General officer
A General Officer is an officer of high rank in the army, in some nations' air forces or marines. The term "general" is used in two ways: as the generic title for all grades of general officer and as a specific rank, it originates in the 16th century, as a shortening of captain general, which rank was taken from Middle French capitaine général. The adjective general had been affixed to officer designations since the late medieval period to indicate relative superiority or an extended jurisdiction. Today, the title of "General" is known in some countries as a four-star rank; however different countries use other insignia for senior ranks. It has a NATO code of OF-9 and is the highest rank in use in a number of armies, air forces and marine organizations; the various grades of general officer are at the top of the military rank structure. Lower-ranking officers in land-centric military forces are known as field officers or field-grade officers, below them are company-grade officers. There are two common systems of general ranks used worldwide.
In addition, there is a third system, the Arab system of ranks, used throughout the Middle East and North Africa but is not used elsewhere in the world. Variations of one form, the old European system, were once used throughout Europe, it is used in the United Kingdom, from which it spread to the Commonwealth and the United States of America. The general officer ranks are named by prefixing "general", as an adjective, with field officer ranks, although in some countries the highest general officers are titled field marshal, marshal, or captain general; the other is derived from the French Revolution, where generals' ranks are named according to the unit they command. The system used either a colonel general rank; the rank of field marshal was used by some countries as the highest rank, while in other countries it was used as a divisional or brigade rank. Many countries used two brigade command ranks, why some countries now use two stars as their brigade general insignia. Mexico and Argentina still use two brigade command ranks.
In some nations, the equivalent to brigadier general is brigadier, not always considered by these armies to be a general officer rank, although it is always treated as equivalent to the rank of brigadier general for comparative purposes. As a lieutenant outranks a sergeant major; the serjeant major was the commander of the infantry, junior only to the captain general and lieutenant general. The distinction of serjeant major general only applied after serjeant majors were introduced as a rank of field officer. Serjeant was dropped from both rank titles, creating the modern rank titles. Serjeant major as a senior rank of non-commissioned officer was a creation; the armies of Arab countries use traditional Arabic titles. These were formalized in their current system to replace the Turkish system, in use in the Arab world and the Turco-Egyptian ranks in Egypt. Other nomenclatures for general officers include the titles and ranks: Adjutant general Commandant-general Inspector general General-in-chief General of the Army General of the Air Force General of the Armies of the United States, a title created for General John J. Pershing, subsequently granted posthumously to George Washington Generaladmiral Air general and aviation general Wing general and group general General-potpukovnik Director general Director general of national defence Controller general Prefect general Master-General of the Ordnance – senior British military position.
Police Director General. Commissioner Admiral In addition to militarily educated generals, there are generals in medicine and engineering; the rank of the most senior chaplain, is usually considered to be a general officer rank. In the old European system, a general, without prefix or suffix, is the most senior type of general, above lieutenant general and directly below field marshal as a four-star rank, it is the most senior peacetime rank, with more senior ranks being used only in wartime or as honorary titles. In some armies, the rank of captain general, general of the army, army general or colonel general occupied or occupies this position. Depending on circumstances and the army in question, these ranks may be considered to be equivalent to a "full" general or to a field marshal; the rank of general came about as a "captain-general", the captain of an army in general (i.e. th
Jackson, Mississippi
Jackson the City of Jackson, is the capital and most populous city of the U. S. state of Mississippi. It is one of two county seats of Hinds County, along with Mississippi; the city of Jackson includes around 3,000 acres comprising Jackson-Medgar Evers International Airport in Rankin County and a small portion of Madison County. The city's population was estimated to be 165,072 in 2017, a decline from 173,514 in 2010; the city sits on the Pearl River and is located in the greater Jackson Prairie region of Mississippi. Founded in 1821 as the site for a new state capital, the city is named after General Andrew Jackson, honored for his role in the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812 and would serve as U. S. president. Following the nearby Battle of Vicksburg in 1863 during the American Civil War, Union forces under the command of General William Tecumseh Sherman began the Siege of Jackson and the city was subsequently burned. During the 1920s, Jackson surpassed Meridian to become the most populous city in the state following a speculative natural gas boom in the region.
The current slogan for the city is "The City with Soul". It has had numerous musicians prominent in blues, gospel and jazz. Jackson is the anchor for Mississippi Metropolitan Statistical Area, it is the state's largest metropolitan area with a 2016 population of 579,332, about one-fifth of Mississippi's population. The region, now the city of Jackson was part of the large territory occupied by the Choctaw Nation, the historic culture of the Muskogean-speaking indigenous peoples who had inhabited the area for thousands of years before European colonization; the Choctaw name for the locale was Chisha Foka. The area now called Jackson was obtained by the United States under the terms of the Treaty of Doak's Stand in 1820, by which The United States acquired the land owned by the Choctaw Native Americans. After the treaty was ratified, American settlers moved into the area, encroaching on remaining Choctaw communal lands. One of the original Choctaw members, in 1849, described what he and his people experienced during this turbulent time when the Europeans had come to take their land.
"We have had our habitations torn down and burned" as well as their "fences burned" while they themselves faced personal abuse and have been "scoured and fettered". Under pressure from the U. S. government, the Choctaw Native Americans agreed to removal after 1830 from all of their lands east of the Mississippi River under the terms of several treaties. Although most of the Choctaw moved to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma, along with the other of the Five Civilized Tribes, a significant number chose to stay in their homeland, citing Article XIV of the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, they became state and United States citizens at the time. Today, most Choctaw in Mississippi have reorganized and are part of the federally recognized Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, they live in several majority-Indian communities located throughout the state. The largest community is located in Choctaw 100 miles northeast of Jackson. Located on the historic Natchez Trace trade route, created by Native Americans and used by European-American settlers, on the Pearl River, the city's first European-American settler was Louis LeFleur, a French-Canadian trader.
The village became known as LeFleur's Bluff. During the late 18th century and early 19th century, this site had a trading post, it was connected to markets in Tennessee. Soldiers returning to Tennessee from the military campaigns near New Orleans in 1815 built a public road that connected Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana to this district. A United States treaty with the Choctaw, the Treaty of Doak's Stand in 1820, formally opened the area for non-Native American settlers. LeFleur's Bluff was developed; the Mississippi General Assembly decided in 1821. They commissioned Thomas Hinds, James Patton, William Lattimore to look for a suitable site; the absolute center of the state was a swamp, so the group had to widen their search. After surveying areas north and east of Jackson, they proceeded southwest along the Pearl River until they reached LeFleur's Bluff in today's Hinds County, their report to the General Assembly stated that this location had beautiful and healthful surroundings, good water, abundant timber, navigable waters, proximity to the Natchez Trace.
The Assembly passed an act on November 28, 1821, authorizing the site as the permanent seat of the government of the state of Mississippi. On the same day, it passed a resolution to instruct the Washington delegation to press Congress for a donation of public lands on the river for the purpose of improved navigation to the Gulf of Mexico. One Whig politician lamented the new capital as a "serious violation of principle" because it was not at the absolute center of the state; the capital was named for General Andrew Jackson, to honor his victory at the Battle of New Orleans during the War of 1812. He was elected as the seventh president of the United States; the city of Jackson was planned, in April 1822, by Peter Aaron Van Dorn in a "checkerboard" pattern advocated by Thomas Jefferson. City blocks alternated with other open spaces. Over time, many of the park squares have been developed rather than maintained as green space; the state legislature first met in Jackson on December 23, 1822. In 1839, the Mississippi Legislature passed the first state law in the U.
S. to permit married women to administer their own property. Jackson was connected by public road to Vicksburg and
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s, beginning in the United States. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, it was the longest and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is used as an example of how intensely the world's economy can decline; the Great Depression started in the United States after a major fall in stock prices that began around September 4, 1929, became worldwide news with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession; some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II; the Great Depression had devastating effects in countries both poor. Personal income, tax revenue and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%.
Unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities around the world were hit hard those dependent on heavy industry. Construction was halted in many countries. Farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few alternative sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Economic historians attribute the start of the Great Depression to the sudden devastating collapse of U. S. stock market prices on October 29, 1929, known as Black Tuesday. However, some dispute this conclusion and see the stock crash as a symptom, rather than a cause, of the Great Depression. After the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time. John D. Rockefeller said "These are days. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have gone. Prosperity has always returned and will again." The stock market turned upward in early 1930. This was still 30% below the peak of September 1929.
Together and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the corresponding period of the previous year. On the other hand, many of whom had suffered severe losses in the stock market the previous year, cut back their expenditures by 10%. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S. By mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928. Prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930. A deflationary spiral started in 1931. Farmers faced a worse outlook. At its peak, the Great Depression saw nearly 10% of all Great Plains farms change hands despite federal assistance; the decline in the U. S. economy was the factor. Frantic attempts to shore up the economies of individual nations through protectionist policies, such as the 1930 U.
S. Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act and retaliatory tariffs in other countries, exacerbated the collapse in global trade. By 1933, the economic decline had pushed world trade to one-third of its level just four years earlier. Change in economic indicators 1929–32 The two classical competing theories of the Great Depression are the Keynesian and the monetarist explanation. There are various heterodox theories that downplay or reject the explanations of the Keynesians and monetarists; the consensus among demand-driven theories is that a large-scale loss of confidence led to a sudden reduction in consumption and investment spending. Once panic and deflation set in, many people believed they could avoid further losses by keeping clear of the markets. Holding money became profitable as prices dropped lower and a given amount of money bought more goods, exacerbating the drop in demand. Monetarists believe that the Great Depression started as an ordinary recession, but the shrinking of the money supply exacerbated the economic situation, causing a recession to descend into the Great Depression.
Economists and economic historians are evenly split as to whether the traditional monetary explanation that monetary forces were the primary cause of the Great Depression is right, or the traditional Keynesian explanation that a fall in autonomous spending investment, is the primary explanation for the onset of the Great Depression. Today the controversy is of lesser importance since there is mainstream support for the debt deflation theory and the expectations hypothesis that building on the monetary explanation of Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz add non-monetary explanations. There is consensus that the Federal Reserve System should have cut short the process of monetary deflation and banking collapse. If they had done this, the economic downturn would have been much shorter. British economist John Maynard Keynes argued in The General Theory of Employment and Money that lower aggregate expenditures in the economy contributed to a massive decline in income and to employment, well below the average.
In such a situation, the economy reached equilibrium at low levels of economic activity and high unemployment. Keynes' basic idea was simple
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church is a mainline Protestant denomination and a major part of Methodism. In the 19th century, its main predecessor, the Methodist Episcopal Church, was a leader in evangelicalism; the present denomination was founded in 1968 in Dallas, Texas, by union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. The UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley in England, as well as the Great Awakening in the United States; as such, the church's theological orientation is decidedly Wesleyan. It embraces both evangelical elements; the United Methodist Church has a connectional polity, a typical feature of a number of Methodist denominations. It is organized into conferences; the highest level is called the General Conference and is the only organization which may speak for the UMC. The church is a member of the World Council of Churches, the World Methodist Council, other religious associations. With at least 12 million members as of 2014, the UMC is the largest denomination within the wider Methodist movement of 80 million people across the world.
In the United States, the UMC ranks as the largest mainline Protestant denomination, the largest Protestant church after the Southern Baptist Convention, the third largest Christian denomination. In 2014, its worldwide membership was distributed as follows: 7 million in the United States, 4.4 million in Africa and Europe. In 2015, Pew Research estimated that 3.6 percent of the US population, or 9 million adult adherents, self-identify with the United Methodist Church revealing a much larger number of adherents than registered membership. The movement, which would become the United Methodist Church, began in the mid-18th century within the Church of England. A small group of students, including John Wesley, Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, met at Oxford University, they living a holy life. Other students mocked them, saying they were the "Holy Club" and "the Methodists", being methodical and exceptionally detailed in their Bible study and disciplined lifestyle; the so-called Methodists started individual societies or classes for members of the Church of England who wanted to live a more religious life.
In 1735, John and Charles Wesley went to America, hoping to teach the gospel to the American Indians in the colony of Georgia. Instead, John became vicar of the church in Savannah, his preaching was legalistic and full of harsh rules, the congregation rejected him. After two years in America, he returned to England dejected and confused. On his journey to America, he had been impressed with the faith of the German Moravians on board, when he returned to England he spent time with a German Moravian, passing through England, Peter Böhler. Peter believed a person is saved through the grace of God and not by works, John had many conversations with Peter about this topic. On May 25, 1738, after listening to a reading of Martin Luther's preface to Romans, John came to the understanding that his good works could not save him and he could rest in God's grace for salvation. For the first time in his life, he felt the assurance of salvation. In less than two years, the "Holy Club" disbanded. John Wesley met with a group of clergy.
He said "they appeared to be of one heart, as well as of one judgment, resolved to be Bible-Christians at all events. The ministers retained their membership in the Church of England. Though not always emphasized or appreciated in the Anglican churches of their day, their teaching emphasized salvation by God's grace, acquired through faith in Christ. Three teachings they saw as the foundation of Christian faith were: People are all by nature dead in sin and children of wrath, they are justified by faith alone. Faith produces outward holiness; these clergy became popular, attracting large congregations. The nickname students had used against the Wesleys was revived; the English preacher Francis Asbury arrived in America in 1771. He became a "circuit rider", taking the gospel to the furthest reaches of the new frontier as he had done as a preacher in England; the first official organization in the United States occurred in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1784, with the formation of the Methodist Episcopal Church at the Christmas Conference with Francis Asbury and Thomas Coke as the leaders.
Though John Wesley wanted the Methodists to stay within the Church of England, the American Revolution decisively separated the Methodists in the American colonies from the life and sacraments of the Anglican Church. In 1784, after unsuccessful attempts to have the Church of England send a bishop to start a new church in the colonies, Wesley decisively appointed fellow priest Thomas Coke as superintendent to organize a separate Methodist Society. Together with Coke, Wesley sent a revision of the Anglican Prayerbook and the Articles of Religion which were received and adopted by the Baltimore Christmas Conference of 1784 establishing the Methodist Episcopal Church; the conference was held at the Lovely Lane Methodist Church, considered the Mother Church of American Methodism. The new church grew in the young country as it employed circuit riders, many of whom were laymen, to travel the rural nation by horseback to preach the Gospel and to establish churches until there was scarcely any village in the United States without a Methodist presence.
With 4,000 circuit riders by 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church became the largest Protestant denomination in the
Sewanee: The University of the South
Sewanee: The University of the South known as Sewanee, is a private, liberal arts college in Sewanee, Tennessee. It is owned by 28 southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church, its School of Theology is an official seminary of the church; the university's School of Letters offers graduate degrees in American Literature and Creative Writing. The campus consists of 13,000 acres of scenic mountain property atop the Cumberland Plateau, with the developed portion occupying about 1,000 acres; the school was ranked 41st in the 2017 U. S. News & World Report list of liberal arts colleges. In 2016, Forbes ranked it 94th on its list of Top Colleges in the United States. Sewanee is a member of the Associated Colleges of the South. On July 4, 1857, delegates from ten dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas—were led up Monteagle Mountain by Bishop Leonidas Polk — an ardent defender of slavery — for the founding of their denominational college for the region.
The goal was to create a Southern university free of Northern influences. As one of its founders, Bishop James Otey of Tennessee, put it: the new university will "materially aid the South to resist and repel a fanatical domination which seeks to rule over us." John Armfield, at one time co-owner of Franklin and Armfield, "the largest and most prosperous slave trading enterprise in the entire country," was by far the most influential in bankrolling the new university. His purchase of the site where the university continues to exist today and his promise of $25,000 per year far exceeded any other donations and was considered a "princely offer" by a Nashville newspaper. Today, Sewanee admits students from all backgrounds and downplays the role of this slave trader in the University's founding; the six-ton marble cornerstone, laid on October 10, 1860, consecrated by Bishop Polk, was blown up in 1863 by Union soldiers. A few were donated back to the university, a large fragment was installed in a wall of All Saints' Chapel.
Several figures prominent in the Confederacy, notably Bishop-General Leonidas Polk, Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. and Bishop James Hervey Otey, were significant founders of the university. Generals Edmund Kirby Smith, Josiah Gorgas and Francis A. Shoup were prominent in the university's postbellum revival and continuance; because of the damage and disruptions during the Civil War, construction came to a temporary halt. Polk died in action during the Atlanta campaign, he is remembered always through his portrait Sword Over the Gown, painted by Eliphalet F. Andrews in 1900. After the original was vandalized in 1998, a copy by Connie Erickson was unveiled on June 1, 2003. In 1866 building was resumed, this date is sometimes used as the re-founding of the university and the year from which it has maintained continuous operations; the university's first convocation was held on September 18, 1868, with nine students and four faculty members present. Presiding was the Rt. Rev. Charles Todd Quintard, Vice Chancellor of the University, Second Bishop of Tennessee and "Chaplain of the Confederacy".
He attended the first Lambeth Conference in England and received financial support from clergy and laity of the Church of England for rebuilding the school. Quintard is known as the "Re-Founder" of the University of the South. During World War II, the University of the South was one of 131 tertiary institutions nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission. Schools of dentistry, law and nursing once existed, a secondary school was part of the institution into the second half of the 20th century. However, for financial reasons it was decided to focus on the College and the School of Theology. In June 2006, Sewanee opened its School of a second graduate school; the School of Letters offers a Master of Arts in American Literature and a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. The institution has combined its two historical names in all university publications that are not official documents and bills itself as "Sewanee: The University of the South".
Version three of the university's style guide, a document reflecting the official policies of the university with respect to its public image following the name change, stated in part: First, it must be understood that the official and legal name of this institution is "The University of the South". In the past, unorganized use of this official name and the university's familiar name, has been confusing to those unfamiliar with the institution. In addition, college guides and Web sites that have become so crucial in young people's college searches may list the institution under as many as four different entries—beginning with "The", "University", "South", or "Sewanee". To avoid confusion and to honor the history and character of the institution, a consistent reference to the name of the institution is critical. So, for extended audiences unfamiliar with the institution, the naming convention "Sewanee: The University of the South" should be used on a first reference. Subsequent references may be to "Sewanee" or "the University".
When this naming system was proposed in 2004, it was misinterpreted by some alumni to reflect a change in the official name of the university. A minor scandal ensued, with more conservative commentators insinuating that the change was
China
China the People's Republic of China, is a country in East Asia and the world's most populous country, with a population of around 1.404 billion. Covering 9,600,000 square kilometers, it is the third- or fourth-largest country by total area. Governed by the Communist Party of China, the state exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four direct-controlled municipalities, the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. China emerged as one of the world's earliest civilizations, in the fertile basin of the Yellow River in the North China Plain. For millennia, China's political system was based on hereditary monarchies, or dynasties, beginning with the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in 21st century BCE. Since China has expanded, re-unified numerous times. In the 3rd century BCE, the Qin established the first Chinese empire; the succeeding Han dynasty, which ruled from 206 BC until 220 AD, saw some of the most advanced technology at that time, including papermaking and the compass, along with agricultural and medical improvements.
The invention of gunpowder and movable type in the Tang dynasty and Northern Song completed the Four Great Inventions. Tang culture spread in Asia, as the new Silk Route brought traders to as far as Mesopotamia and Horn of Africa. Dynastic rule ended in 1912 with the Xinhai Revolution; the Chinese Civil War resulted in a division of territory in 1949, when the Communist Party of China established the People's Republic of China, a unitary one-party sovereign state on Mainland China, while the Kuomintang-led government retreated to the island of Taiwan. The political status of Taiwan remains disputed. Since the introduction of economic reforms in 1978, China's economy has been one of the world's fastest-growing with annual growth rates above 6 percent. According to the World Bank, China's GDP grew from $150 billion in 1978 to $12.24 trillion by 2017. Since 2010, China has been the world's second-largest economy by nominal GDP and since 2014, the largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity.
China is the world's largest exporter and second-largest importer of goods. China is a recognized nuclear weapons state and has the world's largest standing army and second-largest defense budget; the PRC is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as it replaced the ROC in 1971, as well as an active global partner of ASEAN Plus mechanism. China is a leading member of numerous formal and informal multilateral organizations, including the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, WTO, APEC, BRICS, the BCIM, the G20. In recent times, scholars have argued that it will soon be a world superpower, rivaling the United States; the word "China" has been used in English since the 16th century. It is not a word used by the Chinese themselves, it has been traced through Portuguese and Persian back to the Sanskrit word Cīna, used in ancient India."China" appears in Richard Eden's 1555 translation of the 1516 journal of the Portuguese explorer Duarte Barbosa. Barbosa's usage was derived from Persian Chīn, in turn derived from Sanskrit Cīna.
Cīna was first used including the Mahābhārata and the Laws of Manu. In 1655, Martino Martini suggested that the word China is derived from the name of the Qin dynasty. Although this derivation is still given in various sources, it is complicated by the fact that the Sanskrit word appears in pre-Qin literature; the word may have referred to a state such as Yelang. The meaning transferred to China as a whole; the origin of the Sanskrit word is still a matter of debate, according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The official name of the modern state is the "People's Republic of China"; the shorter form is "China" Zhōngguó, from zhōng and guó, a term which developed under the Western Zhou dynasty in reference to its royal demesne. It was applied to the area around Luoyi during the Eastern Zhou and to China's Central Plain before being used as an occasional synonym for the state under the Qing, it was used as a cultural concept to distinguish the Huaxia people from perceived "barbarians". The name Zhongguo is translated as "Middle Kingdom" in English.
Archaeological evidence suggests that early hominids inhabited China between 2.24 million and 250,000 years ago. The hominid fossils of Peking Man, a Homo erectus who used fire, were discovered in a cave at Zhoukoudian near Beijing; the fossilized teeth of Homo sapiens have been discovered in Fuyan Cave in Hunan. Chinese proto-writing existed in Jiahu around 7000 BCE, Damaidi around 6000 BCE, Dadiwan from 5800–5400 BCE, Banpo dating from the 5th millennium BCE; some scholars have suggested. According to Chinese tradition, the first dynasty was the Xia, which emerged around 2100 BCE; the dynasty was considered mythical by historians until scientific excavations found early Bronze Age sites at Erlitou, Henan in 1959. It remains unclear whether these sites are the remains of the Xia dynasty or of another culture from the same period; the succeeding Shang dynasty is the earliest to be confirmed by contemporary records. The Shang ruled the plain of the Yellow River in eastern China from the 17th to the 11th century BCE.
Their oracle bone script
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups referring to races. This is most used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education desegregation of the school systems and the military. Racial integration of society was a related goal. Starting with King Philip's War in the 17th century, blacks served alongside whites in an integrated environment in the North American colonies, they continued to fight in every American war integrated with whites up until the War of 1812. They would not fight in integrated units again until the Korean War. Thousands of black men fought on the side of rebellious colonists in the American Revolutionary War, many in the new Continental Navy, their names, accomplishments or total numbers are unknown because of poor record keeping. During the American Civil War, Blacks enlisted in large numbers, they were enslaved blacks who escaped in the South, although there were many northern black Unionists as well.
More than 180,000 blacks served with the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War, in segregated units known as the United States Colored Troops, under the command of white officers. They are part of the National Park Service's Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System. Around 18,000 black people joined the Union Navy as sailors, they are part of the National Park Service's War Soldiers & Sailors System. While a handful of Blacks were commissioned as officers in World War I, blacks were underrepresented throughout the conflict, though the NAACP lobbied for the commission of greater numbers of black officers. Upon entering office, President Woodrow Wilson segregated the United States Navy. S. Navy had never been segregated. During World War II, most officers were white and most black troops still served only as truck drivers and as stevedores; the Red Ball Express, instrumental in facilitating the rapid advance of Allied forces across France after D-Day, was operated exclusively by African-American truck drivers.
In the midst of the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was short of replacement troops for existing military units—all of which were white in composition, so he made the decision to allow African-American soldiers to join the white military units to fight in combat for the first time—the first step toward a desegregated United States military. Eisenhower's decision in this case was opposed by his own army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith, outraged by the decision and said that the American public would take offense with the integration of the military units. For the Army Air Corps see the Tuskegee Airmen. For the U. S. Army see the 761st Tank Battalion. In World War II, the U. S. Navy first experimented with integration aboard USCGC Sea Cloud later on USS Mason, a ship with black crew members and commanded by white officers; some called it "Eleanor's folly", after President Franklin Roosevelt's wife. Mason's purpose had been to allow black sailors to serve in the full range of billets rather than being restricted to stewards and messmen, as they were on most ships.
The Navy was pressured to train black sailors for billets by Eleanor Roosevelt, who insisted that they be given the jobs they had trained for. The U. S. Navy's newest component, the Seabees, had the same ingrained attitudes and approaches but ended up at the forefront of change. In February 1942 CNO Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark recommended African Americans for ratings in the construction trades. In April the Navy announced. So, those men were put into segregated units, the 34th and 80th Naval Construction Battalions. Both had black enlisted. Both battalions experienced problems with that arrangement that led to the replacement of the officers. In addition, many of the stevedore battalions were segregated. However, by wars end many of those Special Construction Battalions were the first integrated units in the U. S. Navy; the wars end brought the decommissioning of every one of those units. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9981 ordered the integration of the armed forces following World War II, a major advance in civil rights.
Using the Executive Order meant that Truman could bypass Congress. Representatives of the Solid South, all white Democrats, would have stonewalled related legislation. For instance, in May 1948, Richard B. Russell, Democratic Senator from Georgia, attached an amendment granting draftees and new inductees the opportunity to choose whether or not they wanted to serve in segregated military units to the Selective Service Act, being debated in Congress, but it was defeated in committee. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. In June 1950 when the Selective Services Law came up for renewal, Russell unsuccessfully tried again to attach his segregation amendment. At the end of June 1950, the Korean War broke out; the U. S. Army had accomplished little desegregation in peacetime and sent the segregated Eighth Army to defend South Korea. Most black soldiers served in segregated support units in the rear; the remainder served in segregated combat units, most notably the 24th Infantry Regiment.
The first months of the Korean War were some of the most disastrous in U. S. military history. The North Korean People's Army nearly drove the American-led United Nations forces off the Korean peninsu
