By Jim Garamone, American Forces Press Service
July 23, 2008
July 26 marks the 60th anniversary of President Harry S. Truman’s executive order that integrated the U.S. armed forces.
Conrad Crane, director of the U.S. Army Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks, Pa., said the order recognized a basic tenet of warfare.
“When your life depends on your buddy, the color of their skin tends to become less important; it’s how good they are,” he said.
The order came five years before the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown vs. Topeka Board of Education that struck down the idea of “separate, but equal” and ushered in integration of American schools.
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