Black American soldiers were dying

for AmSoldats noirserica in Korea

President Truman had issued Executive Order 9981 in 1948, officially desegregating the armed forces. But the Army—unlike the Navy and Air Force—had simply ignored it. Senior commanders dragged their feet, made excuses, and kept segregation firmly in place. Secretary of the Army Kenneth Royall insisted that African Americans were "fearful, unreliable, and lacked the manly virtues of the warrior,“ making them ”unfit for the fight." General Douglas MacArthur, then commanding UN forces in Korea, refused to integrate, arguing it wasn't “practical” to make such changes in the middle of a war. This was the Army Matthew Ridgway inherited in December 1950.