had increased at a rate of double the increase in the population. Trash heap: In the nearly two decades between 19, the amount of trash in the U.S. to enter to war as a Jewish conspiracy, he was by then a very private man of 65 who had written about his sadness in the nuclear age at seeing “the aircraft I loved destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.” As for Lindbergh himself, having had his reputation somewhat rehabilitated after having shown the world his worst side in the lead-up to World War II, when he spoke about the push for the U.S. Yes, it’s not surprising if you think about it, but it’s a reminder that events that can seem to have taken place in a different world are often just one step removed from our own. Lucky Lindy: Something I found remarkable about this essay in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Charles Lindbergh’s solo transatlantic flight was the realization that Lindbergh was still alive when it was written. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. Clifford Alexander Jr., to TIME “together we can win in both places.”įor your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. “We are fighting over here against the Viet Cong and at home against discrimination,” said Capt. Though African-American fighters had defended the United States since the earliest days of the nation and the military had officially been desegregated in the 1940s, in Korea segregation was still largely in practice.įor the men to whom TIME spoke, the numbers - which could also be read as the black man taking the brunt of the war’s burden - were evidence of inroads being made. He was black, the men he commanded were not, and that didn’t seem to matter. On the other side, there were men like Staff Sergeant Glide Brown Jr., exemplars of the fact that Vietnam was the first truly integrated conflict in U.S. Establishment is using colored mercenaries to murder brown-skinned freedom fighters,” as TIME put it. and public figures like Ali made the case that Vietnam was an example of “a ‘race war’ in which the white U.S. Meanwhile, civil-rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. At the same time, there were disproportionately fewer African-Americans serving as officers - they were 5% of the officers but 10% of all Army troops - and, in their off time, troops tended to congregate in de facto segregated areas in Saigon.
Their rate of combat death was likewise higher. population as a whole, the magazine reported.
First, the numbers: Though 70% of African-Americans who were drafted were rejected from the Army, the ratio of black combat troops to white ones was double that for the U.S.