Civil War in The south

[David_66_UK]

And Truman was the one who ordered the integration of the armed forces.

 

I always assumed that their was a degree of pragmatism to this - as if you are s#itting on folk it's best not to arm them with machine guns and form them into self contained units (a lesson oft forgotten).

 

Wasn't their something about a near mutiny in Korea (or about the time of Korea) which helped the decision along?

[Flashermac]

No.

[..]

Big_Kahuna said:

No, he hasn't. The one time a message was up that said he was shut down by the government was his own April Fool's joke. That was this year.

Ron DID get into some shit for his 1992 coup coverage (after the fact of course) and had to back down. But the stuff is still on the site if you know where to look. Fastenating as he was right in the thick of it taking pix!

 

Cheers,

SD

[Guest]

 

But the 1992 coup was before 2bangkok.com ever started. Do you mean he took shit at the time for photographing it, ot later for posting it once the site was running?

[Guest]

Just caught the "after the fact". Thanks.

[Guest]

DavidUK: Truman's decision was, I believe, in 1947, years before the outbreak of the Korean war. There was no mutiny anywhere else to hasten the decision.

[Guest]

Ah, here it is. July 26, 1948, still almost 2 full yaers before the Korean War.

 

And there's this from "The Penguin History of the United States of America":

 

"Harry Truman was not untouched by the prejudices of his native state, Missouri, but he was too intelligent and had too lively a sense of decency nd justice to let them rule him. Besides, he knew the increasing importane of the Negro vote to the Democratic Party and, above all, to the New Deal, which he was determined to carry to renewed victories. So as well as ordering the desegregation of the armed services, he set up a new Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC), using his executive authority (the wartime FEPC had lapsed after the return of peace, and filibustering southern senators made sure that Congress did not revive it on a statutory footing), he forbade the Federal Housing Administration to lend money to racially segregated building projects, and he opened vast numbers of civil service jobs to blacks. He also made various symbolic gestures, calculated to advertise the Negroes' cause and his own attachment to it: he proposed a civil rights act and appointed Dr Ralph Bunche to be American ambassador to the United Nations. Best of all, perhaps, by defying the Dixiecrats in 1948 and yet managing to get re-elected, he showed that the power of the Solid South was waning at last, within the Democratic Party and within the nation at large."

[David_66_UK]

I stand corrected / better informed!

 

(as you all may have noticed, I did not claim it as a FACT in my original post!)

[Flashermac]

Korea WAS the first war in which integrated units did see combat. No mutinies that I have ever heard of though.

 

A good friend -- now deceased -- was a retired Lt Col with service in WWII, Korean and Vietnam. He told me about his first company after getting his commission. (He had been a young NCO in WWII.) It had been a previously all black unit and was still mostly black. He walked into his platoon barracks one morning and saw a black soldier still sleeping well into working hours. He went and told the first sergeant (= company sergeant major). The first sergeant walked in with him, saw the private sleeping, grabbed him by one arm ... and slammed him up against the wall! (The first sergeant was a huge guy!) The private tried to bring charges against the lieutenant for striking him, but the first sergeant squleched it. He swore that the lieutenant hadn't touch the soldier. He simply "fell out of the bed".

[Guest]

Don't forget the story of the white guy who led the b;ack regiment in the Civil war, as portrayed in the film "Glory". It was just him and maybe one other guy, but wouldn't that be technically integrated?