An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era. Beth Bailey. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2023.

Beth Bailey has established herself as one of the premier authorities on the history of the institutional army. Her written scholarship includes America’s Army: Making of the All Volunteer Force, Understanding The U.S. Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (edited with Richard H. Immerman), and Managing Sex in the U.S. Military (edited with Alesha E. Doan, Shannon Portillo, and Kara Dixon Vuic). Bailey’s 2023  book, An Army Afire, offers a deep dive into the Civil Rights Era, and more specifically how the U.S. Army understood and attempted to address the racial conflagration within its ranks.

An Army Afire begins by describing the crisis conditions the U.S. Army faced amid the Vietnam War. These crises occurred on a global scale. In Vietnam, there were prison riots at Long Binh and an armed standoff between military police and soldiers at Dong Tam. In Germany, there was patrolling of enlisted barracks by armed commissioned and non-commissioned officers. On the homefront there were additional prison riots at Fort Riley, Kansas. Further strife at home included black soldiers refusing to deploy to Chicago during the 1968 Democratic Convention riots. Indeed, there was a litany of racial incidents throughout the military.[1] Bailey’s introduction grabs attention and creates anticipation. 

An Army Afire is contextualized by the broader history of segregation and racism inherent in the ranks of the U.S. Army. The U.S. military, even in times of war, seemed to emphasize segregation more than effectiveness in warfighting. Indeed, during the Second World War, the U.S. military in Great Britain strictly enforced American segregation laws.[2] In An American Uprising, author Kate Werran describes the resulting friction between British and American authorities. Further, Werran examines how African Americans, who composed 10% of the force, constituted 80% of death sentences carried out during the Second World War in Europe and describes how deep seated segregation resulted in riots between white and black units.[3] Racial strife in the ranks was not unique to the Civil Rights Era.  

Going back further, the establishment of bases throughout the American south exhibited racism on larger scales. There are the obvious examples of bases named after confederate leaders such as Bragg, Polk, and Benning, when those leaders betrayed their country, proved to be poor generals in war, and even worse human beings in peace.[4] In her book Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century, Catherine Lutz describes how Fort Bragg, established as a training camp in 1918 and named after Braxton Bragg, came into being only through the displacement of black farmers.[5] Lutz further describes how, in the 1950s, off-post business establishments could be blacklisted for price gouging but not for race discrimination.[6] It took over a century to rename Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty.

Bailey’s work continues this scholarship as she describes how the crisis the U.S. Army faced in the late 1960s did not occur in a vacuum. In Asia, the nation was engaged in the Vietnam War. In Europe, American servicemen stood across the Iron Curtain from the Warsaw Pact. On the home front, the military was beginning the transition from a conscripted to an all-volunteer force, and senior leaders understood that racial strife within the force would adversely impact recruiting and retention numbers. This larger context that Bailey outlines highlights how America’s military largely reflects society; in the late 1960s this was no different. America was a powder keg, and it took strong, clear, and sustained leadership to prevent a spark from turning into an inferno.

A feature of Bailey’s work is her insight into institutional innovation. Military innovation is more than changing how a force fights wars. Often, military innovation is about transformation in the institutional force. While the organization of an army might still be platoons, brigades, divisions, and corps, changing the social composition and demographics of the people inside those formations is a form of military innovation. The health, morale, and welfare of those people is paramount in creating and maintaining an effective fighting force.

Bailey describes what it takes to change the culture of large and hierarchical organizations. The foremost change is leadership. Bailey describes how senior military and civilian leaders understood their role in moving from desegregation to racial equality. Bailey points to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara who wielded his office to empower subordinate commanders with the ability to blacklist discriminatory off-post businesses. However, not all leaders embraced change. A military often resembles the nation or society it serves and in the Civil Rights Era there was no shortage of people in society and in government looking to preserve the status quo. From the moment Truman examined desegregating the armed forces, members of Congress looked for other ways to keep the military segregated.[7] These actions ranged from advocating for separate barracks to Senator Carl Vinson calling for the court-martial of commanders who blacklisted establishments.[8]  

Bailey’s writing describes how strategic leaders can influence change in the culture of an organization that numbers in the millions. Indeed, Bailey’s descriptions of the actions of senior leaders mirror the methods described in various publications. Benjamin Jensen’s Forging the Sword describes how senior leaders must signal approval as a method to drive change, and John Kotter’s Leading Change emphasizes creating a guiding coalition. At the Department level, Bailey illustrates how McNamara, the man who conceptualized using systems to institutionalize change, created new positions to provide oversight and direction. This manifested in the creation of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD) for civil rights and coincided with multiple regulations and policies to implement change.[9]  By creating appointed positions in the Department of Defense, McNamara ensured buy-in for change from strategic leadership who were willing to think outside the box and experiment with novel solutions. At the service level, Bailey tells us how the Army Chief of Staff directed race relation training throughout the U.S. Army.[10]  At the tactical or unit level, Bailey also describes how General Michael Davison relieved company and battalion commanders who failed to manage race relations or ignored civil rights regulations.[11] Bailey’s book reminds us of the importance of leadership in championing change and the prudent decision to replace ineffective leaders is critical to fostering positive social change. 

Standards often reflect the  composition of an organization. A strength of Bailey’s book is the examination of how the U.S. Army tried to solve its race problems during the more turbulent times of our nation, to include challenging the logic of certain standards. Bailey describes an institutional campaign with multiple examples of senior leaders stepping back to understand a broader problem and develop unique solutions. For example, Bailey describes how hair standards in the era were originally created for white soldiers. Barbers at each Army base had zero training on hairstyles for Black men. The U.S. Army hired Willie Lee Morrow, the famous Black hair stylist and inventor of the hair pick, to travel the globe and teach barbers on Army bases how to cut and style Black hair.[12] Other aspects of change included broader selections of music and clothing available at base and post exchanges. Understanding the impact of hair styles and shopping on morale is relevant to today’s force. Recent changes to the hair standards for the health of women service members provides a modern example of re-examining existing policies with an end toward inclusivity. [13] 

The insight Bailey provides on standards is the logic of the military mind and the difficulty of imposing universal standards. For example, Bailey discusses the use of cultural symbols such as flags and the tension in the force between soldiers displaying Confederate flags and soldiers displaying Black Panther and Black Liberation flags.[14] Making exceptions for a part of the population creates the paradox of allowing exceptions to the entire population. As the author points out in her chapter in Managing Sex in the U.S. Military, services tend to impart universal standards across the force even when the society it represents have different standards for various segments of the population.[15] Allowing a flag that many see as part of inclusion means allowing the display of another flag that represents repression. In today’s force this means the Secretary of Defense specifying exactly what flags are authorized on military bases.[16]

Another strength of the book is Bailey’s ability to identify insights into the Army of the 1960s. For example, Bailey identified specific skills minorities in the 60s and 70s required to advance their military career. In addition to their tactical  acumen, black officers had to develop intangible talents to navigate a white-dominated force, including officers and senior leaders openly hostile to their inclusion in the military.[17] Empathy is central to strategic leadership.[18] Understanding that non-commissioned officers and officers require unspoken skills to climb the ranks is central to understanding the people who make up the joint force today.

Bailey’s writings tend to focus specifically on the U.S. Army, and, in a sense, this leads to the only criticism of her work. If one is looking for a history or examples of racial strife, segregation, and organizational attempts to overcome them in other services, they will not be found in this book. Other authors fill those particular gaps. For example, Contested Valor by Cameron McCoy details racial turmoil in the U.S. Marine Corps within the context of American society from the Second World War to Vietnam, and Black Sailor, White Navy: Racial Unrest in the Fleet during the Vietnam War by John Sherwood examines racial unrest in the Navy in the 60s and 70s, the same timeframe of An Army Afire. 

An Army Afire offers lessons for leaders throughout the joint force in how to approach and solve complex and seemingly overwhelming problems. Bailey’s work is an important addition to the historical record of the U.S. military, and, more specifically, the U.S. Army. Innovative ideas and novel courses of action are necessary for combat and institutional actions. The military that fought in the 1991 Gulf War, and later in Afghanistan and Iraq were more than the product of combat platforms, the Goldwater-Nichols Act, and AirLand Battle; it was a force composed of a diverse set of men and women who stood on the shoulders of those who suffered and fought to change a system of inequality.

Dan Sukman is an Army Strategist.  The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect the official position of the Joint Staff, the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

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Header Image: Armed Forces Integration (U.S. Army Photo)

Notes:

[1] Beth Bailey, An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023, 2023) Kindle, 13.

[2] Kate Werran, An American Uprising In Second World War England: Mutiny in the Duchy. (South Yorkshire, England: Pen and Sword Books, 2020).

[3] Werran,168.

[4] Chris Cameron, “How Army Bases in the South Were Named for Defeated Confederates.” New York Times, 2 December, 2022). Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/us/politics/army-base-names-south-confederates.html

[5] Catherine Lutz, Homefront: A Military City and the American 20th Century, (Boston: Beacon Press, 2001), 49.

[6] Lutz, 121.

[7] Bailey, 77.

[8] Bailey, 84.

[9] Bailey, 83.

[10] Bailey, 191.

[11] Bailey, 161.

[12] Bailey, 248.

[13] Stephen Losey, “Air Force to OK braids, ponytails for women – but no beards for men.” Air Force Times. 21 January 2021. Retrieved from: Air Force to OK braids, ponytails for women — but no beards for men (airforcetimes.com)

U.S. Army Public Affairs, “Army authorizes female Soldiers ponytails in all uniforms.” 6 May 2021. Retrieved from: https://www.army.mil/article/246037/army_authorizes_female_soldiers_ponytails_in_all_uniforms#:~:text=Braids%20and%20singular%20ponytails%20may,of%20a%20ponytail%20or%20braid. 

[14] Bailey, 168.

[15] Beth Bailey, “A Higher Moral Character,” in Managing Sex in the U.S. Military: Gender, Identity, and Behavior, ed. Beth Bailey, Alesha E. Doan, Shannon Portillo, and Kara Dixon Vuic. (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2022), 89.

[16] Mark T. Esper, Memorandum on “Public Display or Depiction of Flags in the Department of Defense.  16 July 2020. Retrieved from: https://media.defense.gov/2020/Jul/17/2002458783/-1/-1/1/200717-FLAG-MEMO-DTD-200716-FINAL.PDF

[17] Bailey, 147.

[18] Headquarters, Department of the Army. Army Doctrinal Reference Publication 6-22: Army Leadership. (Washington D.C., 1 August 2012) 3-3.