nam. Beyond that, King stressed, the poor themselves were doing much of
the fighting overseas. As he put it in his famous speech at Riverside
Church in New York City (April 1967), the war was not only "devastating
the hopes of the poor at home," it was also "sending their sons and their
brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high
proportions relative to the rest of the population."17
While King focused attention on the economic condition of white and
black soldiers, he emphasized the additional burden on blacks of fighting
overseas in disproportionate numbers while being denied full citizenship
at home: "We have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching
Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a
nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. So
we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but
we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit." In
another speech he added, "We are willing to make the Negro 100 percent
of a citizen in warfare, but reduce him to 50 percent of a citizen on
American soil. Half of all Negroes live in substandard housing and he has
half the income of white. There is twice as much unemployment and infant
mortality among Negroes. [Yet] at the beginning of 1967 twice as many
died in action-20.6 percent-in proportion to their numbers in the popu-
lation as a whole."18
In his postwar apologia for U .S. intervention, America in Vietnam,
Guenter Lewy accused King of heightening racial tension by making false
allegations about black casualties in Vietnam. After all, Lewy argued,
black casualties for the whole war were 12.5 percent, no higher than the
portion of draft-age black males in the total U .S. population. Lewy's
charge falls apart, however, as soon as one points out that black casualties
did not drop to the overall figure of 12.5 until well after King was assassi-
nated. During the period King and others were articulating their crit-
icisms of the war, the disproportions were quite significant. To attack the
antiwar movement for failing to use postwar statistics is not only unfair, it
is ahistorical. Moreover, King was by no means the first prominent black
to criticize the war or the disproportionate loss of black soldiers. Malcolm
X, Muhammad Ali, Adam Clayton Powell, Dick Gregory, John Lewis, and
Julian Bond were among those who spoke out repeatedly well before 1967.
In fact, had the civil rights movement not brought attention to racial
disproportions in Vietnam casualties, those disproportions almost cer-
tainly would have continued. According to Commander George L. Jack-
son, "In response to this criticism the Department of Defense took steps to
force levels in order to achieve an equitable proportion and
in Vietnam." A detailed analysis of exactly what
taken has yet to be written. It is clear, however, that by late
to 13 percent and then to below 10 percent
to the war or the military.
blacks had been struggling for equal participation in all
, the military included. In World War II the struggle
integration and the "right to fight." Aside from some all-
units, most blacks were assigned to segregated, rear-area
military was officially desegregated in 1948, and most blacks
integrated units in the Korean War. It was the Vietnam War,
-, was hailed in the mass media as America'ss first truly inte-
In 1967 and 1968 several magazines and newspapers ran
on "the Negro in Vietnam." While disproportionate casu-
mentioned, they were not the target of criticism. Instead,
including a cover story in Ebony (August 1968)-empha-
, their courageous service, and the
ostensibly provided by wartime duty in an integrated
was often made that blacks had more civil rights in the
In Harper's magazine (June 1967) Whitney Young
League wrote, "In this war there is a degree of integration
Americans far exceeding that of any other war in
as well as any other time or place in our domestic life." As
put it in Ebony, giving the point an ironic turn, "The
.his nation's most totalitarian society-the military-
of functional democracy that this nation has granted
black casualties as the result
but of "the simple fact that a higher proportion of
duty." There was some truth to this. In
-the training for which is voluntary-blacks were re-
Moreover,
a reenlistment rate three times higher than whites. It fell
, but it was always much higher than that
These points surely suggest that many blacks were
enthusiastic troops.21
"20
equaloppor-
an absence of discrimination. Mter all, presumably
(
geocities.com/yaoleechenb2)