Blue and Gold And Black: Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy (Texas a&M University Military History Series) |
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Blue and Gold And Black: Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy (Texas a&M University Military History Series)
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by Robert J., Jr. Schneller
Sales Rank: 727109
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$45.00
At Amazon
on 6-22-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 437 pages
Published by: Texas A&M University Press February 2008
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 1603440003
ISBN 13 Number: 978-1603440004
Book Dimensions:
9.5 x 6.5 x 1.3 inches
Weighs: 1.6 pounds
Admiral Mike Mullen, Chief of Naval Operations
"Blue & Gold and Black will fast become a classic. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how the United States Naval Academy set sail on a course to build for our Navy a more diverse and talented officer corps."
Book Description
During the twentieth century, the U.S. Naval Academy evolved from a racist institution to one that ranked equal opportunity among its fundamental tenets. This transformation was not without its social cost, however, and black midshipmen bore the brunt of it.
Blue & Gold and Black is the history of integration of African Americans into the Naval Academy. The book looks at how civil rights advocates' demands for equal opportunity shaped the Naval Academy's evolution. Author Robert J. Schneller Jr. analyzes how changes in the Academy's policies and culture affected the lives of black midshipmen, as well as how black midshipmen effected change in the Academy's policies and culture.
Most institutional history is written from the top down, while most social history is written from the bottom up. Based on the documentary record as well as on the memories of hundreds of midshipmen and naval officers, Blue & Gold and Black includes both perspectives. By looking at both the institution and the individual, a much more accurate picture emerges of how racial integration occurred at the Naval Academy.
Schneller takes a biographical approach to social history. Through written correspondence, responses to questionnaires, memoirs, and oral histories, African American midshipmen recount their experiences in their own words. Rather than setting adrift their humanity and individuality in oceans of statistics, Schneller uses their first-hand recollections to provide insights into the Academy's culture that cannot be gained from official records. Covering the Jim Crow era, the civil rights movement, and the empowerment of African Americans from the late 1960s through the end of the twentieth century, Blue & Gold and Black traces the transformation of an institution that produces men and women who lead not only the Navy, but also the nation.
Reader Reviews
While no one will claim that in America there has been a complete integration of races, there have been worthy changes for the better. One of the success stories has been the integration of the military, and a specific success has been the integration of the United States Naval Academy. It isn't the biggest or most dramatic story of successful integration, but it is worth knowing about as a microcosm of society. In _Blue & Gold and Black: Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy_ (Texas A & M University Press), naval historian Robert J. Schneller Jr. gives a satisfying story of how once the Navy decided to make integration happen, it put plans into action that really did bring changes to the Academy's atmosphere and functioning. Not all was done as early or as quickly as it could be, but Schneller concludes that "... by the end of the twentieth century, the Naval Academy had become an unparalleled opportunity for African American men and women." His book not only looks at the Academy and the military, but at the history of integration in America, and it concentrates on memoirs and interviews with dozens of African American former midshipmen, giving personal histories to flesh out the social, political, and military history recounted here. There are some chilling stories of racism, but there are also accounts of heroes of both races who helped make the Academy something close to being bias-free. Schneller's history starts after WWII, in 1946 when there was a modest effort to recruit black officers. President Truman's 1948 order requiring desegregation of the military had little initial effect. There were changes brought in the civil rights revolution, when in 1965 President Johnson wrote a memo to the Secretary of the Navy, noting that there were nine blacks among the 4,100 midshipmen, and wondering how to encourage more "... Negroes to apply." It was then that the Academy started to take seriously the problem of low numbers and discrimination, and credit must be given to the Navy's chain of command for the steps described here that made full integration thinkable. Schneller describes many aspects of the Academy's efforts: "regulations prohibiting discrimination, human resources organizations, extracurricular activities, racial awareness training, even the minority midshipmen study group". All of these "gave black midshipmen the sense that the Academy took racial issues seriously. The more impressive part of Schneller's story, however, is describing the ways that African American midshipmen survived in a discriminatory system. They learned they could generally count on their classmates regardless of race. "You had to pitch in and do things together," said one. "I helped out white guys and white guys helped me out all through my time there." Athletics, too, helped form bonds; a varsity player remembered, "I don't give a hoot what you played. If you were an athlete, other athletes looked out for you." The black midshipmen drew upon support from the black community within the town of Annapolis, which took great pride in them, and from the black workers within the Academy itself. The black midshipmen themselves formed close relationships with other black midshipmen, often with upperclassmen who could help with tutoring or intervene with a white upperclassman who was putting on undue pressure. This is an optimistic book about a real success story. In its final pages, Schneller considers the other enormous social change, that of letting females become midshipmen. In many ways, this is the greater change; no one argues that black people should not be midshipmen nowadays, but thirty years after women were first admitted, there are those who seriously maintain that women have no place at the Academy, and prejudice against women seems more ingrained and difficult to eradicate than was that against blacks. This effort is ongoing, but the Academy has shown that organizations can resolve problems of prejudice. Schneller's book profiles the brave black midshipmen (and some brave white ones) who helped make it happen.
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Blue and Gold And Black: Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy (Texas a&M University Military History Series)
Available from Amazon
Price: $45.00
Updated on 6-22-2008.
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