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Fort Jackson is a sprawling military base east of Columbia, South Carolina. With the impending entry of America into World War I, city fathers recognized the country's need for military training camps and made a successful proposal to the US Army for construction of a camp near Columbia. Named after Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans and the seventh US president, Camp Jackson soon became the home of the famous 81st "Wildcat" Division and, later, the 5th Infantry Division. Over time, the camp's prospects waned, but the advent of another world war brought renewed interest in the camp and its eventual designation as Fort Jackson in 1940. Fort Jackson has been instrumental in the mobilization and training of troops for service in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Global War on Terror. Today, Fort Jackson is the Army's premier basic training installation, responsible for over 50 percent of Army trainees each year.
One of the first Army bases to implement on a large scale President Truman's call for racial integration of the armed forces, Fort Jackson, South Carolina, quickly took its place in the Defense Department's official history of the process. What reporters, and later on, historians, overlooked was the interaction between the integration of Fort Jackson and developments, in particular, the civil rights movement, in the wider communities in which the base is situated.In Black, White, and Olive Drab, Andrew H. Myers redresses this oversight; taking a case-study approach, Myers meticulously weaves together a wide range of official records, newspaper accounts, and personal interviews, revealing the impact of Fort Jackson's integration on the desegregation of civilian buses, schools, housing, and public facilities in the surrounding area. Examining the ways in which commanders and staff at the installation navigated challenges over racial issues in their dealings with municipal authorities, state politicians, federal legislators, and the upper echelons of the military bureaucracy, Myers also addresses how post leaders dealt with the potential for participation in civil rights demonstrations by soldiers under their command. Original and provocative, Black, White, and Olive Drab will engage historians and sociologists who study military-social relations, the civil rights movement, African American history, and the South, as well as those who are interested in or familiar with basic training or the American armed forces.