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  • Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and the Civil Rights Movement
  • Marcus S. Cox
Black, White, and Olive Drab: Racial Integration at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, and the Civil Rights Movement. By Andrew H. Myers. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8139-2575-2. Map. Photographs. Tables. Notes. Sources. Index. Pp. 287. $39.50.

Over the last several decades many books have been written about the history of race relations in the U.S. armed forces. Studies have focused on the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines as institutions, in addition to military combat units. Service branch histories have added to our understanding of how the U.S. military successfully integrated and was viewed as a model of success for civil society. Black, White, and Olive Drab by Andrew H. Myers tells a slightly different story. Myers suggests that the attempt at the largest U.S. military training facility, Fort Jackson, to integrate and manage the civil rights movement had a profound impact on the surrounding community, which was economically dependent on post life.

From the start, Myers quickly establishes three simple goals that make his work a significant addition to military historiography. "The book will determine how and why integration took place at a single post, it will assess the impact of change on desegregation on nearby civilian buses, schools, and public facilities, and finally, it will address how post leaders dealt with the potential for participation in civil rights demonstrations by soldiers" (pp. 2– 3). Fort Jackson makes a terrific case study, according to the author, because its atypical relationship with the city of Columbia, South Carolina, held political and economic implications that resulted in the annexation of Fort Jackson to the city in the late 1960s. "No American city had ever done anything like this before" (p. 3).

One of the book's strengths is the author's ability to link the broader civil rights and antiwar movements with social activism among black and white soldiers at Fort Jackson. According to Myers, "military and civilian authorities coordinated efforts to undermine activists" such as Capt. Howard Levy, one of the few soldiers to participate in the civil rights movement, the civilian owners of the UFO coffeehouse, an establishment that promoted antiwar rhetoric and activities near the post, and the Fort Jackson Eight, soldiers who were arrested and discharged for agitation and various offenses associated with the antiwar movement (pp. 189–204). Fort Jackson did, however, have a positive influence on the surrounding community as a model for peaceful social change. With few incidents, the base integrated during the period and strongly encouraged public facilities and the business community to do the same, though the level of commitment varied from post commander to post commander.

Black, White, and Olive Drab highlights how military installations in the South were mirror images of their surrounding communities in the 1940s and '50s, and in the following decades, became vehicles of social change, and quietly influenced the greatest social revolution in America history. The book is well written, is rich in primary sources, and makes a vital contribution to our understanding of the military tradition in the South. One hopes that it is a harbinger of studies to come.

Marcus S. Cox
The Citadel
Charleston, South Carolina
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