Equality or Discrimination?: African Americans in the U.S. Military During the Vietnam War

Equality or Discrimination?: African Americans in the U.S. Military During the Vietnam War. By Natalie Kimbrough, Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2007. ISBN 0-7618-3672-1. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. ix, 186. $28.95.

Considering the vast array of current scholarship on the military and political facets of the Vietnam War, surprisingly little research has been pieced together concerning African American troops. Taking place in the context of the turbulent 1960s civil rights struggles, the story of the service of African American troops in Vietnam deserves much more recognition than it has received from historians of the period. Yet, Natalie Kimbrough has failed to craft a fresh account that goes substantially beyond existing scholarship.

The first two-thirds of the book provides a valuable synthesis of relevant secondary scholarship on race relations. Mention of President Truman's important 1948 Executive Order 9981 and President Kennedy's lesser-known 1961 Executive Order 10925-each mandating or...