• "Most investigations of race relations in the United
States have focused on either the racial integration of the armed
forces or the impact of the civil rights movement on society at
large. Andrew Myers, however, addresses the relationship between
the integration of the races at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and
the campaign to achieve civil rights for African Americans at the
nearby city of Columbia. His scrupulously researched, tightly organized,
and clearly written narrative will inspire historians and sociologists
while enlightening and entertaining the average reader."
óBernard C. Nalty, author of Strength for the Fight: A History
of Black Americans in the Armed Forces
• "Revealing new information about how the armed forces
integrated and how military bases interacted with their civilian
communities in the American South, Black, White, and Olive Drab
illuminates an important aspect of history in South Carolina and
the nation. With this book, Andrew Myers makes an original and significant
contribution to military history, civil rights history, the history
of race relations, southern history, and the genre of local or community
studies."
óVernon Burton, author of In My Father's House Are Many Mansions:
Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina
|
Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial integration at
Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and the Civil Rights Movement |
| |
| Andrew H. Myers |
| 288 pages, 6 x 9 |
| 10 illustrations and 2 tables |
| Cloth 978-0-8139-2575-2 • $39.50 |
| The American
South Series |
| Available September 2006 |
 |
One of the first Army bases to implement on a large scale President
Truman's call for racial integration of the armed forces, Fort
Jackson, South Carolina, quickly took its place in the Defense
Departmentís official history of the process. What reporters,
and later on, historians, overlooked was the interaction between
the integration of Fort Jackson and developments, in particular,
the civil rights movement, in the wider communities in which the
base is situated.
In Black, White, and Olive Drab, Andrew H. Myers redresses
this oversight; taking a case-study approach, Myers meticulously
weaves together a wide range of official records, newspaper accounts,
and personal interviews, revealing the impact of Fort Jackson's
integration on the desegregation of civilian buses, schools, housing,
and public facilities in the surrounding area. Examining the ways
in which commanders and staff at the installation navigated challenges
over racial issues in their dealings with municipal authorities,
state politicians, federal legislators, and the upper echelons
of the military bureaucracy, Myers also addresses how post leaders
dealt with the potential for participation in civil rights demonstrations
by soldiers under their command. Original and provocative, Black,
White, and Olive Drab will engage historians and sociologists
who study military-social relations, the civil rights movement,
African American history, and the South, as well as those who
are interested in or familiar with basic training or the American
armed forces.
Andrew H. Myers is Associate Professor
of American Studies and History at the University of South Carolina
Upstate. He holds a commission as an infantry officer with more
than twenty years of combined active and reserve service in the
U.S. Army.
|
