Download or read book The U S Military and Civil Rights Since World War II written by Heather Stur and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through examinations of U.S. military racial and gender integration efforts and its handling of sexuality, this book argues that the need for personnel filling the ranks has forced the armed services to be pragmatically progressive since World War II. The integration of African Americans and women into the United States Armed Forces after World War II coincided with major social movements in which marginalized civilians demanded equal citizenship rights. As this book explores, due to personnel needs, the military was a leading institution in its opening of positions to women and African Americans and its offering of educational and economic opportunities that in many cases were not available to them in the civilian world. By opening positions to African Americans and women and remaking its "where boys become men" image, the military was an institutional leader on the issue of social equality in the second half of the 20th century. The pushback against gay men and women wishing to serve openly in the forces, however, revealed the limits of the military's pragmatic progressivism. This text investigates how policymakers have defined who belongs in the military and counts as a soldier, and examines how the need to attract new recruits led to the opening of the forces to marginalized groups and the rebranding of the services.
Download or read book Integrating the US Military written by Douglas Walter Bristol and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2017-05 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Integrating the US Military is an edited collection that examines the US Army's role and place in progressive social change through the lens of the military experience of African Americans, women, and gays since World War II. By making this long overdue comparison, the editors argue this anthology demonstrates how the challenges launched against the racial, gender, and sexual status quo in the years after World War II transformed overarching ideas about power, citizenship, and America's role in the world. This anthology's major contribution is synthesizing recent scholarly work on the history of minorities and women in the US military. It does so by examining connections between GIs and civilian society in the context of ideologies of race, gender, and sexuality. Given the militarization of American society since World War II, revealing the links between these legally marginalized groups within the Armed Services is historically significant in its own right. At the same time, this comparison also sheds new light on a broad range of issues that affected civilian society, such as affirmative action, integration, marriage laws, and sexual harassment. Integrating the US Military is a book designed for college students, military professionals, policy makers, and general readers. Allowing readers to view the history of several civil rights movements within the Armed Forces will prompt them to rethink the way they understand the history of social movements. It will also help them to better understand the relationship between the military and American society. Finally, readers will gain a historical perspective on recent debates about the rights of gays in the military and the implications of deploying women in combat."--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The U S Military and Civil Rights Since World War II written by Heather Marie Stur and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2019 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Through examinations of the U.S. military's racial and gender integration efforts, and its handling of sexuality, this book argues that the need for personnel filling the ranks has forced the armed services to be pragmatically progressive since World War II. Includes an introduction that offers historical context for understanding the U.S. military's relationship to social change, provides an in-depth examination of race, gender, and sexuality within the U.S. military since World War II and a conclusion that explores the future of military progressivism."--
Download or read book World War II and American Racial Politics written by Steven White and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the myriad consequences of World War II for racial attitudes and the presidential response to civil rights.
Download or read book The U S Military and Civil Rights Since World War II written by Heather Stur and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Through examinations of the U.S. military's racial and gender integration efforts, and its handling of sexuality, this book argues that the need for personnel filling the ranks has forced the armed services to be pragmatically progressive since World War II. Includes an introduction that offers historical context for understanding the U.S. military's relationship to social change, provides an in-depth examination of race, gender, and sexuality within the U.S. military since World War II and a conclusion that explores the future of military progressivism."--
Download or read book Promises to Keep written by Paul S. Boyer and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This challenging and motivating text presents the experience of the U.S. in World War II as a backdrop for understanding recent developments and events in American history. Four principal interwoven themes trace 1) the pervasive impact of the Cold War, 2) the effects of social-protest movements among African-Americans, women, and other groups, 3) the sources and impact of economic, demographic, and cultural changes, and 4) a thorough examination of politics.
Download or read book War what is it Good For written by Kimberley L. Phillips and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how African Americans' participation in the nation's wars after President Truman's order to intergrate the military, and their protracted struggles for equal citizenship, galvanized the antiwar activism that reshaped their struggles for freedom.
Download or read book The Double V written by Rawn James, Jr. and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-03-25 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The century-long struggle to achieve equality for America's black soldiers and sailors, in a stirring narrative history by the author of Root and Branch
Download or read book Freedom to Serve written by Jon E. Taylor and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of America's entry into World War II, African American leaders pushed for inclusion in the war effort and, after the war, they mounted a concerted effort to integrate the armed services. Harry S. Truman's decision to issue Executive Order 9981 in 1948, which resulted in the integration of the armed forces, was an important event in twentieth Jon E. Taylor gives an account of the presidential order as an event which forever changed the U.S. armed forces, and set a political precedent for the burgeoning civil rights movement. Including press releases, newspaper articles, presidential speeches, and biographical sidebars, Freedom to Serve introduces students to an underexamined event while illuminating the period in a new way. Critical Moments in American History is a series of supplemental books designed specifically for undergraduate history courses, providing students with the opportunity to examine a specific event within the context of both narrative history and primary source documents.
Download or read book Divisions written by Thomas A. Guglielmo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-03 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first comprehensive narrative of racism in America's World War II military and the resistance to it. America's World War II military was a force of unalloyed good. While saving the world from Nazism, it also managed to unify a famously fractious American people. At least that's the story many Americans have long told themselves. Divisions offers a decidedly different view. Prizewinning historian Thomas A. Guglielmo draws together more than a decade of extensive research to tell sweeping yet personal stories of race and the military; of high command and ordinary GIs; and of African Americans, white Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans. Guglielmo argues that the military built not one color line, but a complex tangle of them. Taken together, they represented a sprawling structure of white supremacy. Freedom struggles arose in response, democratizing portions of the wartime military and setting the stage for postwar desegregation and the subsequent civil rights movements. But the costs of the military's color lines were devastating. They impeded America's war effort; undermined the nation's rhetoric of the Four Freedoms; further naturalized the concept of race; deepened many whites' investments in white supremacy; and further fractured the American people. Offering a dramatic narrative of America's World War II military and of the postwar world it helped to fashion, Guglielmo fundamentally reshapes our understanding of the war and of mid-twentieth-century America.
Download or read book Fighting for America written by Christopher Paul Moore and published by One World. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The African-American contribution to winning World War II has never been celebrated as profoundly as in Fighting for America. In this inspirational and uniquely personal tribute, the essential part played by black servicemen and -women in that cataclysmic conflict is brought home. Here are letters, photographs, oral histories, and rare documents, collected by historian Christopher Moore, the son of two black WWII veterans. Weaving his family history with that of his people and nation, Moore has created an unforgettable tapestry of sacrifice, fortitude, and courage. From the 1,800 black soldiers who landed at Normandy Beach on D-Day, and the legendary Tuskegee Airmen who won ninety-five Distinguished Flying Crosses, to the 761st Tank Battalion who, under General Patton, helped liberate Nazi death camps, the invaluable effort of black Americans to defend democracy is captured in word and image. Readers will be introduced to many unheralded heroes who helped America win the war, including Dorie Miller, the messman who manned a machine gun and downed four Japanese planes; Robert Brooks, the first American to die in armored battle; Lt. Jackie Robinson, the future baseball legend who faced court-martial for refusing to sit in the back of a military bus; an until now forgotten African-American philosopher who helped save many lives at a Japanese POW camp; even the author’s own parents: his mother, Kay, a WAC when she met his father, Bill, who was part of the celebrated Red Ball Express. Yet Fighting for America is more than a testimonial; it is also a troubling story of profound contradictions, of a country still in the throes of segregation, of a domestic battleground where arrests and riots occurred simultaneously with foreign service–and of how the war helped spotlight this disparity and galvanize the need for civil rights. Featuring a unique perspective on black soldiers, Fighting for America will move any reader: all who, like the author, owe their lives to those who served.
Download or read book Double V written by Lawrence P. Scott and published by MSU Press. This book was released on 1998-12-31 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On April 12, 1945, the United States Army Air Force arrested 101 of its African American officers. They were charged with disobeying a direct order from a superior officer—a charge that could carry the death penalty upon conviction. They were accused of refusing to sign an order that would have placed them in segregated housing and recreational facilities. Their plight was virtually ignored by the press at the time, and books written about the subject did not detail the struggle these aviators underwent to win recognition of their civil rights. The central theme of Double V is the promise held out to African American military personnel that service in World War II would deliver to them a double victory—a "double V"—over tyranny abroad and racial prejudice at home. The book's authors, Lawrence P. Scott and William M. Womack Sr., chronicle for the first time, in detail, one of America's most dramatic failures to deliver on that promise. In the course of their narrative, the authors demonstrate how the Tuskegee airmen suffered as second-class citizens while risking their lives to serve their country. Among the contributions made by this work is a detailed examination of how 101 Tuskegee airmen, by refusing to live in segregated quarters, triggered one of the most significant judicial proceedings in U.S. military history. Double V uses oral accounts and heretofore unused government documents to portray this little-known struggle by one of America's most celebrated flying units. In addition to providing background material about African American aviators before World War II. the authors also demonstrate how the Tuskegee airmen's struggle foretold dilemmas faced by the civil rights movement in the second half of the 20th century. Double V is destined to become an important contribution in the rapidly growing body of civil rights literature.
Download or read book Fog of War written by Kevin M. Kruse and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-02 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection is a timely reconsideration of the intersection between two of the dominant events of twentieth-century American history, the upheaval wrought by the Second World War and the social revolution brought about by the African American struggle for equality. Scholars from a wide range of fields explore the impact of war on the longer history of African American protest from many angles: from black veterans to white segregationists, from the rural South to northern cities, from popular culture to federal politics, and from the American confrontations to international connections. It is well known that World War II gave rise to human rights rhetoric, discredited a racist regime abroad, and provided new opportunities for African Americans to fight, work, and demand equality at home. It would be all too easy to assume that the war was a key stepping stone to the modern civil rights movement. But the authors show that in reality the momentum for civil rights was not so clear cut, with activists facing setbacks as well as successes and their opponents finding ways to establish more rigid defenses for segregation. While the war set the scene for a mass movement, it also narrowed some of the options for black activists.
Download or read book World War II and Mexican American Civil Rights written by Richard Griswold del Castillo and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This historical study examines how Mexican American experiences during WWII galvanized the community’s struggle for civil rights. World War II marked a turning point for Mexican Americans that fundamentally changed their relationship to US society at large. The experiences of fighting alongside white Americans in the military, as well as working in factory jobs for wages equal to those of Anglo workers, made Mexican Americans less willing to tolerate the second-class citizenship that had been their lot before the war. Having proven their loyalty and “Americanness” during World War II, Mexican Americans began to demand the civil rights they deserved. In this book, Richard Griswold del Castillo and Richard Steele investigate how the wartime experiences of Mexican Americans helped forge their civil rights consciousness and how the US government responded. The authors demonstrate, for example, that the US government “discovered” Mexican Americans during World War II and began addressing some of their problems as a way of ensuring their willingness to support the war effort. The book concludes with a selection of key essays and historical documents from the World War II period that provide a first-person perspective of Mexican American civil rights struggles.
Download or read book Let Us Fight as Free Men written by Christine Knauer and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, the military is one the most racially diverse institutions in the United States. But for many decades African American soldiers battled racial discrimination and segregation within its ranks. In the years after World War II, the integration of the armed forces was a touchstone in the homefront struggle for equality—though its importance is often overlooked in contemporary histories of the civil rights movement. Drawing on a wide array of sources, from press reports and newspapers to organizational and presidential archives, historian Christine Knauer recounts the conflicts surrounding black military service and the fight for integration. Let Us Fight as Free Men shows that, even after their service to the nation in World War II, it took the persistent efforts of black soldiers, as well as civilian activists and government policy changes, to integrate the military. In response to unjust treatment during and immediately after the war, African Americans pushed for integration on the strength of their service despite the oppressive limitations they faced on the front and at home. Pressured by civil rights activists such as A. Philip Randolph, President Harry S. Truman passed an executive order that called for equal treatment in the military. Even so, integration took place haltingly and was realized only after the political and strategic realities of the Korean War forced the Army to allow black soldiers to fight alongside their white comrades. While the war pushed the civil rights struggle beyond national boundaries, it also revealed the persistence of racial discrimination and exposed the limits of interracial solidarity. Let Us Fight as Free Men reveals the heated debates about the meaning of military service, manhood, and civil rights strategies within the African American community and the United States as a whole.
Download or read book The Greatest Generation Comes Home written by Michael D. Gambone and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the conclusion of World War II, Americans anxiously contemplated the return to peace. It was an uncertain time, filled with concerns about demobilization, inflation, strikes, and the return of a second Great Depression. Balanced against these challenges was the hope in a future of unparalleled opportunities for a generation raised in hard times and war. One of the remarkable untold stories of postwar America is the successful assimilation of sixteen million veterans back into civilian society after 1945. The G.I. generation returned home filled with the same sense of fear and hope as most citizens at the time. Their transition from conflict to normalcy is one of the greatest chapters in American history. "The Greatest Generation Comes Home" combines military and social history into a comprehensive narrative of the veteran's experience after World War II. It integrates early impressions of home in 1945 with later stories of medical recovery, education, work, politics, and entertainment, as well as moving accounts of the dislocation, alienation, and discomfort many faced. The book includes the experiences of not only the millions of veterans drawn from mainstream white America, but also the women, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans who served the nation. Perhaps most important, the book also examines the legacy bequeathed by these veterans to later generations who served in uniform on new battlefields around the world.
Download or read book The African American Experience During World War II written by Neil A. Wynn and published by Rowman & Littlefield Pub Incorporated. This book was released on 2011-09-22 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Synopsis: World War II was crucial in the development of the emerging Civil Rights movement, whether through the economic and social impact of the war, or through demands for equality in the military. This period was characterized by an intense transformation of black hopes and expectations, encouraged by real socio-economic shifts and departures in federal policy. During the war, black self consciousness found powerful expression in new movements such as the "Double V" campaign that linked the fight for democracy at home for the fight for democracy abroad. A half century after the war, this volume presents a much-needed, up-to-date, short and readable interpretation of existing scholarship on the era and its issues. Drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and research, Dr. Wynn pulls together primary sources and locates the war years within the long-term developments of the twentieth century.
