Race, Politics, and Reconstruction

The First Black Cadets at Old West Point

Rory McGovern, Ronald G. Machoian, Rory McGovern, Ronald G. Machoian

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2024
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813951928
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The first in-depth study of racial integration at West Point after the Civil War

Race, Politics, and Reconstruction tells the story of racial integration at the United States Military Academy after the Civil War and spotlights the social environment and cultural currents that led to its failure. The first attempt to racially integrate West Point proved not simply a lost opportunity but an opportunity sabotaged with shocking degrees of forethought and deliberation.

By investigating West Point’s experience with race from varied and nuanced perspectives, including those of the first Black cadets, the US Army officer corps, white cadets, the Academy’s faculty and staff, and the Black and white American publics, the contributors to this volume cast both the promise and the failure of integration at West Point as an illuminating microcosm of Reconstruction itself.

Contributors: Jonathan D. Bratten, Army National Guard * Makonen A. Campbell, United States Military Academy * Adam H. Domby, Auburn University * Le’Trice Donaldson, Auburn University * Louisa Koebrich, US Army North * Ronald G. Machoian, University of Wisconsin-Madison * Cameron McCoy, US Naval War College * Rory McGovern, United States Military Academy * Amanda M. Nagel, US Army Command and General Staff College

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• A Nursery of Treason Remade? Reconstruction Politics and the Rise and Fall of West Point’s First Black Cadets
• Making West Point “All American”: Integration as the Legacy of Civil War Service
• The First African American Cadets at West Point
• Trying Times on the Hudson: One Cadet’s Witness to James Webster Smith’s Travails at Old West Point
• “You Need Not Think You Are on an Equality with Your Classmates”: Resistance to Integration at West Point
• “The Army Would Soon Grow Accustomed to It”: The Army Reacts to Integration at West Point
• The Integration of USMA in the Popular Press, 1870–1871
• “A Brief Moment in the Sun”: The Black Community’s Response to a Failed Promise
• Afterword
• Bibliographic Essay
• Notes on Contributors
• Index