African Americans played a prominent role in the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War was the first American war in which Black and White troops were not formally segregated, and even saw significant growth in the number of African Americans engaged in battlefield combat, though some de facto segregation still occurred.
Background
African Americans have always been involved in United States military service since its inception despite official policies of racial segregation and discrimination. In 1948 President Harry S. Truman abolished discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin. By 1953, the final black only unit was abolished.
Draft
Black Americans were more likely to be drafted than White Americans. The Vietnam War saw the highest proportion of African-American soldiers in the US military up to that point. Though comprising 11% of the US population in 1967, African Americans were 16.3% of all draftees.
During the period of the Vietnam War, well over half of African American draft registrants were found ineligible for military service, compared with only 35-50% of white registrants. For example, in 1967, 29% of African Americans were found eligible for military service, compared to 63% of whites; the armed services drafted 64% of the eligible African American registrants, in comparison to 31% of the eligible white registrants. Project 100,000, which helped dramatically increase US troop presence in Vietnam from 23,300 in 1965 to 465,600 two years later, sharply increased the number of African American troops drafted. By lowering the education standards of the draft, an estimated 40% of the 246,000 draftees of Project 100,000 were Black. A total of 300,000 African-Americans served in Vietnam. According to Daniel Lucks the reason behind the high turnout was the pay, which for many, was more than they had ever made in their lives, and that young African Americans "perceived military service as a vocational opportunity, and they had the additional incentive to enlist to prove on the battlefield that they were worthy of their newly acquired civil rights."
Some activists in the US speculated that the uneven application of the draft was a method of Black genocide. From the years, 1966 to 1969, opinion of the draft grew increasingly negative. A 1966 poll from Newsweek found that 25% of African Americans thought of the laws as unfair. A similar poll in 1969 saw the number rise to 47%. Black people were starkly under-represented on draft boards in this era, with none on the draft boards of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Arkansas. In Louisiana, Jack Helms, a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, served on the draft board from 1957 until 1966. In 1966, 1.3% of the US draft board members were African American with only Delaware having a proportionate number of African American board members to the African American population. In 1967, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit in South Carolina demanding that South Carolina halt the drafting of African Americans on the grounds of their absence on the state's draft boards. By 1970, the number of African Americans on the draft boards grew from 230 to 1,265, though this still only represented 6.6% of all draft board members.
Service
Across all branches of the military, African Americans composed 11% of all troops. However, a disproportionately small number were made officers, with only 5% of Army officers African American, and 2% across all branches. In 1968, out of the 400,000 officers, there were only 8325 African American officers. Out of the 1342 admirals and generals, there were only 2 African Americans generals – Lieutenant General Benjamin O. Davis and Brigadier General Frederic E. Davison – and no African-American admirals.
African American troops were more likely to be assigned to combat units: 23% of such troops in Vietnam were African Americans. In some airborne units African Americans composed 45-60% of troops. Racism against African Americans was particularly pronounced in the Navy. Only 5% of sailors were Black in 1971, with less than 1% of Navy officers African American. From 1966 to 1967, the reenlistment rate for African Americans was 50%, twice what it was for white soldiers. It would rise to 66.5% in 1967 but then drop to 31.7% in 1968. The growth in African Americans serving in battlefield combat during the Vietnam war was considered a shift in the attitude from previous wars that black men were not meant to serve in combat.