President Harry Truman desegregated military services in January, 1948, a few months before Joan and I were married in Buffalo. The man from Kansas City was sharply criticized and little praised as his order was carried out. He changed tradition with the scratch of his pen, but could not change ingrained attitudes.
Segregationists labeled Truman a traitor to his race; Ku Klux Klan members howled in protest under their white sheets. African-American soldiers who’d lost limbs and earned medals for heroism in World War II had returned to a segregated nation that excluded them from restaurants and lodgings and relegated them to the back of the bus and the end of the line economically. They had fought bravely and well, almost exclusively under the command of white officers.
The G.I. bill opened college doors to millions of returning veterans, motivating them to pursue careers they hadn’t considered before the war, but the vast majority of blacks and whites studied on segregated campuses.
General Benjamin O. Davis, who commanded the famed Tuskegee “Red Tails” on bombing missions over Africa, Italy and Germany, had received the silent treatment from his West Point classmates for four long years, and was subjected to untrue and career damaging criticisms after graduation. Only belatedly did he receive praise for his outstanding leadership during the war.
Young people today wonder what all the fuss was about back then. After all, America has elected a bright, handsome, eloquent president of mixed race. They’ve grown up in an integrated society, with racism hidden beneath the surface, not blatantly displayed. They’re stunned to learn blacks were excluded from major sports and most professions. As they assess the makeup of today’s baseball, football and basketball teams, they’re quite amazed coaches in a segregated society were able to field teams with only white players.
Society has moved on, young people say. Does it really matter if they understand blacks’ earlier struggle to break the color barrier in sports and the professions? It matters profoundly. The courage and determination of those agents of change set the stage for desegregation and eventually Barack Obama’s election.
1948 signaled change beyond anyone’s imaginings. Only a month after Truman desegregated military services in 1948, Lt. Nancy Leftenant became the first African-American in the Army Nursing Corp, and Reginald Weir became the first African-American to play in the U.S. Tennis Open. The door had been opened. There would be no turning back as blacks continued to struggle for equality.
The United Nations established the World Health Organization in 1948 for “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.” The color barrier was to be ignored. Europe’s Common Market (EEC) was launched in Paris in 1948, and Truman urged Congress to adopt a civil rights program and universal health care.
European nations, shattered by war, picked up the pieces, brick by brick, looking to Truman’s Marshall Plan to rebuild their infrastructures and rekindle hope among their peoples, struggling to survive.
In 1948, the State of Israel was officially announced in Tel Aviv, and North Korea declared itself the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. At home, a ban on interracial marriages in California was voided by the state’s Supreme Court.
Kennedy had listened to King, but moved with deliberate speed to push legislation on Capital Hill.
His key pledge to the citizenry was to land a man on the moon and safely return him to earth within a decade. The pledge was kept in 1969, but Kennedy did not live to see it. His assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963, only a few months after King’s triumph on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, affirmed hate’s presence and life’s fragility.
A grieving nation responded to a new president, Lyndon Johnson, sworn into office aboard Air Force One that carried Kennedy’s shattered body back to Washington.
Kennedy’s photo was replaced by Johnson’s overnight in government offices throughout the capital city. And to the dismay of Southern Legislators, Johnson championed Kennedy’s civil rights legislation.
Technology has changed the world in my lifetime: the computer, jet flight, the global positioning system, robotic surgery, space exploration. Troops severely wounded in war survive, thanks to swift transport to field hospitals, modern surgical procedures and prosthetic devices. But we are more militaristic, global arms merchants without peer, engaging in unnecessary wars with grievous consequences for us and the sovereign nations we occupy.
Many thousands of war’s veterans suffering post traumatic stress wait for mental health evaluation. Family abuse is on the rise. Suicide rates are alarmingly high.
Those of us old enough to remember, and those too young to remember, saw in President Obama a man who could renew hope, heal divisions, and open paths to peace. No more gleeful knee-slapping about shock and awe, no more dehumanizing others and ourselves through torture and arrogance, but rather the beginning of a new era in which mankind understands that hostility emerges from fear, humiliation, deprivation and pain, and that international challenges, especially terrorism, cannot be solved through military aggression.
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Carlton E. Spitzer
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