Recalling the history of blacks in uniform

[unhappycamper]

A soldier from the 82nd Airborne Support Battalion salutes during the playing of Taps at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C., on Veterans Day 2007.


Recalling the history of blacks in uniform
By Seth Robbins, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Cole B. Whaley Jr. stood outside a movie theater in El Paso, Texas, with two friends from officer candidate school. Together, they made up the sum of black students in their 1957 class.

Whaley was the first to reach the ticket window. Then he saw the sign: "No coloreds allowed."

"They made it known we weren’t getting in," he said. "We were 2nd lieutenants getting ready to go into the Army, and we were turned away because we were black."

A little more than 50 years later, the retired lieutenant colonel will watch, along with the nation, as Barack Obama is sworn in as the first black president and commander-in-chief.

~snip~

Black servicemembers have died in every American war, dating back to the Revolution. Racism, however, plagued nearly two centuries of their service, and it is only within the past 40 years that minorities have become commonplace among the military brass. While racism is dissipating, said Gregory Black, a retired Navy commander and founder of the Web site Blackmilitaryworld, "over the last eight years, a downward trend of African-Americans coming into the military."


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=60124