Description
Book SynopsisWhile 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, Geoffrey Jensen is the first to emphasize the importance of presidential leadership and their staffs.
Trade Review"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
Table of Contents
- 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
