In the Columbia of the 1960s, ladies who lunched wore hats and white gloves as they crossed the street diagonally to reach the Belk's or Tapp's snack counter.
Others, perhaps considering themselves genteel, gathered in their white robes to protest recent civil rights legislation by marching up Main Street to the Capitol -- the Capitol whose Confederate battle flag flapped gaily in the breeze.
Into the midst of these circumstances came the 277,000 Soldiers of the Vietnam War era being trained at Fort Jackson, many of them from places far outside a world of soft accents and old Southern manners.
At its best, Fort Jackson was a relatively calm island situated in a sea of turmoil over civil rights.
What support many of the Soldiers on post received for defense of God and Country -- at that time, South Carolina received a huge chunk of federal military spending for its Army, Navy and other bases -- those who were of black or Latino heritage often received a much cooler reception.
"The racial lines were still clearly drawn," says Andy Myers, author of "Black, White and Olive Drab: Military-Social Relations During the Civil Rights Movement at Fort Jackson and in Columbia, South Carolina."
Myers says that Fort Jackson, fully integrated during World War II, "was an island, and as long as you stayed on post, you were OK." It wasn't idyllic, though, he says -- not all officers on post believed in the institution's insistence on equal rights for those of all races, and the opinions of civilian employees on post varied widely.
Often, it was the Fort Jackson Soldier who negotiated the tightrope between post and town. That is, after he had been given a lecture on how to behave himself in a political culture he might find foreign.
Come weekends during the Vietnam era, it was difficult to visit downtown without coming across gaggles of close-clipped young men staring into the windows of the pawn shops or eyeing the USC coeds who passed by.
If the Soldiers grew hungry, some could find a welcoming lunch counter. As late as 1965, some counters still bore "whites only" placards, even though all theoretically had been integrated in 1962.
By 1964, the Soldiers could visit an integrated USO -- down from the five Columbia boasted during World War II, all divided by race.
On post, Fort Jackson had the first integrated school in the state. Soldiers had little effect on schools off post -- Soldiers and their Families didn't stay long enough to spark institutional change.
On post and off, housing for Soldiers was in short supply -- especially for a nonwhite Soldier, Myers says.
The secretary of defense had forbade paying landlords who discriminated based on race, but it happened anyway, Myers says -- partly because of a secret cooperation between the city's the white power structure and the leaders of Fort Jackson. Myers found a manila folder of documents supporting this claim in the bottom drawer of a forgotten cabinet at the Basic Combat Training Museum.
By the late 1960s, racial disparities had become more visible on post, as well.
In the mid-1960s, Army draftee Dr. Howard Levy began counseling black Soldiers not to go to Vietnam if ordered. He also declined to provide training to Special Forces medics, claiming that to do so was to commit a war crime. The Army didn't see it that way. In 1967, Levy was court-martialed, sentenced to three years' hard labor and dismissed from service.
In 1968, a group of black and Latino Soldiers later labeled the Fort Jackson 8 -- a ninth was found to be an informer -- resisted fighting for a country they said gave them no rights or valid reason for fighting. Most were dishonorably discharged.
Also in 1968, The Fort Jackson Leader ran an article by a wide-eyed Soldier and music buff extolling the virtues of a new club downtown, the UFO. It played great music, welcomed Soldiers with discount admission and had Bob Dylan posters on the wall, the Soldier enthused. Only later did authorities realize the UFO was one of the first in the nation's "coffeehouse" movement protesting the war. The city shut down the UFO in 1970, charging the owners with maintaining a public nuisance.
Off post, few Columbians protested the war or the Soldiers who fought in it -- except those on the campuses of Allen University, Benedict College and the University of South Carolina, who staged sit-ins and burned their draft cards.
But mostly, Myers says, both South Carolina at large and Fort Jackson in particular exercised secrecy or excessive caution in meeting the problems of the day -- a situation that would change as the decades passed.
In the 1960s, "the Vietnam War helped to undermine many of the gains that African Americans made" during World War II and the 1950s, Myers says in his book. Back then, Myers says, post commanders found themselves have to balance the needs of their integrated force with the desires of the segregated power structure off post.
"Columbians normally held the upper hand when dealing with Fort Jackson," Myers says. Through their political connections, civilian leaders could influence financing of the post -- even the promotions of officers who displeased them.
Always, it was the Fort Jackson Soldier who bridged the conflicting worlds of the post and its surroundings -- an unwitting ambassador for an integrated Army dipping his toe into a turbulent sea.
Social Sharing