My favorite book is Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry , a story of an African-American family in Mississippi by Mildred Taylor. Mildred Taylor writes beautifully as she explains the many hardships faced by the Logan family and how they dealt with racism.  The story takes place in the 1930’s in the segregated south.  White and black  families just couldn’t see beyond skin color, and the treatment of the Logan family and their friends was terrible.  Toward the end of the book, a gang of angry whites is about to hang a young black teenager when a fire suddenly breaks out in a cotton field.  The fire could have destroyed cotton fields of both blacks and whites, and the angry crowd suddenly  stopped what they were doing and ran to the fire.  Working furiously side by side the community of people, both black and white, put out the fire and saved the cotton.

Just as in the story Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, our real-life society was largely segregated and racist.  In the 1950’s and 1960’s, through a series of Supreme Court decisions and Congressional legislation, society was gradually becoming more integrated and just.  Still, there were many who fought against these changes, while others felt these changes neither went far enough nor fast enough.  Racial tension in the 1960’s was high and a dynamic leader of the black movement, Martin Luther King, Jr.,  had captured the imagination of the country as he strove for change through peaceful means.  Not everyone was peaceful though, as marchers were met with violence, and violence yielded more violence.  It was a difficult and challenging time in our nation.  At the same time, in Vietnam black and white soldiers fought side by side for a common cause.  Integrated companies of men had to work together in a time of personal and national crisis in order to survive.  They had to learn to trust each other, to lean on each other, to work, cry, suffer, and grieve together.

Reports vary from person to person, but once the men were out of the field, they often returned to segregated bases.  The segregation was informal rather than formal, and was misperceived by some.  Yes, there were certainly some racial problems, but for the most part men simply hung around with others who had similar interests and tastes.  Still, insensitivity to others didn’t help.  For instance, Richard Ford, and African-American serving in the Army said in Voices From Vietnam, “In the rear we saw a bunch of rebel flags.  They didn’t mean nothing by the rebel flags.  It was just saying we for the South.  It didn’t mean they hated blacks.  But after you’re in the field, you took the flags very personally.”  As time wore on and new recruits came to Vietnam fueled with the revolutionary spirit evident in America at the time, racial polarization increased. Whites meanwhile, felt offended and excluded by the African-American practice of “dap,” an extensive and involved greeting of blacks by and for blacks.

Many African-Americans in the United States and in Vietnam felt they shouldn’t be fighting for rights and freedom for Vietnamese people when they didn’t have freedom at home.
Many other African-Americans held a totally different view represented by the comments made to America’s Defense Monitor by Air Force Colonel Fred Cherry, a former fighter pilot and prisoner of war in North Vietnam for seven and a half years. Colonel Cherry's captors tried to manipulate what they assumed were racial divisions among the POWs. “They said being a person of color, how can you support the white imperialistic Americans? I am an American, that's why I support Americans. I am not a Vietnamese, I am an American. And so, because of that, they expected me to do this .... 35 or 40 percent of the troops in South Vietnam were African American out on the front lines, and if they could get me to make tapes denouncing the war or make statements, it would certainly have been to their advantage. So because of that, and I would not do it, I got treated worse.“  Many black Americans willingly went to Vietnam with the hope that the government and society would treat them more fairly and recognize them as equals upon their return.

In the United States there was a belief among some blacks and protesting college students that a disproportionate number of African-Americans were serving in Vietnam, and that an unfair percentage were on the front lines.  Statements that blacks were being used as “cannon fodder” took hold in the mind of rebellious young people and the press.  These points are arguable, but only in the early part of the war.
In 1965 African-Americans filled 31% of the ranks of ground combat battalions and
they suffered 24% of the fatal casualties, while representing just 13.5% of the U.S. military age population, and 12% of the total U.S. population.  As the war went on the  percentage of African-American combat fatalities decreased as follows:
 1965 = 24%          1966 = 16%          1968 = 13%          1970 = 9%         Overall = 12.5%

It appears the reason for the early high percentage of blacks killed in Vietnam is that when Harry Truman ended segregation of the military in 1947, the armed forces became one of the few equal opportunity employers in the United States.  By the early 1960’s the percentage of career military personnel who were black had risen to more than the proportion of African-Americans in the overall population.  The larger percentage of blacks in the military yielded a larger percentage of fatalities.  As the need for more troops increased, the draft brought many more whites to Vietnam and the numbers eventually leveled to percentages more representative of our society.

More than 275,000 African-Americans served in Vietnam and 7,241 died, 5,711 of whom were killed in action.  Unfortunately, arguments about statistics cloud the one issue that is undeniable, African-Americans fought bravely for their country in the fields of Vietnam, just as did whites and others.  Together, working side by side, whites and blacks fought for freedom and performed their duties with honor and valor.  In Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, after working together to put out the fire in the fields, the people went back to their segregated ways.  Have we done the same?