Frederick W. Hamilton - "Capitals"

Various - "Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864"

Sir Rabindranath Tagore - "Glimpses of Bengal"

Alfred Lord Tennyson - "Becket and other plays"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965

M >> Morris J. MacGregor Jr. >> Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940 1965




[Footnote 19-5: 328 U.S. 373 (1946).]

These judicial initiatives whittled away at segregation's hold on (p. 476)
the Constitution, but it was the Supreme Court's rulings in the field
of public education that dealt segregation a mortal blow. Its
unanimous decision in the case of _Oliver Brown et al._ v. _Board of
Education of Topeka, Kansas_, on 17 May 1954[19-6] not only undermined
segregation in the nation's schools, but by an irresistible extension
of the logic employed in the case also committed the nation at its
highest levels to the principle of racial equality. The Court's
conclusion that "separate educational facilities are inherently
unequal" exposed segregation in all public areas to renewed judicial
scrutiny. It was, as Professor Woodward described it, the most
far-reaching Court decision in a century, and it marked the beginning
of the end of Jim Crow's reign in America.[19-7]

[Footnote 19-6: 347 U.S. 483 (1954); see also 349 U.S.
294 (1955).]

[Footnote 19-7: Woodward, _Strange Career of Jim
Crow_, p. 147.]

But it was only the beginning, for the Court's order that the
transition to racially nondiscriminatory school systems be
accomplished "with all deliberate speed"[19-8] encountered massive
resistance in many places. Despite ceaseless litigation and further
affirmations by the Court, and despite enforcement by federal troops
in the celebrated cases of Little Rock, Arkansas, and Oxford,
Mississippi, and by federal marshals in New Orleans, Louisiana,[19-9]
elimination of segregated public schools was painfully slow. As late
as 1962, for example, only 7.6 percent of the more than three million
Negroes of school age in the southern and border states attended
integrated schools.

[Footnote 19-8: 349 U.S. 294 (1955).]

[Footnote 19-9: For an outline of the federal and
National Guard intervention in these areas, see
Robert W. Coakley, Paul J. Scheips, Vincent H.
Demma, and M. Warner Stark, "Use of Troops in Civil
Disturbances Since World War II" (1945 to 1965 with
two supplements through 1967), Center of Military
History Study 75.]

The executive branch also took up the cause of civil rights, albeit in
a more limited way than the courts. The Eisenhower administration, for
instance, continued President Truman's efforts to achieve equal
treatment and opportunity for black servicemen. Just before the
_Brown_ decision the administration quickly desegregated most
dependent schools on military bases. It also desegregated the school
system of Washington, D.C., and, with a powerful push from the Supreme
Court in the case of the _District of Columbia_ v. _John R. Thompson
Co._ in 1953,[19-10] abolished segregation in places of public
accommodation in the nation's capital. Eisenhower also continued
Truman's fight against discrimination in federal employment, including
jobs covered by government contracts, by establishing watchdog
committees on government employment policy and government contracts.

[Footnote 19-10: 346 U.S. 100 (1953).]

Independent federal agencies also began to attack racial
discrimination. The Interstate Commerce Commission, with strong
assistance from the courts, made a series of rulings that by 1961 had
outlawed segregation in much interstate travel. The Federal Housing
Authority, following the Supreme Court's abrogation of the state's
power to enforce restrictive covenants in the sale of housing, began
in the early 1950's to push toward a federal open-occupancy policy in
public housing and all housing with federally guaranteed loans. (p. 477)
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, an investigatory agency appointed
by the President under the Civil Rights Act of 1957, examined
complaints of voting discrimination and denials of equal protection
under the law. Both Eisenhower and Kennedy dispatched federal
officials to investigate and prosecute violations of voting rights in
several states.

But civil rights progress was still painfully slow in the 1950's. The
fight for civil rights in that decade graphically demonstrated a
political fact of life: any profound change in the nation's social
system requires the concerted efforts of all three branches of the
national government. In this case the Supreme Court had done its part,
repeatedly attacking segregation in many spheres of national life. The
executive branch, on the other hand, did not press the Court's
decisions as thoroughly as some had hoped, although Eisenhower
certainly did so forcibly and spectacularly with federal troops at
Little Rock in 1957. The dispatch of paratroopers to Little
Rock,[19-11] a memorable example of federal intervention and one
popularly associated with civil rights, had, in fact, little to do
with civil rights, but was rather a vivid example of the exercise of
executive powers in the face of a threat to federal judicial
authority. Where the _Brown_ decision was concerned, Eisenhower's view
of judicial powers was narrow and his leadership antithetical to the
Court's call for "all deliberate speed." He even withheld his support
in school desegregation cases. Eisenhower was quite frank about the
limitations he perceived in his power and, by inference, his duty to
effect civil rights reforms. Such reforms, he believed, were a matter
of the heart and, as he explained to Congressman Powell in 1953, could
not be achieved by means of laws or directives or the action of any
one person, "no matter with how much authority and forthrightness he
acts."[19-12]

[Footnote 19-11: For an authoritative account of
Little Rock, see Robert W. Coakley's "Operation
Arkansas," Center of Military History Study 158M,
1967. See also Paul J. Scheips, "Enforcement of the
Federal Judicial Process by Federal Marshals," in
_Bayonets in the Streets; The Use of Troops in
Civil Disturbances_, ed. Robin Higham (Lawrence:
University Press of Kansas, 1969), pp. 39-42.]

[Footnote 19-12: Ltr, Eisenhower to Powell, 6 Jun 53,
G 124-A-1, Eisenhower Library. For a later and more
comprehensive expression of these sentiments, see
"Extemporaneous Remarks by the President at the
National Conference on Civil Rights, 9 June 1959,"
_Public Papers of the Presidents: Dwight D.
Eisenhower, 1959_, pp. 447-50.]

Despite the President's reluctance to lead in civil rights matters,
major blame for the lack of substantial progress must be assigned to
the third branch of government. The 1957 and 1960 civil rights laws,
pallid harbingers of later powerful legislation in this field,
demonstrated Congress's lukewarm commitment to civil rights reform
that severely limited federal action. The reluctance of Congress to
enact the reforms augured in the _Brown_ decision convinced many
Negroes that they would have to take further measures to gain their
full constitutional rights. They had seen presidents and federal
judges embrace principles long argued by civil rights organizations,
but to little avail. Seven years after the _Brown_ decision, Negroes
were still disfranchised in large areas of the south, still (p. 478)
endured segregated public transportation and places of public
accommodation, and still encountered discrimination in employment and
housing throughout the nation. Nor had favorable court decisions and
federal attempts at enforcement reversed the ominous trend in black
unemployment rates, which had been rising for a decade. Above all,
court decisions could not spare Negroes the sense of humiliation that
segregation produced. Segregation implied racial inferiority, a
"constant corroding experience," as Clarence Mitchell once called it.
It was segregation's seeming imperviousness to governmental action in
the 1950's that caused the new generation of civil rights leaders to
develop new civil rights techniques.

Their new methods forced the older leaders, temporarily at least, into
eclipse. No longer could they convince their juniors of the efficacy
of legal action, and the 1950's ended with the younger generation
taking to the streets in the first spontaneous battles of their civil
rights revolution. Under the direction of the Southern Christian
Leadership Council and its charismatic founder, Martin Luther King,
Jr., the strategy of massive civil disobedience, broached in 1948 by
A. Philip Randolph, became a reality. Other organizations quickly
joined the battle, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), also organized by Dr. King but soon destined to
break away into more radical paths, and the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), an older organization, now expanded and under its new
director, James Farmer, rededicated to activism.

Rosa Parks's refusal to move to the rear of the Montgomery bus in 1955
and the ensuing successful black boycott that ended the city's
segregated transportation pointed the way to a wave of nonviolent
direct action that swept the country in the 1960's. Thousands of young
Americans, most notably in the student-led sit-ins enveloping the
south in 1960[19-13] and the scores of freedom riders bringing chaos
to the transportation system in 1961, carried the civil rights
struggle into all corners of the south. "We will wear you down by our
capacity to suffer," Dr. King warned the nation's majority, and suffer
Negroes did in the brutal resistance that met their demands. But it
was not in vain, for police brutality, mob violence, and
assassinations set off hundreds of demonstrations throughout the
country and made civil rights a national political issue.

[Footnote 19-13: For an account of the first major
sit-in demonstrations, which occurred at
Greensboro, North Carolina, and their influence on
civil rights organizations, including the Student
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, see Miles Wolff,
_Lunch at the Five and Ten; The Greensboro Sit-in_
(New York: Stein and Day, 1970). See also Clark,
"The Civil Rights Movement," pp. 255-60.]

The stage was set for a climatic scene, and onto that stage walked the
familiar figure of A. Philip Randolph, calling for a massive march on
Washington to demand a redress of black grievances. This time, unlike
the response to his 1940 appeal, the answer was a promise of support
from both races. The churches joined in, many labor leaders, including
Walter Reuther, enlisted in the demonstration, and even the President,
at first opposed, gave his blessing to the national event. A quarter
of a million people, about 20 percent of them white, marched to
Lincoln Memorial on 28 August 1963 to hear King appeal to the (p. 479)
the nation's conscience by reciting his dream of a just society. In
the words of the Kerner Commission:

It [the march] was more than a summation of the past years of
struggle and aspiration. It symbolized certain new directions: a
deeper concern for the economic problems of the masses, more
involvement of white moderates and new demands from the most
militant, who implied that only a revolutionary change in
American institutions would permit Negroes to achieve the dignity
of citizens.[19-14]

[Footnote 19-14: _Report of the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders_, p. 109.]


_Limitations on Executive Order 9981_

The decade of national civil rights activity that culminated
symbolically at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was closely mirrored in
the Department of Defense, where the services' definition of equal
treatment and opportunity underwent a marked evolution. Here, a decade
that had begun with the department's placing severe limitations on its
defense of black servicemen's civil rights ended with the department's
joining the vanguard of the civil rights movement.

In the early 1950's the services were constantly referring to the
limitations of Executive Order 9981. The Air Force could not intervene
in local custom, Assistant Secretary Zuckert told Clarence Mitchell in
1951. Social change in local communities must be evolutionary, he
continued, either ignoring or contrasting the Air Force's own social
experience.[19-15] Defending the practice of maintaining large
training camps in localities discriminating against black soldiers,
the Army Chief of Staff explained to Senator Homer Ferguson of
Michigan that while its facilities were open to all soldiers
regardless of race, the Army had no control over nearby civilian
communities. There was little its commanders could do beyond urging
local civic organizations to cooperate.[19-16] The Deputy Chief of
Naval Personnel was even more blunt. "The housing situation at Key
West is not within the control of the Navy," he told the Assistant
Secretary of Defense in 1953. Housing was segregated, he admitted, but
it was the Federal Housing Authority, not the Navy, that controlled
the location of off-base housing for black sailors.[19-17]

[Footnote 19-15: Memo, Lt Col Leon Bell, Asst Exec,
Off, Asst SecAF, for Col Barnes, Office, SecAF, 9
Jan 51, SecAF files.]

[Footnote 19-16: Ltr, CofSA to Ferguson, 7 May 51; see
also Ltr, Under SA Earl D. Johnson to Sen. Robert
Taft, 19 Jul 51; both in CS 291.2 (27 Apr 51).]

[Footnote 19-17: Memo, Dep Chief, NavPers for ASD
(M&P), 19 Feb 53, sub: Alleged Race Segregation at
U.S. Naval Base, Key West, Florida, P 8 (4)/NB Key
West, GenRecs Nav.]

These excuses for not dealing with off-base discrimination continued
throughout the decade. As late as 1959, discussing a case of racial
discrimination near an Army base in Germany, a Defense Department
spokesman explained to Congressman James Roosevelt that "since the
incident did not take place on one of our military bases, we are not
in a position to offer direct relief in the situation...."[19-18] Even
James Evans, the racial counselor, came to use this explanation.
"Community mores with respect to race vary," Evans wrote in 1956, and
"such matters are largely beyond direct purview of the Department (p. 480)
of Defense."[19-19]

[Footnote 19-18: Ltr, ASD (MP&R) Charles C. Finucane
to James Roosevelt, 3 Jun 59, ASD (MP&R) files.]

[Footnote 19-19: Evans and Lane, "Integration in the
Armed Services," p. 83.]

Understandably, in view of the difficulties they perceived, the
services tried to avoid the whole problem. In 1954, for example, a
group of forty-eight black soldiers traveling on a bus in Columbia,
South Carolina, were arrested and fined when they protested the
attempted arrest of one of them for failing to comply with the state's
segregated seating law. In the ensuing furor, Secretary of Defense
Charles E. Wilson explained to President Eisenhower that soldiers were
subject to community law and his department contemplated no
investigation or disciplinary action in the case. In view of the civil
rights issues involved, Wilson continued,[19-20] the Judge Advocate
General of the Army discussed the matter with the Justice Department
and referred related correspondence to that department "for whatever
disposition it considered appropriate." "This reply," an assistant
noted on Wilson's file copy of the memo for the President, "gets them
off our neck, but I don't know about Brownell's [the Attorney
General]."[19-21]

[Footnote 19-20: Wilson, former president of General
Motors Corporation, became President Eisenhower's
first Secretary of Defense on 28 January 1953.]

[Footnote 19-21: Memo, CofS, G-1, for ASA, 6 Jan 54,
sub: Mass Jailing and Fining of Negro Soldiers in
Columbia, S.C.; Memo, ASA for ASD (M&P), same date
and sub; Memo, SecDef for President, 7 Jan 54. All
in G-1 291.2 (10 Dec 53).]

But the services never did get "them" off their neck, and to a large
extent defense officials could only blame themselves for their
troubles. Their attitude toward extending their standards of equal
treatment and opportunity to local communities implied a benign
neutrality on their part in racial disputes involving servicemen. This
attitude was belied by the fact that on numerous and sometimes
celebrated occasions the services helped reinforce local segregation
laws. In 1956, for example, Secretary of the Air Force Harold E.
Talbott explained that military commanders were expected to foster
good relations with local authorities and in many areas were obliged
to "require" servicemen to conform to the dictates of local law
"regardless of their own convictions or personal beliefs."[19-22]

[Footnote 19-22: SecAF statement, 1 May 56, quoted in
Address by James P. Goode, Employment Policy
Officer for the Air Force, at a meeting called by
the President's Committee on Government Employment
Policy, 24 May 56, AF File 202-56, Fair Employment
Program.]

This requirement could be rather brutal in practice and placed the
services, the nation's leading equal opportunity employer, in
questionable company. In 1953 a black pilot stationed at Craig Air
Force Base, Alabama, refused to move to the rear of a public bus until
the military police ordered him to comply with the state law. The Air
Force officially reprimanded and eventually discharged the pilot. The
position of the Air Force was made clear in the reprimand:

Your actions in this instance are prejudicial to good order and
military discipline and do not conform to the standards of
conduct expected of a commissioned officer of the United States
Air Force. As a member of the Armed Forces, you are obliged to
abide by all municipal and state laws, regardless of your
personal feelings or Armed Forces policy relative to the issue at
hand. Your open violation of the segregation policy established
by this Railroad Company and the State of Alabama is (p. 481)
indicative of extremely poor judgment on your part and reflects
unfavorably on your qualifications as a commissioned
officer.[19-23]

[Footnote 19-23: Memo, CG, 3380th Tactical Training
Wing, Keesler AFB, Miss., for (name withheld), Jul
53, sub: Administrative Reprimand; NAACP News
Release, 23 Nov 53; copies of both in SecAF files.]

As the young pilot's commanding officer put it, the lieutenant had
refused to accept the fact that military personnel must use tact and
diplomacy to avoid discrediting the United States Air Force.[19-24]

[Footnote 19-24: Memo, Cmdr, 3615th Pilot Tng Wing,
Craig AFB, Ala., for Cmdr, Flying Dir, Air Tng Cmd,
Waco, Tex., 4 Aug 53, sub: Disciplinary Punishment,
copy in SecAF files.]

Tact and diplomacy were also the keynote when the services helped
enforce the local segregation practices of the nation's allies. This
became increasingly true even in Europe in the 1950's, although never
with as much publicity as the events connected with the carrier
_Midway's_ visit to Capetown, South Africa, in 1955. Its captain, on
the advice of the U.S. consul, agreed to conform with a local law that
segregated sailors when they were ashore. This agreement became public
knowledge while the ship was en route, but despite a rash of protests
and congressional demands that the visit be canceled, the _Midway_
arrived at Capetown. Later a White House spokesman tried to put a good
face on the incident:

We believe that a far greater blow was struck for the cause of
equal justice when 23,000 South Africans came aboard the Midway
on a non-segregated basis--when the whole community saw American
democracy in action--than could have been made if we had decided
to by-pass Capetown. Certainly no friends for our cause would
have been gained in that way![19-25]

[Footnote 19-25: Ltr, Maxwell M. Rabb, President's
Assistant for Minority Affairs, to Dr. W. Montague
Cobb, as reproduced in Cobb, "The Strait Gate,"
_Journal of the National Medical Association_ 47
(September 1955):349.]

The black serviceman lacked the civilian's option to escape community
discrimination. For example, one black soldier requested transfer
because of discrimination he was forced to endure in the vicinity of
Camp Hanford, Washington. His request was denied, and in commenting on
the case the Army's G-1 gave a typical service excuse when he said
that the Army could not practically arrange for the mass reassignment
of black soldiers or the restriction of their assignments to certain
geographical areas to avoid discrimination.[19-26] The Air Force added
a further twist. Replying to a similar request, a spokesman wrote that
limiting the number of bases to which black airmen could be assigned
would be "contrary to the policy of equality of treatment."[19-27]
There was, however, one exception to the refusal to alter assignments
for racial reasons. Both the Air Force and the Army had an established
and frequently reiterated policy of not assigning troops involved (p. 482)
in interracial marriages to states where such unions were
illegal.[19-28]

[Footnote 19-26: Memo, ACofS, G-1, for TIG, 30 Nov 53,
sub: Complaint of Cpl Israel Joshua, G-1 291.2 (3
Nov 53). For an earlier expression of the same
sentiments, see ACofS, G-1, Summary Sheet for CofS,
27 Nov 50, sub: Request for Policy Determination,
G-1 291.2 (9 Nov 50). Camp Hanford was originally
the Hanford Engineer Works, which played a part in
the MANHATTAN project that produced the atom bomb.]

[Footnote 19-27: Memo, Maj Gen Joe Kelly, Dir, Legis
Liaison, USAF, for Lt Col William G. Draper, AF
Aide to President, 1 Sep 54, with attachments, sub:
Segregation in Gulfport, Mississippi; Memo, Col
Draper for Maxwell Rabb, 6 Oct 54; both in GF
124-A-1, Eisenhower Library.]

[Footnote 19-28: Career Management Div, TAGO, "Policy
Paper," Jul 54, AGAM 291.2 For other pronouncements
of this policy, see ibid.; DF, ACS/G-1 to TAG, 4
Jan 54, sub: Assignment of Personnel; and in G-1
291.2 the following: Memo, Chief, Classification
and Standards Br, G-1, for Planning Office, G-1, 28
Feb 50, sub: Assignment of Personnel; DF, G-1 to
TAG, 8 Mar 50, same sub.]

At times the services' respect for local laws and ordinances forced
them to retain some aspects of the segregation policies so recently
abolished. Answering a complaint made by Congressman Powell in 1956,
for example, The Adjutant General of the Army explained that off-duty
entertainment did not fall within the scope of the Truman order. Since
most dances were sponsored by outside groups, they had to take place
"under conditions cited by them." To insist on integration in this
instance, The Adjutant General argued, would mean cancellation of
these dances to the detriment of the soldiers' morale. For that
reason, segregated dances would continue on post.[19-29]

[Footnote 19-29: Ltr, TAG to Powell, 9 Aug 56, GF
124-A-1, Eisenhower Library.]

This response illustrates the services' approach to equal opportunity
and treatment during the Eisenhower administration. The President
showed a strong reluctance to interfere with local laws and customs, a
reluctance that seemed to flow out of a pronounced constitutional
scruple against federal intervention in defiance of local racial laws.
The practical consequence of this scruple was readily apparent in the
armed forces throughout his administration. In 1955, for example, a
black veteran called the President's attention to the plight of black
soldiers, part of an integrated group, who were denied service in an
Alabama airport and left unfed throughout their long journey.
Answering for the President, Maxwell M. Rabb, Secretary to the
Cabinet, reaffirmed Eisenhower's dedication to equal opportunity but
added that it was not in the scope of the President's authority "to
intervene in matters which are of local or state-wide concern and
within the jurisdiction of local legislation and determination."[19-30]
Again to a black soldier complaining of being denied service near Fort
Bragg, North Carolina, a White House assistant, himself a Negro,
replied that "outside of an Army post, there is little that the
Federal Government can do, except to appeal to the decency of the
citizens to treat men in uniform with courtesy and respect." He then
suggested a course of action for black soldiers:

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.