Contested Valor (eBook)

African American Marines in the Age of Power, Protest, and Tokenism

Cameron D. McCoy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
376 Seiten
University Press of Kansas (Verlag)
9780700635795 (ISBN)

Infos

Contested Valor is a challenging examination of the use and status of black Marines in United States military service during the Cold War era. These pioneering men experienced contested military integration, as well as multiple forms of institutional and social opposition, which called their humanity, manhood, and rights to full citizenship into question. Efforts to undermine their service compromised their right to be counted among the elite and sidelined their story to the fringes of Marine Corps and US history.

Cameron McCoy describes the factors and pressures leading to the racial turbulence that surfaced in the Marine Corps from the end of World War II through Vietnam, and the measures taken by civilian and Marine officials to maintain and restore organizational integrity based on a foundation of white supremacy. He examines the psychological effects of institutionalized racism on African American Marines during the Vietnam era and the emergence of a new generation of black men unwilling to submit to the traditions of a Jim Crow Marine Corps. By exploring the realities American society constructed about black Marines, this work calls attention to the diverse ways in which these men coped within a strict, prejudiced organization and found greater purpose as US Marines despite an embattled image.

Contested Valor weaves the experiences of black Americans in the armed forces into the larger tapestry of the American racialist past and aptly captures the dilemmas, triumphs, and pitfalls that the first African American Marines encountered during the contentious eras of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. McCoy explores the creation of organizational policies designed to minimize their footprint as US Marines until the social experiment of military integration faded and illustrates the discriminatory practices that further delegitimized their wartime reputation.

McCoy demonstrates that black Marines’ absence from the historical record has been compounded by the negligence and oversight of past historians as the Marine Corps reckons with its racist past and its first black Marines.

Inhalt

Series Editor’s Foreword

Preface

The Trailblazers

Acknowledgments

Introduction

PartI: “Mr. President, What of the Marines?”

1. Token Devil Dogs

2. You People: Things Must Be Rough for Uncle Sam

3. The Myth of Image: American Culture& the Propaganda War Machine

Part II: Bloods and the “White Man’ Folly”

4. A Return to Normalcy: “What Are You Doing Saluting That Nigger?”

5. Growing Pains: Black Solidarity and the Arsenal of White Supremacy

6. For a New Generation

Conclusion

Appendix: Supplemental Documents

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 6.2.2024
• Reihe/Serie: Studies in Civil-Military Relations
• Reihe/Serie: Studies in Civil-Military Relations
• Zusatzinfo: 16 photographs; 1 map
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Schlagworte: 1925 Army War College Report • Double V Campaign • EO 8802 • EO9981 • first black marines • Frederick C Branch • Korean War • Major General Thomas Holcomb • Studies in Civil-Military Relations series • Vietnam War • World War I
• ISBN-13: 9780700635795 / 9780700635795