All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fausone.
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Well, it's February, which is always a gloomy month.
But let's put a little information at your disposal.
It is Black History Month, so we're going to do a little focusing on the service and
challenges that African Americans face when in the military.
So I think we have two good programs.
One is an interview talking about Major General Oliver Dillard, who exceeded everybody's
expectations in getting his military career lasting as long as it did in achieving what
he did.
So I think you'll find his meteoric rise and really an incredible career of interest.
But we're also going to talk about some of the challenges that exist.
And one of them would be with making sure academic admissions to service academies can
reflect our nation that we can have enough African American cadets or midshipment so
that 30 years later they can become admirals and generals, right?
That's sort of the breeding ground for that.
So an interesting dialogue there too, I think you'll find this very interesting.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Colonel Stephen P. Perkins, U.S. Army retired.
We're going to talk a little bit about his service, but we're also going to talk with
him about his intersection with Major General Oliver W. Dillard Sr., who's a pretty impressive
figure.
I think you'll agree by the time we get done with this.
But Colonel, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Well, thanks, Jim.
I really appreciate it.
It's been a while since I've seen you.
I guess we first met back in May of 2023 at the VA Clinic dedication, and I was really
appreciative of your efforts on that.
Well, again, Major General Dillard, somebody to talk more about and learn more about.
But before we get in there, you've had a long military career and Army civilian career
so that our veteran radio listeners kind of know you're a guy who knows what he's talking
about.
Tell us a little bit about your military and Army civilian career.
Yes, I was commissioned out of Cameron University, which is right there by Fort Sill, Oklahoma.
And immediately after coming out of the Guard for almost two years as an artillery officer,
I became an infantry officer.
Did that for about 10 years, including service with the 82nd Airborne Division and the 25th
Infantry Division, and then made the transition to military intelligence.
I commanded battalion at Fort Stewart and got a chance to go to Iraq in 2006, 2007.
But really, the biggest thing for me, in addition to doing a bunch of those things in the Army,
was coming out and being a civilian.
And using those skills that I had acquired over the course of 28 years and going into
a civilian service that I didn't know exactly what it was getting into, but it was one of
those things that we immediately made the transition from Fort MacPherson, Georgia, in
the Atlanta area to Fort Bragg slash Fort Liberty here in North Carolina.
It was during that time period that I first really discovered General Dillard, even though
he was an infantry officer, kind of turned him my officer.
And immediately, my ears perked that, hey, this was an opportunity to do something for
our first G2 here at Force Comm, where forces command.
So I'm going to stop you there on a couple of things because we've got listeners who
are not as familiar with the lingo.
So tell us what you transferred into the Military Intelligence Corps, and I know there would
be plenty of people who would make a joke at this point about that being an oxymoron.
But tell us what military intelligence is about.
Yeah, pretty much in my case, it was to be a tactical intelligence officer, meaning that
I would find out about the enemy, analyze it, and give it to my commander as he made
decisions.
In my case, I also became a counterintelligence officer, and so it was one of those things
of, I won't say we're the James Bond's of the military, but we're people that go out
and use information gathered from other sources like the, about the adversary and bring it
back to our commanders.
So really, it's just a matter of, in my case, I had a vested knee as an infantry officer
and that said, well, you know, I probably need a couple of skills before I retire.
And so I went in and I was intrigued by the intelligence field, and they gave me an opportunity
to do that.
Well, I would also point out to our listeners that Colonel Perkins picked up his master's
degree in strategic studies from the US Army War College back in 2001.
So both experience and educated in this general area.
I want to get another thing out of the way here before you go on and tell the story about
General Dillard and that is, you mentioned the term G2.
So explain to the listeners, what, what is the G2 designation in the Army?
Yeah, G2's are essentially go back to the Napoleonic era to where Napoleon had, gave
numbers to the, the various skills or offices that he had on his staff.
So G1's being personnel, G3's being operations and G4's being logistics.
So G2 is the intel or intelligence and security aspects of a staff.
So that person's actually trained.
Sometimes it's an inherent thing, which is kind of the way it was for General Dillard
in the beginning.
So S2's or G2's, depending upon what level of staff.
So generals get a G2.
The other guys just get S2's.
That was really General Dillard's first exposure to a staff was he was the S2 for a battalion
in, in Korea.
Well let's go back now and, and transition this to talking about Major General Oliver
Dillard who was born in 1926 in Alabama.
But tell us about his education and how he found himself in the military.
Well, he's an interesting character in that he comes from a really a poor background,
but not one that didn't appreciate education.
So he came out of high school or really out of high school at about the age of 16 and
went to Tuskegee Institute.
And so around that same time the war started and he was really too young.
So he goes to college and as he starts to turn 18, well, they start looking at him
at being drafted.
And so he puts in a deferment and they accept it.
The next year, however, with 1945, he doesn't think he's, he's passed the age of getting
into the, into the military and the draft.
He doesn't know anything about the draft.
And as a young black or African American student, he's, he's not sure what that whole
thing is in the military.
But he goes through it, even though he's in RTC at Tuskegee.
He goes through the process and the army says, no, we want you.
And he goes, well, the war's already over in Europe.
And they had other things for him to do like the occupation of Europe after the war.
So he gets in there, snicks in before 1946, which is really essentially when the war ends
in Europe.
It gets pushed over as a, in an artillery unit in Europe.
So during that time period, he goes through, he gets identified by a white officer and
pushed into OCS.
So that's really the first time that he gets a, so he's got three years of college.
He's in the, in the unit, comes out of OCS, goes through, essentially goes through the
Korean War and then gets a chance to finish his degree.
And he's at the Commander General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
And ultimately his education ends formally when he goes through the National War College
in Fort McNair, District of Columbia, and his current, is what do you think, dual student,
if you will, at the George Washington University.
And so that's kind of his education background.
And what's really sort of unique and, and here that people ought to make sure they're
catching is he starts out as an enlisted guy.
He does.
His skill set is recognized.
He's encouraged or I think he's had pushed into going to officer candidate school so
that he can move from enlisted to an officer, which normally would have required that degree.
They get him through OCS, they get him through making sure he picks up his degree.
And now he's on a whole different path, isn't he?
He is.
And he's the only one of the three black students in the Commander General Staff College immediately
following that.
He goes to the University of Omaha, now Nebraska, Omaha, and like a special program for people
like him, nowadays we actually don't let him go that deep.
They have to basically get it before their degree, before they are captains.
And so he's already a major at that time.
And but he's being recognized as being a fast mover, if you will, at the time.
And this is really, he was in a, when he went to Korea back in 50, 51, he was in the segregated
unit.
So now we fast forward to basically the CGSE class of 58.
And he's now one of only three students in that whole class that are lack of a better
term today, a person of color that are making it through that course.
So the Army is definitely starting to identify him.
And he's a person at that point with a Silver Star and a CIB, Combat Infantryman's Badge.
So he is being looked on as being a fast mover, if you will, but he's in a position
where there aren't a lot of black soldiers or officers.
One, there aren't a lot of black soldiers, but there definitely not a lot of black officers.
And so he's fighting upstream, but being helped along the way because he's shown some potential
and competence.
Well, it's more than potential.
It was right.
I mean, he really was a very competent officer.
And fortunately, you know, the Army recognizes this and tell us about how he moved over to
military intelligence, which brings us back to that's not an oxymoron.
So tell us how that move occurred.
You can't let that one die, can you?
I can't.
Yeah, it's an interesting thing.
Back in his day, we really didn't have a military intelligence branch.
So you can be an infantry officer, but also be an intel, what we'll call an intelligence
officer just to keep us from having the oxymoron come in.
But you could do both.
And in my day, there were only when I made the transition, they still had the program,
which was kind of like a dual branch, but you could be what was called an 1135, which
is infantry intel.
And when I came in, they quit doing that.
They had quit that.
But my first boss, believe it or not, was an infantry officer.
My first intelligence supervisor was an infantry officer with an intel background.
And what really made it so hard was that you had to know all of these things intel-wise,
but you were constantly going back and being an infantryman.
Now, the good side to that is that you never quit being an infantryman.
And so you were able to give that perspective of an infantry officer to intel people.
And General Dillard was famous for his view that we need to get people out of the suits
and into the boots.
And he jokingly said that, but he was serious about it, that there were a bunch of people
that believed counterintelligence people just needed to be in suits, walking around, looking
cool and whatever.
And his answer was, no, you need to be in these boots and be irrelevant to the tactical
soldier.
So not strategic focus, but tactical focus.
And again, he sort of had this unique perspective because he started over on the enlisted side,
artillery in Europe before kind of moving in a different direction.
And one of the sort of, you know, sometimes there's a life's a circle, he ends up as the
first black deputy chief of staff intelligence for the US Army Europe.
He couldn't have imagined that when he went over there in, say, 1946 or 7.
Jim, I can't imagine that today that you could take an infantry officer and basically put
him into a two star billet of the of a organization that is in charge of all the land forces
in Europe during the Cold War.
I mentioned during the Cold War.
So we're ready to go to war at any time.
This is not Vietnam's done and we now the whole focus of the US Army is on Europe.
And he is the lead intel guy.
I can't even imagine how tough that is and the scrutiny that he's being put under because
he's not a true blood.
Am I officer?
Yeah, well, and again, and this is so much of life in general, just not the army, but
you know, he didn't go to West Point.
It's not a written actor, right?
He's African American.
So he doesn't fit in in that regards.
He went to Tuskegee Institute, which has a huge reputation in more more in the Air Force
side, the Army Air Corps side than it does in the regular Army side.
So just a whole lot of different pathways that got him to into all of these first.
Do you want to talk to us about some of the first that he's kind of broke the broke the
glass on?
Well, I'm not sure I can remember all the first that he did.
I will say this, he was only the fifth general officer when he penned on his star.
So there's not a lot of precedence for this.
And you hit on a key point that he wasn't the typical guy and and we taught you, you
talked about not being a ring locker.
He's not even that.
He's a mustang or what some call this thing, which is an OCS guy.
So most of the OCS guys don't get an opportunity to make it as far as he did.
And I'm trying to I guess the biggest thing that he was the first on was he was the first
officer to attend the National War College in in DC.
And that was problem.
And go ahead.
Well I have from his introduction to the Michigan Military and Veterans Hall of Honor,
another little paragraph I'll read which says, General Dillard served as the first black
general officer in the office of the assistant chief of staff for intelligence.
The last J2 for the US military assistance command Vietnam.
The first US Army forces command deputy chief of staff intelligence and the first black
deputy chief of staff intelligence for the US Army Europe prior all that prior to obviously
to his retirement from the Army in 1980.
I mean along the way there are a whole lot of firsts aren't there?
You know they they really are.
The funny thing is as I was researching even more into General Dillard, you brought up
the point of where he's the final military assistance command Vietnam J2, meaning the
joint staff general officer command.
The guys are in charge of all of Vietnam.
He didn't go there during that tour to be the intel officer.
He had gone back to being the infantry guy again and so he was the the deputy chief
of staff for the cords program which is basically the civilian advisory and development program
in Vietnam.
It was only to the point of we were about to get out of Vietnam and so the J2 he left.
The war is not even over and this guy leaves and so they're going okay well we need a
strong intel guy.
Didn't Ollie?
Isn't he an intel guy?
Yeah we give it to him.
And so they walked over and said hey Ollie do you want to do this?
And he thinks about it a little bit and remembering that you know some of the he's got about I
think four things that he tries to think of in life.
Part of it one of his final ones is seize opportunities when you have the ability to
seize opportunities.
Wow isn't that a pearl of wisdom that needs to be passed down to everybody.
This isn't a job he was looking for.
Not even sure it was a job that he wanted but it was an opportunity and you kind of
have to grab the bull by the horns don't you?
You do and beyond even that Jim you have to be ready to do that.
So he's he's preparing he's thinking about these things all during that time period.
So he's already had a two year tour being a provincial military advisor up there in
Can Thun province with with General Wynn.
Wynn Hop Dwan is the guy's name.
The last mayor of Saigon and these guys have gotten along really well and he's really made
his name all he's made his name up there in that province of how they have his advisory
team has really done a good job of working with the people and he's got those kind of
tentacles if you will that he can kind of pull from but big time that he recognized
opportunity.
Well you have to be right you have to be ready for the opportunity you have to have the skill
set the communication the analytical thinking he's demonstrated all of that at that point
and we're talking to Colonel Stephen Perkins US Army retired he helped a major General
Oliver Dillard write his book little old war stories and and Steve has authored a number
of articles on General Dillard's career including the forgotten Sable officer which was published
in the military intelligence and professional journal.
You are if you will Steve and the family reviews you this way is sort of the official biographer
for Major General Oliver Dillard how'd you find yourself in that role.
Well it was because him being the first general officer or the first Intel guy G2 at forces
command so I just taken over and we had a new building at Fort Liberty Fort Bragg and so
we started naming conference rooms we had about three conference rooms that we were
going to try to name after people and so as we did that they said well you can't you can't
name after people I went okay.
There's a rule.
Right and so I said that's fine.
And then I thought to myself well what campaigns because we're going to make you had to name
them after campaigns.
I said what campaigns was General Dillard in so the first one which is really when he
made the transition was the UN defensive campaign of the Korean War and so that's what we did
was we named the conference room after him and I immediately started thinking what are
the things that I can do and the reason that I called the first article that we had in
the military intelligence professional bulletin or MIPB the reason I wrote about it and it's
entitled the Sable Officer is I had pulled from a guy his PhD thesis was in was talking
about general officers that had made had made something of themselves and he talks about
the reason he chooses instead of black is he said he goes with Sable and the reason is
that he says well people come in all kinds of colors and Sable is it has multi multi
colors and so that was how he he did it and I went after the title I said you know he
is that to me he was the alt from an MI standpoint or intelligence standpoint he was the quid
essential perfect person to show how people have grown since 1951 53 probably is when
they they really got rid of segregation but how we had really grown as a military and
had had taken a look had kind of grown as an organization or it's an institution and
so he he was the first and so I decided that he was going to be the guy that I was going
to put a lot of time and effort into well it he certainly deserves it because his career
is phenomenal the more you look into it the more you recognize it but it's been recognized
by others he was has was awarded the military intelligent corps associations lieutenant
colonel Nolton award for excellence in intelligence he was inducted into the officer candidate
school hall of fame the army military intelligence hall of fame the Alabama military hall of
honor the Michigan military and veterans hall of honor most recently the VA named its community
clinic in Canton Michigan in his honor this is also put into the military the armies military
intelligence hall of fame I mean that these are all outside recognitions of what a tremendous
man he was officer leader across a whole variety of times and circumstances as we close out
here Colonel Perkins give us your kind of overall thoughts of how Colonel or Major General
Dillard's life should be remembered he's really a guy that took on a lot of challenges that
and I use this in the dedication of the Canton facility I use that he was our hero and he
put a lot of effort into being an honorable person with humility he always pushed himself
and others to be excellent in what he did many say that you can't lead unless people
know that you care and he spent a lot of time gaining their respect but more important as
importantly because that is really important right he seized opportunities but he was able
to really push the envelope on those those opportunities because he was competent and
ready to do the mission that people are going to offer to him and again I just think that
as a former Buffalo soldier and and I actually I'm not sure if this res made with you're
not but there was another although you mentioned like five or six other first I'm gonna be
another first some believe that he was that his platoon in Korea was the first American
victory on the peninsula during that war the battle of the H on in South Korea and his
platoon went in and he was very humble as he described it but his company commander
it was a Buffalo soldier and a paratrooper during World War two black paratrooper during
World War two with the triple nickel regiment he was there was an article on this this battle
written for infantry magazine I believe where he see describes all the goodness that Oliver
Diller did and part of that eventually led to earning the Silver Star so definitely still
my hero and I hope it's everybody else will read about him and understand he's got Wikipedia
page which he was very proud of and yeah this is this is why we tell these stories is so
that we wet your appetite maybe you go do some more reading and research on them and
learn more and see the attributes the talents the the pearls of wisdom in his life and apply
it to yours and and Colonel Steven Perkins US Army retired official biographer if you
will for me general Oliver Diller I don't think there's any pay that goes with that
but at least it's a title Steve I'm cleaning I want to I want to thank you for the time
that you've given us today on Veterans Radio well thanks Jim and I really appreciate everybody
else listening to it and you specifically of pulling out all even more that I know of
but may not have been able to articulate earlier than that so thank you again for your assistance
in getting me to open up even more about my hero we enjoyed it well general Dillard is
a heck of a patriot broke a lot of barriers really the African community African American
community should be very proud of this man and what he accomplished so we're glad to
bring that back to you as I mentioned at the outset it's Black History Month and maybe
you've seen or heard about a Netflix film by Tyler Perry that's out called the 6th Triple
Eighth it's about a US Army postal unit made up of African American women in World War
II who go to England and then France and administrative task of getting piles and piles and piles
of mail that was stuck out as their motto was no male low morale and they really did
accomplish something it's a great movie in a couple of years ago here on Veterans Radio
we did a podcast on the 6th Triple Eighth so you can go go search for that Veterans Radio
6th Triple Eighth Kai Anderson was the author that we talked to so we were a couple of years
ahead of Hollywood but they're doing a great job of promoting this we want to bring a few
words from sponsors and then we're going to talk about Academy Admissions military veterans
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at 1-800-693-4800 they're experts in handling cases before the US Court of Appeals for Veterans
Claims their number again 1-800-693-4800 we're talking today on Veterans Radio with Captain John
P. Cordell retired from the US Navy and Lieutenant Commander Ruben Keith-Green retired from the US
Navy as well both gentlemen we've talked to a number of different times on important subjects
but they recently wrote an article that focuses on a subject we've had some passing discussion on
but I want to have some more which is the tragedy of the lost generation and that's about the lack
of representation of minorities African Americans in the United States Naval Academy it's percentage
wise I think John you were telling me that while the Navy overall has a 17% black
census the Naval Academy only has about 6% is that right right I recently looked up their
demographics of the class of 2024 and it's about 6.8% now the numbers get a little fuzzy because
some people identify with multiple ethnic groups you know mother was black father was white and
you know as we were talking about the past with folks applying General Williams reminded me that
hey back in the day if you had the option to not put black when you knew that nobody could
look you up on the internet or interview in person you didn't put black you put white and so the
numbers may be skewed a little bit but that's what they said about 6.8% black. And you referenced
a book that I think we ought to give a little mention to which is Blue and Gold and Black
Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy by historian Robert Schneller. That's correct.
When I read your article and looked at his writing and it sort of you know when you say it out loud
it makes sense there are certainly states that his because appointments are made by senators
and congressmen and women there are certain areas of the country that have just avoided
nominating to the academies a diverse racial population. Was this something that just was
obvious and I just never thought about it? Not at all so the path of that was through actually
the Navy history inheritance command a friend of ours named Denise Crepe who actually advocated
for the re-name of a base that was named for one of her ancestors because he was a confederate.
And she actually pointed me towards the Naval Academy archivist who basically sent me a database
and we got permission to use it and essentially of all the nominations from all of the Naval Academy
going back as far as digital records which was 1978. And then we basically searched through that data
and sorted by state and then we looked at the demographics of the state and said okay
all the demographics of the state you know the percent black population represented by the
percent of nominations and when you sort that those two columns magically all 12 southern states
percolate to the bottom with the worst ratio with Mississippi with the absolute worst ratio.
So no it was not readily apparent and nobody else that I've talked to had even looked at it.
So that was kind of mind-boggling to discover. And Keith talk a little bit about why it's important
that the academies not just the naval but we're focusing on the naval academy that the military
academies kind of reflect our general population in terms of who gets into these prestigious positions.
Well during the Vietnam War the number one complaint of black sailors was that they had no
black officers to go to their to share their concerns with. And the Navy and Army took
very different approaches on that. The Army banned the Confederate flag in theater in Vietnam War
and powerful people like Mississippi Senator John C. Stennis pressured the Army to reverse that ban.
You had KKK rallies, cross burning, etc. etc. You would go into your commander's office and he'd
have a big giant Confederate flag on the wall behind him sitting in his office in Vietnam.
So because there were so few black officers black people felt like they weren't getting they weren't
being heard they weren't being respected and they weren't being treated fairly. And all of the all
the statistics bear that out. That's where we're to today you've got all these claims of DEI hires and
cull over merit when they don't even understand the history of how we got to the limited number
of black officers that exist right now. It is important if you're going to have a diverse force
that they have people that look like them and represent them. One of the biggest problems
in the military justice system is that there are very few black judge-affricate general officers
and many of the issues that are treated as disciplinary issues are actually cultural and
communications issues. And when you've got someone that has racial bias and they are trying to
communicate with someone that is experiencing racial bias you're setting yourself up for failure.
I don't want to see the military go back into a period where you're having this racial strife because
you've got a majority white leadership leading a very diverse force and they have no skin in the
game in terms of changing the you know that dynamic. But the black people and the minorities, Jewish,
black, you know, Hispanic, etc. they know what they're experiencing on a day-to-day basis.
Yeah I think it's one of those situations where if you and I think the language you use John if
you're if you don't start out as an admiral you you got to work your way up from being an ensign and
if you're not coming out of an academy with a bunch of ensigns who are in the minority
classifications they're not gonna buy tuition and everything else over 30 years they're not
going to be there in the in the flag ranks are they? Right yeah that number never gets bigger
right it can only start where it starts and then start to work its way down as you would try.
And that's you know but back to Keith's you know one of the big counter arguments that I see and
there was a recent article in the Naval Institute making this argument that you know we're we're
sort of post-racism now and that we need to focus on meritocracy and that the military
should be a pure meritocracy and and I fully agree that your advancement should be based on merit.
But one of the purposes and Keith can probably articulate this rather than I can, in a form of
action was to try to close that gap between opportunity whether it was wealth opportunity,
education opportunity, that was a racial gap and at least give people who had not had those
opportunities a leg up so they could compete in a meritocracy on an equal basis but you can't have
a meritocracy if I can't get in the door in the first place. Well and you point out from the
statistics it's sort of a quiet we just won't make any appointments or a limited number of
appointments it's a it's a very subtle and quiet bias. Keith react if you would. Well in addition
to that about a few years ago I did an interview with Steve Walsh at KPBS and the article was
why there's so few black animals in the U.S. Navy and Admiral St. Clair Harris talked about
the death valley phase of a black officer's career after about 10 or 12 years when they've been fighting
this perception of a lack of qualification and subtle racial discrimination and open racial
discrimination they finally decide that they're just not willing to do it anymore and throw in
the towel and then those people are taken out of the selection pool or some of the most motivated
people decide that I can't do this anymore I'm not going to do this anymore and go get a job in
civilian community and then they get blamed for not being able to hack it or not willing to hack it
when they're competing against people that have not had in any way shape or form to deal with those
issues. I left the Navy at 22 years because I simply could not take the discrimination I was
spacing from my commanding officer who asked me when I challenged him on why he was mistreating me
he asked he smirked at me and said do you feel like a second-class citizen and he was completely
protected by the people when I filed a five-page discrimination complaint against him a rock solid
the early documented case and he was protected and went on to abuse a ship full of people before he
retired as a Navy captain. Well we're having this discussion as it was about admissions to the
academies in part because the US Supreme Court in the last year struck down race-conscious
admissions at civilian schools and that raised a question of well can can race or gender be used
in a qualifying applications to the to the academies and there are many groups who have our
filing briefs and motions and saying yeah you've got to be able to use these factors if we're going
to have the right officer corps going forward and I know earlier in the year I spoke to the
National Association of Black Women Veterans and it was one of the major issues for that group
that they were advocating for. If this is not improved do you see John based on the statistics
you ran is are the southern states going to continue what they're doing can California make up the
difference New York how does how do the statistics tell you this will all work itself out?
Well you know when you draw two dots on the board they they lead to a line and you can follow that
line and so if you change the if you do away with the the ability to at least consider race
you know the numbers aren't going to go up the other two things points I would make Jim number
one no one records the number of nominees who were not accepted and so we don't even know
how many applications there were by by any sort of demographic means and what percentage were
rejected whether it was you know by black Hispanic. You know let me just give you an example of why
this is important when the first black secretary of the army Clifford Alexander received a promotion
list for for one star general there were no black people on the list and he rejected the list he
said you can't tell me that there's not one black colonel in the entire United States army that is
not ready and and capable of being promoted and has not earned it so he sent the list back and said
go back and look at your top black candidates and when they returned the list to him the name of
colonel Powell had been added to that list colonel Powell was preparing to retire as a colonel his
career was over and then all of a sudden he gets a new lease on life because the black secretary
of the army knew that they needed to have a more diversified army course so imagine how many times
that has happened since then particularly in the navy where these very highly qualified
black people have been looked over because they're not part of the same group as the rest of the
people being considered it's a great example and as I think most people know colonel Powell didn't go
to the academy he got his commission through an rotc scholarship again kind of highlights he probably
would never have gotten an appointment back in that point in time and we really need to encourage
the representative grouping of folks who get appointments to our academies to reflect the
diversity of our country there's certainly are folks who have plenty of skills for it but if you
keep rejecting people then at the same time they're not going to apply they're going to go as you're
saying Keith hey I don't have a shot at this why am I even bothering right that's correct well it's
an important issue and it's one that folks who certainly need to think about and work on and
hopefully our congressional and senatorial staffers who really do the do the grunt work in
getting academy appointments pulled together and the interviewing committees will approach this with
a little bit of 2024 insight and not exclude people because of their race ethnicity gender
lieutenant commander Reuben Keith Green US Navy retired as always Keith great to talk to you keep
keep us informed as these things move forward and if the veterans radio audience can can provide
any assistance please feel free to reach out thank you very much Jim well we hope that both of these
interviews have given you some new information been a little thought-provoking we all in February
of every year we do try to focus on African-American servicemen and women you know it is you know if
you're not taught the history if you don't know the history of our country and and all of the
cultures in it it's easy to kind of think well those guys haven't pulled their weight and that
nothing could be further from the truth from African-American women who joined in World War
II and are now you know remembered in that Netflix video 6888 by Tyler Perry which will
probably get the word out more about what African-American women did during that war than anything else
no one reads the books anymore so I think that film will be very useful as I said we've done a
podcast on it you can go listen to but maybe also didn't know that of the 3525 medals of honor that
have been awarded as of January 2025 97 have been awarded to African-Americans and actually
Robert Augustus Sweeney is one of 19 men and the only African-American who have been awarded two
medals of honors so you know the contributions of our fellow Americans is you can find it imprinted
on the in the stories of Medal of Honor recipients certainly there were times when the bias and
prejudice kept African-Americans out of receiving those awards and in fact there was a time where
no medals of honors had been awarded to black soldiers who served in World War II there was a
review of files and several African-Americans who had received the Distinguished Service Cross
got upgraded to the Medal of Honor back in 1997 so Bill Clinton actually awarded the Medal of
Honor to seven African-American World War II veterans but only one was alive at that point so
it becomes one of these things where yeah there's recognition maybe there's even recognition of
upgrades of medals but some of that's just a little bit too late to really make a big difference
one of the last African-Americans to receive the Medal of Honor was Elwin Cash Army Sergeant
First Class for activity in Iraq in October of 2005 where he distinguished himself by acts of
gallantry above and beyond the call of duty while serving in Iraq in October as I said of 2005 so
the service of these great men and women who have African-American designation if you will
continues on and will continue on they are certainly part of the backbone of the U.S. Army
and the backbone of the U.S. military I mentioned earlier an interview that we did with the National
Association of Black Military Women which I'd point you back to we did that last year so you
can look that up as well the National Association website is nabw.org a dynamic group of Black
Military Women preserving history and helping it continue on the service of other Black women so
you may want to look that up as well as you learn a little bit more about these contributions
would remind you again that our guest Lieutenant Commander Ruben Keith Green has a book that you
can obtain Black Officer White Navy very insightful gives you a different view of what it is to be a
Black Officer in the U.S. Navy you know this is recent history that not many many years ago so
you can look that one up he's writes on this subject regularly as as this Captain John Cordell
both gentlemen have a lot of social media presence a lot of articles that they don't let much
grass grow under their feet advocating for issues that they really do care about we're at an
interesting time in our history as we change presidents and administrations with more focus
on rebuilding the military and rebuilding the navy in particular to respond to the China threat
but and you know when you look at our you can't rebuild any of the military without adding more
people right more tanks more planes more ships aren't going to make the difference you gotta have
the individuals maintaining driving all of those sorts of things currently about 29 percent
of the U.S. military are African American men and about 17 percent are African American women
that is really a big group and critical to our national defense as as is the
Hispanic population which is about 21 percent of the military men and 18 percent of military women
so as we think about these issues as we go into the new organizational administration new secretary
defense we just got confirmed who claims these four of the warfighters we've got to remember our
warfighters include blacks Hispanics Asians native americans and be respectful and give equal
opportunity based on merit to all of those people if we're going to have truly a representative
military and one that can protect the entire population these are important subjects that
we bring forward to you on veterans radio every week we want to thank our sponsors such as the
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the u.s. military maybe you're a veteran maybe you're a friend maybe you're just somebody who
understands the importance or just likes history obviously we bring a lot of history to the table
stories that you probably haven't heard somewhere else so that's where we're at we're glad to have
you on board dale will be back next week with more interesting stories uh as i said at the
outside i am jim fosso and i was the officer of the deck today glad to bring you these stories
hopefully they're a little thought-provoking and maybe something that uh knew that you didn't know
about and if you're out there influencing young men and women to join up please do so and if you're
you can influence uh the right type of kids to join and seek appointments to the military categories
that's what we need don't let people get turned away because they don't think they can pull it off
they don't have the connections let's get good pools into these academies so that uh 30 years later
we've got a good core of people that uh you can make admirals and captains and generals uh and
really leadership in the military and as we now look at the new secretary defense i guess you can
say you can start anywhere and end up at the top it's a real good example maybe of that for kids
so i am jim fosso and it's been a pleasure to bring you these stories today and until next time on
veterans radio you are dismissed