticated...

...There is also an experimental program of "threshold" sensitivity training, designed to erase as much racial prejudice as possible from the minds of Marines...

...He was relieved of command of the unit shortly after the incident and was made a race relations trouble-shooter for the 2nd Marine Division...

...1f Idleness...

...But intra-service discrimination and off-base prejudice have been present for a long time...

...He said that until recently recruiting films showed white soldiers visiting white European countries—with no blacks involved...

...Brown has since requested a list of establishments that discriminate and will ask Air Force Secretary Robert Seamans Jr...

...The Chicago Defender, perhaps the most respected of black newspapers, editorialized that the orders "amounted to a tap on the wrist...

...Other factors believed to cause race troubles in the services are: Discrimination in promotions...

...It is unofficially off-limits to whites...

...They see the war as "neo-colonialist...

...His attitude is echoed by a Marine officer who told a reporter, "There's no room in the Marines for any color except green...

...Marine Corps Commandant Leonard Chapman acknowledged the existence of a racial problem...

...Quite often the new spirit of black brotherhood takes organizational form...

...He points to the chairmen of the House and Senate armed forces committees—L...

...Young black servicemen are increasingly adopting the trappings and rhetoric of black militancy...

...Paul Good, a well-known free lance journalist, wrote in Life magazine how various factors combined to bring racial tensions at Camp Lejeune to an explosive pitch last summer...

...How do you think we feel when we see black power flags or when we see them give their black power salute...

...Mendel Rivers of South Carolina and John Stennis of Mississippi respectively—as support for his argument...

...Secretary of the Army Resor's recommendations that Bennett's human relations training be implemented have not been in effect long enough to judge their effectiveness...

...In late November, an eight-man Pentagon team, accompanied by a special Presidential aide, was sent to Vietnam to "study the implementation of Department of Defense policies and programs dealing with minority-group relations within the military...

...And black noncommissioned officers don't say anything about it because their careers come into it...

...Figures released in 1965 showed that 18.3 per cent of the total Army casualties were suffered by Negroes, although they made up only a little more than thirteen per cent of the total Army manpower in Vietnam...

...If something occurred that might be construed as racial, the military was inclined either to ignore it or cover it up...

...In northern Virginia the number of landlords who have agreed to rent on a non-discriminatory basis jumped from ten per cent to thirty-six per cent as a result of McNamara's actions...

...Military officials say this results from the high percentage of blacks in elite fighting units such as the Airborne and Air Cavalry...

...As recently as 1962, an Army survey found that at least forty-eight of its bases were located adjacent to communities operating segregated school systems, sixty-eight near segregated bars and restaurants, sixty-three near segregated theaters, ten adjacent to segregated libraries, and twenty-three near segregated churches...

...But it is also clear that the adjustments are made within the American pattern of racial prejudice and discrimination...

...Bert Shaixnader, twenty-two, of Fresno, California, was wounded twice in Vietnam...

...JACK WHITE, formerly a correspondent for The Washington Post, is on the staff of the Race Relations Information Center...

...Generally, what I did was keep my mouth shut so as to not interfere with my own efficiency rating...

...Others, like a veteran civil rights leader, attributed the troubles to long domination of the armed services by "men from the South, the section of the country we have the most trouble with...

...The ban was later made nationwide by his successor, Clark Clifford...

...Black soldiers, who make up about thirteen per cent of the Army's enlisted men, point to this as prima facie evidence that the military is a white supremacist organization...

...Besides the human relations council, a human affairs officer has been assigned to each battalion...

...Strong measures were taken to clamp down on any further disorder...

...Some, like an irate writer in Life magazine, thought military authority had capitulated to "the black power boys...

...I can tell you one thing, it sure doesn't make us happy...

...Now, he has a job carting railroad ties...

...All were said to be minor...

...By most accounts, racial incidents are more prevalent in the Army and Marines than in the Navy and Air Force...

...Perhaps the only thing that could be agreed upon was that a number of serious incidents had taken place at military bases in North Carolina, New Jersey, Hawaii, and Vietnam...

...Thus, where there is an allegation that patterns of discrimination exist, the military may respond that investigation did not discover any basis for court martial or other disciplinary action...

...In Seaside, California, near Fort Ord, black soldiers have staked out a dingy conglomeration of pool hall, liquor store, and bar and renamed it "The Pit...

...women seem to play a large part in racial conflict...

...Even the black captain cited above said, "The man who is commanded by a segregationist must always put out ten per cent more if he wants to be judged equal...

...Indeed, it was difficult to assess how widespread the turmoil was...

...The top brass did not acknowledge any problem, and officers in the field tended to follow their example...

...Why should I fight in Vietnam," one black soldier asked, "when I'll just have to fight some more when I get home...

...In the first war ever fought by an integrated American Army, blacks are doing more than their numerical share of the fighting and dying...

...Reportedly they have told German women that blacks are "animals" and "rapists...

...His daughter was a soul singer, the original "Peaches" in the "Peaches and Herb" combo...

...Off-base discrimination—or self-segregation—is practiced by blacks as well as whites...

...In the last analysis, that is the real lesson of last summer...

...Says a black Navy officer, "The Navy is way ahead of any equal "Many whites are put off by black organizations of any type...

...He said that the youths had experienced "the most intensive kind of integration" in Vietnam, only to return to off-base discrimination and in-tra-Corps prejudice at home...

...They cannot find women of their own race, so naturally they turn to those available...

...As a result of the measures Maxwell referred to, Camp Lejeune has become a testing ground for military policies recommended by Bennett some years ago...

...Many whites are put off by black organizations of any type...

...But NAACP official Williams investigated the incident in the company of Bennett, the Pentagon's civil rights director...

...Williams concluded that the fight was the result of a regional rather than a racial confrontation...

...Less than one per cent of the officers in the Navy, Air Force, or Marines are black...

...Newsmen have reported all-black platoons in these units...

...These views are balanced by those of servicemen who say the armed forces are far less discriminatory than civilian institutions...

...Before the fall of 1969, the armed forces had been complacent about racial troubles...

...Because they are the ones who see how they can advance in these units," according to Clarence Browning of the Concerned Veterans of Vietnam...

...There was little similarity among them...

...In an effort to turn blacks and whites into "green" Marines, the Corps uses methods which one scholar has described as "brutal" and "anachronistic...

...When this happens, the discrimination is likely to continue...

...Soldiers are under great pressure not to make complaints because of fear their commanding officers will retaliate...

...We don't have enough girls, period.' Most of the white girls will dance with black Marines, he said, and some of the white Marines from the South resent it...

...The military is "a mirror reflection" of society, one high-ranking military man said recently...

...He is angry because he feels that the armed forces discriminate against him, because when he goes off base he becomes a second-class citizen, because he must fight in Vietnam and, sometimes, against his brothers in the streets at home...

...It didn't start out racial, but it became that...

...Possibly an even greater producer of tension than intra-military discrimination is off-base discrimination, which raises the question of the value of military service for a black man...

...A few weeks before the racial brawl at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, an ad hoc committee of officers had warned the base's commander that serious trouble was in the offing...

...It pays two dollars an hour...

...It is also designed to spike rumors before they spread...

...But career men—"lifers" who served in Jim Crow units prior to President Harry Truman's desegregation order in 1948—tend to see great improvements in military race relations...

...When they returned, the black official, L. Howard Bennett, reported that if something were not quickly done to ease racial tensions, there would be "riots and demonstrations of epidemic proportions...

...Since then, the Pentagon has become a relative hotbed of activity...

...Some of the white Southerners objected to this white sailor and everybody went outside and they got into a fight...

...Black militants say the war is a racist plan to exterminate "the cream of young black manhood...

...So nothing was done...

...Browning of the Concerned Veterans of Vietnam claimed that "it will just make it easier for them to single out militant blacks for punishment...

...During the riot in Washington, D.C...

...And their analysis is taking hold, not only among young blacks, but among young radical whites as well...

...The black Marines say that they were fighting to protect the white sailor when he was attacked, because he was a Northerner and had been friendly with some of them...

...With no outlet for the boredom built up on base, Good wrote, all the Marines became edgy and aggressive...

...But Representative William J. Randall, Missouri Democrat who headed a House investigation of the summer's violence, said that "the disturbances were much fewer than it would seem from nationwide publicity...

...The Angry Black Soldiers by JACK WHITE TVThy did racial violence break out *' at military bases across the nation last summer...

...In October, Robert J. Brown, special assistant to President Nixon...

...Career-minded individuals are first of all soldiers and segregationists second," said Joseph Burgess, who served six years as an Army captain and is now a National Urban League staff member, "and on duty, you don't usually have racial problems...

...Women—of any color—are in short supply...

...But in the main, the nation was shocked and surprised by racial fighting in what was thought to be its most successfully integrated institution, and there was no complete explanation for the trouble or proven solutions to prevent its recurrence...

...opportunity employer in civilian life...

...The problem is believed to have been alleviated by the passage of civil rights laws outlawing discrimination in public accommodations, but it has by no means disappeared...

...In many cases, he said, organization goes no further than eating together in the base cafeteria or congregating in a corner of a barracks...

...But they show that the military has finally recognized the connection between discrimination off base and within the services...

...Waldo Lyon, a psychologist, found that physical harassment at Marine boot camps was even more prevalent than in the brig...

...Said one: "I think that the primary cause of the racial disorder is that most of the military men, particularly those from the South, do not want to accept black men as their equal...

...Members of Congress asked the Pentagon about the prediction and were told that it was "alarmist...

...He is hopeful that racial tension will be reduced...

...Well, he went on about his business...

...The Navy has had only "a small number, perhaps three to four of any consequence," according to the Naval Information Office...

...The problem is more complex for black soldiers who are stationed in areas far away from any large number of Negro civilians...

...One of the problems is the Saturday night dance,' explained Jack Bale, executive director of the Ocean-side Armed Services YMCA near Camp Pendleton...

...Some believe it was not important how the fight began, that only the gloomy results matter...

...Moskowitz, the former deputy assistant Secretary of Defense, said after returning from Vietnam that idleness was a key factor in racial troubles there last year...

...As Bennett put it, the events of last summer "represent the infiltration into the military community of the turbulence that has taken place in the civilian communiHow effective will the military's proposals for reform be...

...Many whites are put off by black organizations of any type...

...Looking at that," he said, "I don't blame any black brother for concluding that the armed forces were lily white...

...HThe white officers' "elite...

...Most of the members have been subjected to Marine discipline...

...He is angry, too, because many times he will find unemployment his only reward for risking his life in his country's service...

...A cross was burned on the lawn of a black civilian employe of the base after he was quoted in newspapers as saying, "Lejeune is worse than Mississippi...

...Subsequently, Vietnam became a racial battleground, with numerous serious incidents reported...

...In the fall of 1968, two top Pentagon civil rights officials —one black, one white—visited Vietnam...

...Reporters who visited the camp in the wake of the brawl found blacks and whites at extreme odds...

...His orders marked a permissive departure from Marine tradition, but it remains to be seen how effective they will be...

...Black re-enlistment rates, over the years nearly double that of whites, offer additional support for this view...

...Office of Economic Opportunity, maintains offices in three states, and operates a veterans' assistance program...

...His sergeant, a black veteran of more than twenty years, could not understand it either...

...The Air Force has had only twelve racially motivated incidents in the past two years, according to the Air Force Public Information Office...

...When he sees trouble brewing, Bale immediately stops the dance...

...White servicemen's prejudice has also led to German reluctance to rent to black servicemen...

...Accounts of the brawl differ...

...It is clear, then, that the military is not exempt from the racial pressures that threaten to tear America apart...

...He has given them unofficial recognition...

...The official version, according to Good, is: "Blacks provoked a fight on the dance floor of the Area One Service Club after a black WAVE dancing with a white Marine refused to let a black Marine cut in...

...The military insists that there is no discrimination in promotions because their procedures—including standardized tests—are so impersonal...

...In the Army the figure is higher: 3.4 per cent...

...Methods such as Lyon describes are bound to cause abrasive reactions in young blacks, many of whom have just become attuned to black identity...

...William Endicott and Stanley Willi-ford, writing in The Nation, reported, "Most commanders will admit that in the last few months the post off-duty clubs have become increasingly explosive...

...Again, nothing was done at the time...

...It is impossible to say which attitude prevails among the 350,000 black servicemen...

...However, some observers feel that Chapman's orders are significant because they mark a real effort on the part of a senior military man to cope with intraservice racial difficulties...

...Clarence Browning, a twenty-year Army veteran and now assistant director of the Concerned Veterans of Vietnam, puts it this way: "If a black GI stands up for his rights—to be black and proud of it— he's going to get knocked down...

...The young black soldier is angry...

...Its purpose is to discuss problems and seek solutions...

...Poinchetta Pierce and Peter Baily of Ebony reported that black veterans were encountering problems finding good jobs despite the proliferation of programs set up by public and private agencies...

...The reason: German women had been told their babies would be born black if Negroes lived nearby...

...Camp Lejeune had split into two camps, warily eying each other and seemingly moving toward an inevitable confrontation...

...Blacks at Camp Lejeune reportedly were outraged to discover that the Marine version of an Afro haircut does not closely resemble the civilian version...

...the military is not exempt from the racial pressures that threaten to tear America apart...

...The organization now has a $65,000 grant from the U.S...

...Thomas Johnson of The New York Times found that black veterans were "confused and bitter" because they could not find decent work...

...At the end of the fighting, one white Marine was dead, a number of others had been injured, and forty-two black and Hispano-American Marines had been arrested and charged with offenses ranging from murder to participation in a riot...

...following Martin Luther King's assassination, a young paratrooper back from Vietnam said he could not understand why he should have to go so far away to fight when there was so much misery at home...

...Sentries were given twice the normal issue of ammunition and armed "reaction" squads were kept ready twenty-four hours a day...

...Phrases like "black Mafia" came easily to the lips of whites...

...Syndicated columnist Carl Rowan concluded that the armed forces "were full of dissension...

...The black man has to risk his life to get ahead and get that extra little ¦jump pay, whereas the white boys can get ahead just by putting in time...

...It is unlikely that young blacks will ever find a more clear-cut example of brainwashing than a Marine boot camp...

...Bennett's boss, Deputy Assistant Secretary Jack Moskowitz, who accompanied him on the Vietnam visit, said that he had not reached any of Bennett's conclusions...

...He who wears an Afro gets identified...

...The unofficial boundary lines are said to be religiously observed by black and white servicemen...

...On and off base, women seem to play a large role in racial conflict...

...and a black Air Force officer were all refused service in a Biloxi, Mississippi, tavern that caters to servicemen...

...a white sergeant wrote to Time magazine...

...And civil rights leaders like Williams say that the orders deal only superficially with the problems...

...Now, he can't find a job...

...One explanation is that the Navy and Air Force are organized in much smaller units and much of the men's time is spent on duty, operating ships and airplanes...

...to place them off-limits...

...In Vietnam, one section of Saigon where whites are unwelcome is known as "Soul City...

...One of the major tenets of black militant thought is that whites have brainwashed blacks, causing self-hatred and a distorted mental self-image...

...In and of themselves they are insufficient to explain the outbreak of violence last summer...

...Robert Clay, twenty-one, of Washington, D.C, put in eighteen months as a Marine in Vietnam, crawling into caves looking for the Viet-cong...

...Then . . . blacks swarmed out in gangs beating hapless white individuals...

...Young blacks maintain that they are often court-martialed for offenses that are overlooked when committed by whites...

...He moved to ameliorate it by allowing black Marines to wear a version of the Afro haircut, use the black power salute when off duty, and listen to soul music on juke boxes on the base...

...The tension exploded in July...

...What happened is this," he said during an interview, "a white sailor or Marine had dated the Negro WAVE, and, of course, a black Marine asked her to dance and she refused...

...If I weren't in this uniform, I'd be out here with them," he said of the rioters...

...Now, however, Maxwell feels that the Corps' leadership has taken positive steps to "develop an environment in this division where discrimination cannot occur...

...He added that young Marine officers could not deal with the problem because of their inexperience and that older officers would not deal with it because of indifference and a lack of understanding of "the social revolution that's going on in this country...

...Infantry units, on the other hand, are inclined to be idle much of the time...

...At least some black servicemen share this view...

...Some Negro officers will punish a black GI more severely than a white one just to prove to the man [white superior officers] that they aren't biased in favor of blacks...

...everyone there is brainwashed from thinking of himself as anything other than a Marine...

...The Moormen wear black berets and African shirts off-duty and signal each other with the clinched-fist black power salute...

...A more typical organization, however, is the Moormen at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia...

...Black Marines, he found, were welcome at only one bar in Jacksonville, North Carolina...

...One black naval officer feels the problem is the military's inability to put across the message that it is dedicated to equal opportunity...

...L. Howard Bennett, Defense Department Civil Rights Director...

...Some observers feel that the war in Vietnam may be the spark that ignited the explosive relations between black and white soldiers...

...There is already some evidence that they have contributed to greater racial polarization...

...From these actions, it is clear that the military will continue to grapple with its increasingly apparent racial problem...

...The scenario had been predicted by a committee of officers a few weeks before the brawl began, and now it was coming true...

...Julius Williams, veterans affairs coordinator for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, claims, "The military has always been the policeman of the Southern segregationist tradition...

...His home was Washington...

...For whites, the situation is not much better than it is for blacks...

...He also instructed all commissioned and noncommissioned officers to re-read the Corps' manual on non-discrimination...

...There, white soldiers have been known to burn crosses or wear painted white robes and pointed hats...

...The Concerned Veterans of Vietnam is one such organization...