Fighting together in Korea

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2020

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Seventy years ago tens of thousands of North Korean troops invaded South Korea. Over the next three years one of the bloodiest conflicts of the 20th Century claimed millions of lives. On a more positive note, though, the Korean War helped precipitate social change in the United States. Following President Truman’s Executive Order 9981, the Korean conflict became the first in which US armed forces were desegregated. It was not a smooth process but it did precede civil rights advances back home where segregation was still widespread, especially in the southern states. This is the story of why President Truman, who had himself expressed clear racist views earlier in his career, took the decision to issue his executive order to desegregate the armed forces.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the BBC World Service and I'm Brian Palmer.
0:07.0	Sponer Plains take off to locate enemy positions.
0:11.0	70 years ago the Korean war was raging.
0:14.0	To gunners who take over.
0:17.0	Millions of people, mainly civilians died.
0:21.0	Right on the target, as usual.
0:24.0	Looking for an all-out assault by the Reds, the UN artillery keeps right on tossing them in.
0:30.2	It was the first war in which the United States began to integrate its armed forces.
0:38.0	Until then, they fought in segregated black and white units.
0:42.0	Welcome to fighting together in Korea. segregated black and white units.
0:42.6	Welcome to fighting together in Korea.
0:49.0	It was the very first time in the 20 years that I had lived that I'd ever experienced
0:56.0	living with whites, living with them, eating in the same mess hall, sleeping in the
1:01.9	same bunks, pulling the same god duty.
1:07.0	Now 89 years old, Doug Wilder has had a long and eventful career, including as governor of Virginia. But back in 1951, he just graduated
1:18.0	from Virginia Union University, a historically black college, with a degree in chemistry and he was drafted
1:25.3	into the United States military.
1:28.3	It was just brand new, having conversations with white people. We didn't have that. From all over
1:36.2	yes from all over from the deep south from Nebraska from Colorado, from Texas, from New York, from everywhere, of every nationality.
1:50.0	And we all try to act as if it was all right, it was normal, but we all knew.
1:58.0	It wasn't. Much of the U.S. then was both segregated and racially stratified. The legal system, particularly in the South, stripped the majority
2:15.8	of African Americans of the right to vote and denied them equal economic and educational
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.