The Brothers' Vietnam War: Black Power, Manhood, and the Military Experience.

The Brothers' Vietnam War: Black Power, Manhood, and the Military Experience. By Herman Graham III. (Gainesville and other cities: University Press of Florida, c. 2003. Pp. [x], 179. $55.00, ISBN 0-8130-2646-6.)

In The Brothers' Vietnam War, Herman Graham III examines the interaction of race, gender, and military culture during the Vietnam War. He argues that "The U.S. military was selling manhood during the Vietnam War, and African American men were eager to buy" (p. 15). In the early years of American involvement in Vietnam, African Americans enlisted and reenlisted at higher rates than did whites and even displayed a more favorable opinion of the draft. Frustrated by their marginal status in the military, they turned to the Black Power movement as a means of finding the gender validation they could not get in the armed forces. Hegemonic masculinity had traditionally cast blacks in positions of passivity and powerlessness. As a result, Black Power African Americans in the military developed a counter-hegemonic identity, one that valued an assertive, black-centered masculinity outside of white control and one that could ultimately reject the traditional warrior ethos altogether. They also developed their own symbols of racial and gender validation, such as Afro hairstyles and Black Power salutes. But use of these symbols of racial solidarity and pride often placed Black Power GIs in conflict with military authorities. Many African Americans received Article 15s (a nonjudicial punishment) for wearing symbols of black nationalism and manhood, such as Afros, thereby creating a dilemma for them; to conform to military regulations they would have to suppress their own cultural indicators of black masculinity. This in turn led to confrontations, and sometimes violence, with whites and the white-dominated military leadership.

Graham describes the rise of a Black Power movement within the military as being the result of factors in both civilian and military society but focuses on a few key topics to help demonstrate his case. One of the more interesting and illuminating is his discussion of Muhammad Ali and his battle with the Selective Service. Graham devotes 22 of his 138 pages of text to Ali. He argues that Ali successfully "challenged the link between manhood and military service" because "As the world heavyweight champion ... [Ali] possessed the authority to make opposition to the Vietnam War a manly act" (p. 74). In general, the black antiwar movement demonstrated that African Americans could effectively dispute the notion that manliness was tied to the role of the warrior. Military service was characterized as exploitation, not self-actualization.

Graham develops his arguments and his evidence well, but a foreword to the book with a brief explanation of what Graham means by his subtitle would be helpful. The work is well researched: Graham utilizes a wide variety of sources, including newspaper accounts, congressional hearings, and the Columbia University Oral History Research Office Collection, as well as some of the better published firsthand accounts, including Terry Whitmore's, David Parks's, and James A. Daly's.

University of Cincinnati-Clermont College

JAMES E. WESTHEIDER