Hero or Coward? The African American Soldier in the Public Discourse on the Korean War

Hero or Coward? The African American Soldier in the Public Discourse on the Korean War
  Existing research alludes to the importance of issues of race and inclusion/exclusion during the Korean War. The war is remembered and historicized as the first racially integrated war in US history, although segregation and discrimination still ruled in the military. Surprisingly little research, however, has been done on the status of race in the discourse of the American public and the African American community in particular.                                                               The paper explores the case of the African American pilot Jesse L. Brown, revered as a war hero among whites and blacks alike, and the case of Lieutenant Leon Gilbert, a black soldier sentenced to death for refusing to obey his superior's orders. These soldiers' stories, which were extensively covered, were indicative of the white and black press' construction of black soldiers' performance in war. The paper examines the ways in which domestic concepts, gendered stereotypes of race and the tense race relations informed reports and discussions of the war on the home front. It unravels white America's attempts to subdue African American quests for inclusion and equal citizenship and explores African American claims to equality in discussions of the Korean War and its black soldiers. Finally, it reveals how stories of alleged African American heroism and cowardice dominated the press reports respectively and were symptomatic for the looming and open conflicts between the black quest for integration and white attempts at slowing down, if not preventing, profound changes to racial hierarchies within and outside the military. In short, these two cases exemplify how deeply gendered, masculinized in particular, the African American quest for and the black and white discourse on integration and equality specifically in the military was.