Servicemembers remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Michael Voss
  • 86th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany --  January 15 marks the birthday of possibly the most acclaimed civil rights activists in American history, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. King was born January 15, 1929 and was assassinated April 4, 1968. Dr. King's contributions to the Civil Rights Movement affected not only American culture but the military as well.

"The Air Force is a reflection of society," said Ramstein Command Chief, Chief Master Sgt. Vernon Butler. "Because of his efforts, society became more diverse and accepting of each other, thus so did life in the military."

In his early years, Dr. King attended segregated public schools in Georgia, graduating from high school at the age of fifteen and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts from Morehouse College in Atlanta.

By this time, the United States and the military had already experienced its share of racially charged incidents and the Department of Defense had begun to rethink its stance on segregation.

During World War II, from 1939 to 1945, the U.S. military was racially segregated, reflecting American society and law at the time. Most African American soldiers and sailors were restricted to labor battalions and other support positions.

An experiment in the U.S. Army Air Forces, the Tuskegee Airmen however, showed that given equal opportunity and training, African-Americans could command and support combat units as well as anyone and directly contributed to the eventual integration of the armed services.

According to information from the Truman Library, in Sept. 1945 Secretary of War Robert Patterson appointed a board of three general officers to investigate the Army's policy with respect to African-Americans. They were tasked to prepare a new policy that would provide for the efficient use of African-Americans in the Army.

By 1946, the fight for racial equality in America had also found its way into GI life, sometimes with hurt feeling and other times with violence.

Shortly after, two African-American veterans and their wives were taken from their car near Monroe, Ga., by a white-mob and shot to death; their bodies were found to contain 60 bullets.

In 1946 a board of officers met to evaluate the aviation engineer experience and to discuss the future of black engineer units recommending, "It follows that, because technical skills are relatively seldom attained by individuals of the colored race, aviation engineer units requiring a high proportion of technical skills would not normally be colored. On the other hand, colored personnel may be used, without comparable sacrifice of efficiency, in units wherein labor requirements are predominant."

The following year, however, institutional and individual bias gave way to the growing success of the Civil Rights movement.

President Harry S. Truman appointed the President's Committee on Civil Rights, Dec. 6, 1946, and in May 1947 the President's Advisory Commission on Universal Training gave a report concluding, "nothing could be more tragic for the future attitude of our people, and for the unity of our Nation, than a program in which our federal government forced our young manhood to live for a period of time in an atmosphere which emphasized or bred class or racial difference."

In 1947, President Truman issued Executive Order 998 ordering the desegregation of the Armed Forces.

The Air Force under the direction of General Carl Spaatz, Air Force Chief of Staff, publicly announced it would desegregate to improve combat effectiveness.

Although Dr. King did not become known on the national scene until a few years later, to simply erase the line in the sand and suggest his life did not affect the service would be wrong.

"The Air Force had already realized the benefit of desegregation and was moving in that direction," Chief Butler said. "I believe the Civil Rights Movement was inevitable. Changes in our society were just a matter of time. Without the efforts of Dr. King the process would have been slowed."

Dr. King became pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., in 1954 and a member of the executive committee of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading organization of its kind in the nation.

In 1957, he was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization formed to provide new leadership for the growing Civil Rights Movement.

The ideals for this organization he took from Christianity; its operational techniques from Gandhi. In the eleven-year period between 1957 and 1968, King traveled more than six million miles and spoke more than 2,500 times, appearing wherever there was injustice, protest, and action all while writing five books as well as numerous articles.

At the age of thirty-five, Martin Luther King, Jr., was the youngest man to have received the Nobel Peace Prize.

On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tenn., where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking garbage workers of that city, he was assassinated.

Throughout the nearly 63 years of Air Force history, many have continued to work racial issues from the Tuskegee Airmen, to the fourth and to date only African-American, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force Thomas N. Barnes to General Daniel "Chappie" James Jr. the first African-American to hold the Air Force's highest rank.

Today, 42 years after Dr. King's death lessons from his life have lived on.

"The state of the Air Force is good," the command chief said. "I feel the efforts placed on diversity have been key to our success, but we have to keep striving, be professional and always look for ways to make the Air Force better."

According to the Air Force Portal, there are more than 328 thousand individuals serving on active-duty, 65,496 officers and 263,351 enlisted personnel.

Today African-Americans make 14.6 percent of the Air Force achieving some of the highest held positions in the force.

The Department of Defense and Air Force have seen that only through our servicemembers and diversity are we able to fly, fight and win.

"Diversity opens the door to innovative ideas to offer an unparalleled competitive edge for air, space and cyberspace dominance. Diversity creates the conditions required to elicit high standards of individual and organizational performance from all members at every level of operation in the Air Force," according to the Air Force Portal.

Today the Air Force strives to inclusively attract, develop and retain a diverse core of Airmen.

In a letter to Airmen, dated Feb. 17 2009, Secretary of the Air Force, Michael B. Donley wrote, "Across the service, we represent a broad range of diverse missions, family situations, ethnicities, faiths, races and educational backgrounds. Yet together, this rich tapestry forms the world's finest Air Force, drawn from the best talent that America has to offer. We join together from all walks of life to collectively serve our nation and its flag."

This year the Kaiserslautern Military Community will commemorate Dr. King's life and contributions to today's military with a remembrance breakfast Jan. 15, at the Ramstein Officers' Club, and the 21st Theater Sustainment Command's Equal Opportunity Office will host a Martin Luther King Jr. March from 1 to 2:30 p.m., at the Vogelweh Chapel Jan. 14.

For more information look inside this week's KA.