African American soldiers and the Vietnam War: no more Vietnams

Abstract

During the early years of the Vietnam War, thousands of young African-American men eagerly enlisted in the armed forces because they believed the military afforded them educational and vocational opportunities in supposedly the most integrated institution in the United States. By the end of the 1960s, however, reports of the inherent racial bias in the draft, discriminatory treatment in the armed forces, and institutional racism in all branches of the services enraged and shocked African-Americans puncturing their longstanding belief that military service was a civil rights imperative. Anger over the second-class treatment of blacks in the military was a major reason for Martin Luther King Jr.’s , and other civil rights organizations’ break with the Johnson administration over the Vietnam War. In fact, debates over the Vietnam War divided African-Americans more than any other issue in American history. In the coming decades, bitterness over tragic black subtext of Vietnam lingered and informed their disdain for conservatives’ attempt to depict Vietnam as a “noble cause.” African-Americans’ bitter memory of the war and the continuing plight of African-Americans veterans also contributed to their overwhelming opposition to the use of military force against non-white countries in Latin America and Iraq and Afghanistan. For African-Americans, the legacy of Vietnam was “no more Vietnams.”