Do I Feel a Draft?

Those assholes in khaki Dockers and white Polos we saw chanting “blood and soil” in Charlottesville? Had they spent a few years in the military, working alongside the rest of us, they never would have been carrying those torches in the first place.

Hearts & Minds? I’ll Settle for Behavior.

President Truman ordered the integration of the military in 1948. It didn’t happen overnight, but by 1953 and the end of the Korean War it was reality. My dad was Air Force and I grew up going to integrated DoD schools in Germany. My one exposure to official segregation came when we rotated back Stateside […]

The Last Barrier to Racial Integration

The city of St Louis, Missouri integrated its public swimming pools in June, 1949. The experiment was short-lived. When I was five, my grandfather waded into a creek I was playing in and yanked me out. Some black kids my age had followed me into the water. “You’ll catch a disease,” he explained. This was in my home town […]