An Army Afire

How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era

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Pub Date 02 May 2023 | Archive Date 11 Apr 2023

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Description

By the late 1960s, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in US history was descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged without end. Morale was tanking. AWOL rates were rising. And in August of that year, a group of Black soldiers seized control of the infamous Long Binh Jail, burned buildings, and beat a white inmate to death with a shovel. The days of "same mud, same blood" were over, and a new generation of Black GIs had decisively rejected the slights and institutional racism their forefathers had endured.  

As Black and white soldiers fought in barracks and bars, with violence spilling into surrounding towns within the US and in West Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, and Japan, army leaders grew convinced that the growing racial crisis undermined the army’s ability to defend the nation. Acclaimed military historian Beth Bailey shows how the US Army tried to solve that racial crisis (in army terms, “the problem of race”). Army leaders were surprisingly creative in confronting demands for racial justice, even willing to challenge fundamental army principles of discipline, order, hierarchy, and authority. Bailey traces a frustrating yet fascinating story, as a massive, conservative institution came to terms with demands for change.

Beth Bailey is a Foundation Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Kansas.

By the late 1960s, what had been widely heralded as the best qualified, best-trained army in US history was descending into crisis as the Vietnam War raged without end. Morale was tanking. AWOL rates...


Advance Praise

“Bailey has written a book of tremendous importance that has the potential to become the definitive study on race and the American military during the Vietnam era. She has a wonderful gift for storytelling and infuses what could be a traditional institutional study with life and emotion.” –Chad Williams, author of The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War

“A truly phenomenal book by one of the nation’s leading historians at the top of her game. This is the very best of ‘military, war, and society’ scholarship, superbly blending human stories with expert historical analysis.” –Gregory A. Daddis, author of Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines

“Bailey has written a book of tremendous importance that has the potential to become the definitive study on race and the American military during the Vietnam era. She has a wonderful gift for...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781469673264
PRICE $35.00 (USD)
PAGES 360

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