

SAVANNAH, Ga. | Thomas J. Woods joined the military after graduating from an all-black high school in 1950, when Jim Crow laws forced him to the back of buses and Savannah shop clerks would greet him with a surly, "What you want, boy?"



"I said, 'I don't believe this,'" recalls Woods, 78, a retired postal worker in Fayetteville, Ga. "It gave me a lot of pride, that you are somebody. When you go in there, you think you're nothing. Blacks were always last at everything."

The stories of Woods and other black veterans who served among the military's first desegregated units during the Korean conflict may bear lessons at a time when Americans are debating an end to "don't ask, don't tell." The 1993 policy that bars gays from serving openly in uniform has been challenged by a federal court and President Barack Obama and is under review by the Pentagon.




In other words, the military succeeded with desegregation when a huge proportion of Americans remained hostile to the idea of blacks and whites sharing schools, lunch counters and water fountains - or barracks and foxholes.

"This was a huge change forced upon the American population coming of age," said Steven Schlossman, a history professor at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of the book "Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces." "Its challenge to Jim Crow was enormous and maybe a shock to many young soldiers."


Arguments today in favor of keeping the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell policy" - that openly serving gays would disrupt morale and erode the cohesion of combat units - echo those used to defend military segregation along racial lines, said Marcus S. Cox, a history professor at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C.

"Many people used that same argument against African-Americans serving in the same units as whites," said Cox, who teaches black military history to Citadel cadets. "Many people said it's the end of the military. But the result was there were very few problems, the military ran very efficiently."


"It wasn't that big a deal I don't think," said McCraney of Bartow. "We didn't mistreat them by any chance. But we just didn't associate with them that much."

It was battlefield pressures that ultimately prompted full-scale desegregation.



"Our commander made a very simple statement: When a rifleman comes in with a certain skill, put him where he's needed," recalled retired Army Lt. Gen. Julius W. Becton Jr. "We became an integrated regiment."

Becton, 84, of Springfield, Va., deployed to Korea in the summer of 1950 as a platoon leader in the all-black 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment. Then a lieutenant who had served in World War II, it wasn't long before he was commanding white soldiers.

If there was resentment among the white soldiers, Becton insists he never heard it.

Becton insists it would be naive to deny any racial tension among the ranks. But it wasn't until Vietnam, when race riots erupted in all four military branches, that the integrated military had to deal with racial unrest.

And while America's still at war, commanders may not feel the same need for manpower that forced integration in Korea, said Bernard C. Nalthy, a retired military historian and author of "Strength for the Fight: A History of Black Americans in the Military."