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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Sherwood, John Darrell, 1966–
Black sailor, white Navy : racial unrest in the fleet during the
Vietnam War era / John Darrell Sherwood.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8147-4036-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8147-4036-7 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Vietnam War, 1961–1975—African Americans. 2. United States.
Navy—African Americans—History—20th century. 3. United
States. Navy—History—Vietnam War, 1961–1975. 4. African
American sailors—Social conditions—20th century. 5. African
American sailors—Civil rights—History—20th century. 6. Protest
movements—United States—History—20th century. 7. Racism—
United States—History—20th century. 8. Race discrimination—
United States—History—20th century. 9. Zumwalt, Elmo R.,
1920–—Relations with African American sailors. 10. United
States—Race relations—History—20th century. I. Title.
DS559.8.B55S53 2007
940.54'5108996073—dc22
2006102458
New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper,
and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Prologue
Storm Warning
Great Lakes Correctional Center, 8–9 February 1970
At 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, 8 February 1970, a group of black and white
inmates glared at each other in Post 3 of the Navy’s brig at the Great
Lakes Naval Training Center, a large boot camp located forty miles
north of Chicago. A dispute had erupted earlier in the day over the program to be watched on television: white inmates wanted to watch a
movie, and blacks, a basketball game. Because whites outnumbered
blacks in Post 3 by a large margin (eighty-five to nine), black prisoners
contended that a simple majority vote would not solve the problem equitably. The whites refused to listen, arguing that blacks often got their
way at the facility. “Every time the niggers wanted something, puff they
got it,” complained one white inmate.1
The black prisoners of Post 3 (a large prison dormitory) finally decided to settle the issue by force at dusk on 8 February. Reinforced by
black prisoners from other posts, these inmates returned to the post, intent on solving the matter physically if necessary. Blacks and whites
formed into two loosely knit groups at either end of the dormitory, with
a significant number of both races mingling between the two groups. At
about the same time, two black inmates struck two separate white inmates. An unidentified white then threw a chair at the black group. Seeing the fight breaking out, many white inmates started fleeing out of the
post. Marine guards, most of whom were white, allowed whites to leave
but kept the blacks confined in Post 3. The guards then lobbed tear gas
canisters into Post 3. The sparks from the canisters started small fires
throughout the post, and prisoners trapped inside, both white and
black, stumbled into the post’s bathroom to cover their heads with towels and sheets doused with water. Guards removed additional white
prisoners from the post via a back door but still refused to let the blacks
xi
xii | Prologue
out. After several more minutes, the guards finally removed the subdued
black inmates without incident. A total of twenty-one men required
medical treatment of some form after the incident ended, and five men
were admitted to the base hospital. But the story does not end here.
Guards segregated all of the brig’s thirty-six black inmates, whether
or not they had participated in the riot, into Post 4 while the command
decided how best to ease tensions at the prison. The next day, prison
authorities decided to house all black prisoners in Post 5, the facility’s
punishment post. The authorities argued that the move was for the
blacks’ own protection, but the prisoners perceived it as a disciplinary
move and refused to go. At 8:00 p.m., a group of angry whites, some
armed with sticks and knives, suddenly broke out of Post 1 and headed
toward Post 4. Some of the white inmates believed that armed racial
conflict at the prison was inevitable and therefore decided to attack the
black prisoners preemptively. “Why should we take beatings one at a
time?” white inmate G. R. Tingley explained. “The general sentiment
was, ‘Let’s go out and get it finished now. Let’s get them.’ ”2 A black
prisoner, who saw the group heading for Post 4, claimed that some of
the whites were yelling, “Come out nigger.”3
Rather than trying to thwart the white attack with riot troops, camp
authorities forcibly evacuated the black prisoners from Post 4 and
moved them to Post 5. Again, guards lobbed riot control gas canisters
into the post and then shifted all the black prisoners three at a time to
Post 5. Eleven men required medical treatment after the forced move,
and five needed to be admitted to the hospital.4
Lieutenant Commander Dallas Pickard, the officer assigned to investigate the affair, concluded that the decision to segregate all black prisoners, regardless of their involvement in the disturbance of the 8th, into
Post 5 was an “overreaction” and “acted to reinforce other instances of
treatment which had been considered prejudicial.”5 Pickard, however,
did not view the affair as general evidence of conflict between blacks
and whites in the Navy. Despite noting racial tensions among individual
inmates at the facility and pointing out grossly prejudiced behavior by
the guards during the fight on 8 February and events that occurred the
following day, Pickard blamed the whole episode not on racial unrest
per se but on such factors as overcrowding, lack of trained correctional
center staff, and aggressive leaders among both white and black groups.
“The disturbances of the 8th and 9th of February 1970 would most
probably have developed over any situation, had there not been racial
Prologue | xiii
tension to use as a vehicle for the outbreak of violence,” concluded
Pickard in his report.6
Pickard’s findings allowed the Navy leadership to rest easy after this
violent race riot. Military prisons, the report reasoned, were unique institutions with unique problems—problems unconnected to the larger
institutional culture of the Navy or the country as a whole. To quote
William J. Corcoran, the Navy’s judge advocate general (JAG) in 1970,
in his endorsement of the report:
Persons confined at the Correctional Center are a part of the minority
of servicemen who find it difficult to adjust to the requirements of the
organization. The respective numbers of confinees at various posts, as
noted above, tend to indicate that this is a matter of individual personality differences not afflicting disproportionately any particular ethnic
group.7
Corcoran, like many influential Navy leaders at the time, refused to
draw larger conclusions from thunderclaps such as the one that occurred at Great Lakes despite the fact that Army and the Marine Corps
had already experienced severe racial strife in 1968 and 1969. His view,
as stated in the report’s synopsis, was that “the racial aspects of the
February disorders do not appear to have been associated with revolutionary or counter-revolutionary movements, nor deep seated animosities.”8 It would take the racial unrest experienced on the aircraft carriers Kitty Hawk (CV 63) and Constellation (CVA 64) in 1972 to finally
convince many of the service’s senior leaders that the Navy had a serious problem with race relations.
Even then, however, some retired naval officers as well as members of
Congress and other government officials would continue to argue that
the Navy’s racial unrest was not a reflection of “institutional racism”
but the result of the actions of a very small number of black militants
combined with a general atmosphere of “permissiveness” in the ranks.
This permissiveness, these critics claimed, was much more dangerous
to the service than racism and was a by-product of liberal reforms of
the enlisted ranks initiated by Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, the chief of
naval operations (CNO). Zumwalt was one of the few high-ranking officers in 1970 who believed that the Navy had a problem with institutional racism.
A widely accepted definition of institutional racism can be found in
xiv | Prologue
Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton’s seminal book, Black Power
(1967). They argue:
Institutional racism relies on the active and pervasive operation of antiblack attitudes and practices. A sense of superior group position prevails: whites are “better” than blacks; therefore blacks should be subordinated to whites. This is a racist attitude and it permeates the society,
on both the individual and institutional level, covertly and overtly.9
Carmichael and Hamilton go on to state that the institutional strand of
racism allows people who are not overtly racist to benefit from inequality in society and its institutions. In the Navy context, Zumwalt maintained that institutional racism was endemic in the entire structure of
the Navy from its smallest boats to its highest headquarters—a deepseated, historically based form of discrimination that affected black personnel of every rank and at every stage of their careers.
Black Sailor, White Navy examines racial unrest in the Navy during
the Vietnam War era in a number of ways. First, it explores the context
of racism in the Navy. Was the racial unrest of 1972 rooted in the service’s history? If institutional racism existed prior to 1972, why did the
Navy not suffer major racial unrest in 1968 and 1969—the period in
which the ground services experienced widespread unrest? To put it differently, why did the ground services experience racial unrest three to
four years before the Navy did?
The book then takes a close look at the man most responsible for reforming the Navy’s policies toward African Americans in the twentieth
century: Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. Why did this white son of a California doctor become a crusader for equal opportunity and affirmative
action in the Navy? What elements of his background distinguished
him from other naval officers of the period? Why did Zumwalt act so
forcefully to establish a Navy minority affairs organization in the early
1970s? Why didn’t Zumwalt’s initial round of reforms stave off future
trouble on Kitty Hawk and Constellation?
Chapters 4 through 8 provide an in-depth review of the three most
serious racial incidents in the fleet during the Vietnam War period: the
Kitty Hawk, Constellation, and Hassayampa (AO 145) episodes of
1972. It was these incidents that compelled the House Armed Services
Committee to establish a subcommittee to examine the Navy’s “disciplinary problems.” By delving deeply into the nature, causes, and person-
Prologue | xv
alities involved in those incidents, Black Sailor, White Navy demonstrates the complexity of the Navy’s racial problems during this time
and helps unravel the sources of the unrest. Was the unrest the result of
the “permissiveness” of Zumwalt’s initial set of reforms (as the House
Armed Services Subcommittee argued) or “intuitional racism” as Zumwalt believed? In other words, did discrimination in promotion and job
assignments for blacks exist in the Navy? Was the Navy’s discipline system racially biased? Was there a lack of blacks in the Navy’s management structure (officer and noncommissioned officer corps)? Did a climate of racism exist in the fleet as demonstrated by the regular use of
racial slurs by white sailors or violence perpetrated by whites against
blacks? Did other factors contribute to the problem: recruiting trends,
the material condition of the fleet, the Vietnam War, or the general racial climate in the United States at the time?
Chapter 9 scrutinizes the subcommittee hearings, its members, and
its witnesses to further explore these questions. Zumwalt claimed that
the hearings represented an attempt by a small number of racist congressmen to end affirmative action in the Navy. Were Zumwalt’s assertions correct, or were the Navy’s racial problems the product of Zumwalt’s reforms or some other problem with the institution? In particular,
why did the House Armed Service Committee’s chair, Congressman F.
Edward Hébert of Louisiana, so strongly oppose Zumwalt and his
“programs for the people”? Could these flare-ups have been prevented?
After analyzing the subcommittee’s exact findings and recommendations, Black Sailor, White Navy surveys six major racial incidents that
occurred after those on the Kitty Hawk, Constellation, and Hassayampa to demonstrate that racial unrest was not limited to those three
ships and was indeed a Navy-wide problem in the early 1970s. Patterns
of discrimination in job assignments and discipline plagued many ships,
as did a general climate of racism perpetrated by whites. Moreover, the
minority affairs infrastructure established by Zumwalt early in his term
appeared powerless to stop the unrest permeating the fleet. The Navy’s
white hierarchy, furthermore, handled most of these subsequent cases as
poorly as the Kitty Hawk and Constellation episodes.
Chapter 11 returns to Zumwalt and his policies. Zumwalt initially
created a broad range of equal opportunity and affirmative action programs to help end institutional racism in the Navy: more than 200 were
initiated during his first eighteen months alone. By 1972, however, it became clear to him that many members of the Navy were unwilling to
xvi | Prologue
admit that the service had a problem with racism. He therefore decided
to make racial awareness training the centerpiece of Phase I of the
Navy’s Human Goals Program. Zumwalt hoped that this training would
illuminate institutional and individual racism, and motivate the service’s
leaders and commands to design and implement reforms. Occasionally
controversial, these seminars employed focus-group tactics to generate self-awareness. Chapter 11 analyzes the impact of racial awareness
training on the fleet, paying particular attention to one UPWARD (Understanding Personal Worth and Racial Dignity) course taught by Lieutenant Junior Grade Frank Alvarez at the Great Lakes Naval Regional
Medical Center. The Navy’s official investigation of Alvarez and his
teaching methodology would later convince Admiral James Holloway
III, Zumwalt’s successor as CNO, to scale back racial awareness training in favor of affirmative action programs. He felt that racial awareness training could certainly modify behavior, but it could not change
basic attitudes.
Chapter 12 discusses the Navy’s shift from awareness training toward a strategy emphasizing affirmative action. Designed by Zumwalt
and his team but launched by his successor, Admiral James Holloway
III, in the fall of 1974, Phase II of the Navy’s Human Goals Program
strove to create longer-term solutions to racial unrest via commandlevel affirmative action plans, but these plans in the end were often
hastily conceived and poorly executed. In only a few cases did they result in more blacks being promoted to leadership positions within various commands. As Phase II ran its course, the new CNO realized that
affirmative action was more a Navy-wide problem than a commandlevel affair. He therefore designed the Navy Affirmative Action Plan
(NAAP), which focused the Navy’s efforts on service-wide programs
such as improved minority officer recruitment, remedial training, and
better educational opportunities for minority sailors—programs originally initiated by Zumwalt but given a new sense of urgency and focus
by the NAAP.
In the end, neither Zumwalt’s programs to heighten sensitivity and
awareness nor the NAAP came close to achieving its goal of proportional representation in the Navy’s officer ranks, but the efforts of Zumwalt and Holloway did demonstrate the Navy’s commitment to its minority members, and by 1974, the number of racial incidents finally began to decline in the service. More important, by admitting that the
Navy had a problem with institutional racism and trying to address the
Prologue | xvii
root causes of the problem, Zumwalt and later Holloway significantly
improved the image of the service in the black community, eventually
transforming the Navy into one of the best employers in the nation for
minorities—a workplace often cited later as a model of racial harmony.
However, the Navy’s journey from a state of racial unrest to today’s
relative harmony was not an easy one. Black Sailor, White Navy focuses
on the most turbulent point in this road: the early 1970s. Why did the
unrest occur? Did institutional racism cause the turbulence? Did the
Navy reform its racial policies as a result of the unrest? Did these reforms solve the problem? These are the major questions I address in this
book.
A Note on Sources and Methods
The main sources for Black Sailor, White Navy are the “JAGMAN” investigations of the racial incidents. A JAGMAN investigation provides a
detailed report of an incident for a command and recommends corrective or required disciplinary actions. It is primarily a fact-finding mission by an officer or group of officers and investigators (Naval Investigative Service [NIS] agents or master-at-arms personnel). In the case of
the Kitty Hawk incident, for example, Carrier Division 5 ordered Captain Frank S. Haak to conduct a one-officer investigation of the episode
shortly after receiving notice of it via a Navy message. Under the authority of the Naval Supplement to the Manual for Courts Martial
United States (the Judge Advocate General’s Manual, or JAGMAN for
short), Captain Haak collected evidence on the 12 October unrest from
official ship records and logs, as well as from verbal testimony from witnesses under oath and sworn written statements. His report comprised
five elements: a preliminary statement, findings of fact, opinions, recommendations, and enclosures. The preliminary statement explained the
nature and scope of the investigation, as well as Haak’s methodology for
obtaining facts. The findings of fact were a detailed chronology of the
events that took place on the night of 12–13 October 1972. The opinions section contained Haak’s personal views on various aspects of the
incident, while recommendations listed actions that Kitty Hawk’s officers might take to avoid future incidents and improve the racial climate
on the ship. He did not recommend a court-martial or disciplinary action for participants in the riot, even though as the head of a JAGMAN
xviii | Prologue
investigation he had the authority to make such recommendations. The
enclosures section included all evidence used by Haak in compiling his
report.
For this book, JAGMAN “findings of facts” as well as supporting
witness testimony and statements proved invaluable in reconstructing
and analyzing events. They offered a broad swath of information gathered shortly after the incidents, when memories were still fresh. Even
though the JAGMAN reports were official investigations, to me, the interviews between sailors and investigators attached in the reports generally appeared candid and honest. Within the transcripts, it was not unusual to find raw emotional language, including profanity. In many
cases, I quote directly from these interviews because I want sailors to
speak for themselves and not have their language paraphrased and filtered by me. I also want the reader to understand the intensity of emotions encountered during the period examined—to fully appreciate the
anger and racial hatred that some black and white sailors felt toward
one another. Only then will the reader begin to understand the magnitude of the problem confronted by Admirals Zumwalt and Holloway in
the early 1970s. One limitation of the JAGMAN reports is that any witness who might be tried in a court-martial had to be read his rights before the interview—a process that occasionally convinced a few participants to remain silent.
In addition to the JAGMAN reports, the 2,565 pages of closed executive session testimony for the House hearings on disciplinary problems
in the U.S. Navy constituted another valuable source. Like the witness
testimony in the JAGMANs, the executive session transcripts contain a
wealth of material on the personalities involved in the affair, especially
the motivations and viewpoints of black participants. Testimony by admirals and other government officials, furthermore, provided excellent
insights into Navy policy in the areas of race relations, equal opportunity, affirmative action, and personnel matters. Several sets of other documents also proved invaluable in this regard: Admiral Zumwalt’s personal papers, and the office files of Commander William Norman, Zumwalt’s special assistant for minority affairs, and his successor in that
post, Lieutenant Edith Haynes. All these collections are held by the Operational Archives at the Naval Historical Center.
The timeliness and richness of the documentary sources used for this
book meant that I did not have to rely too heavily on oral history to
piece together complex events. Nonetheless, I did interview many of
Prologue | xix
those involved in the Kitty Hawk, Constellation, and Hassayampa
events. For each ship, I conducted extensive interviews with the commanding officers and key subordinates. I also discussed these issues and
Zumwalt’s actions and intentions with the admiral’s closest adviser on
racial issues, Captain William S. Norman. In addition, Admiral James
Holloway III reviewed for accuracy sections of the book pertaining to
him and his policies toward minorities. Regrettably, one key figure in
the story, Admiral Elmo Zumwalt, died before research for this book
commenced. Admiral Zumwalt, in his last visit to the Naval Historical
Center shortly before his death in 2000, said to the chief archivist at the
time, Mr. Bernard “Cal” Cavalcante, “Take good care of my papers,
Cal, since I may never see them again.”10 In those documents, carefully
organized and preserved by Naval Historical Center archivists, the story
of Admiral Zumwalt and the revolution he inspired and led lives on.
This book is dedicated to his memory and to all the men and women in
uniform who fought hard in the 1970s to make the Navy what is today:
a place where dedicated people, both black and white, work tirelessly
together to defend the United States of America.