Ethical treason

It was 1968. America was embedded in an unpopular war abroad and domestic turmoil within. As troops circulated in and out of a combat zones, their civilian counterpart’s argument over its morality reached a fever pitch, leading to President Lyndon B. Johnson’s decision not to seek reelection that year. The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy notched up the fervor in urban America, as summer approached and fears of a Black uprising swept the nation.
Prelude: Protest and social conflict
Full scale riots did ignite across the country after King’s murder on April 4 in Baltimore, Detroit, Kansas City, and Washington, D.C., and Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley became alarmed over rumors of conspiracy to incite civil strife by Black Power advocates. The government responded with the mobilization of troops to restore order in these minority communities.
As a precaution, he and Johnson mobilized the National Guard and elements of armored divisions from Fort Hood, Tx. This did little to counter the mayhem amounting to $10 million, centered on the city’s West Side. Ironically, minimal damage was experienced on the South Side due to King’s efforts at bridging divisions between gangs in the area two years prior.
As the nation anticipated August 26 and the arrival of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, plans were in the works to mount demonstrations and shut it down, this time by anti-war activists and Far-Left Radicals, many of them from affluent backgrounds. In a prelude to the terrorism paranoia that would accompany the post-9-11 era decades later, these highly educated anarchists succeeded in shrouding the Windy City in an aura of foreboding. Throughout the summer, rumors/threats circulated that attacks would be directed against National Guard armories and police stations, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) would be dumped into the city water supply, and intersections and thoroughfares would be blocked.
Daley, a fan of strong-arm tactics and legitimately fearful of the image of his city on the global stage, again made arrangements for extra security.
Dissension within the ranks:
“The people we are supposed to control, the rioters, are probably our own race.”
—a quote by one of the Fort Hood 43
Located just outside Killeen, Tx. Fort Hood was one of the largest Army installations at 214,968 acres or roughly 340 square miles. Established during World War Il, it is spacious enough for two whole divisions rotating troops in one year tours in the Vietnam war zone. Life on military bases during that era meant relative isolation from the unrest that engulfed the outside world.
Alas, the relative peace of stateside duty was not an exemption from continental turmoil. As mentioned, soldiers from Fort Hood reinforced National Guard units in Chicago earlier that April, and as the political bigwigs made the trek to their midwestern pow wow, plans were drawn up to transport another contingent of troops north for “riot control.”
What transpired was a landmark in the annals of military dissent and a largely forgotten episode of a controversial war.
The day before their deployment, on Aug.23 over 150 soldiers, all of them African American, staged a “sit-in” at a major post intersection and refused deployment to the powder keg in Chicago. In military parlance, they were refusing a lawful order.
These men were unique in that many of them had already served tours in Vietnam. Battle hardened, their major concern about this in-country deployment was the possibility of taking up arms against people who looked like them and likely held similar viewpoints. Influenced by the trend towards civil disobedience across the nation, they ignored overtures by top brass including the commanding general.
Eventually many of them relented by returning to their unit, but those who remained steadfast were charged with court martial. They became known as the Fort Hood 43.
Among them was Sgt. Robert D. Rucker, a seasoned vet who’d been awarded the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star, and the Air Medal, and a recent combatant in the historic siege of Khe Sanh earlier that year, one of the deadliest battles of the war. He and his compadres, decorated and wounded in the service of their country, had no interest in joining the quandary where Mayor Daley gave standing orders to “…shoot to kill any arsonist and to shoot to maim or cripple anyone looting.”
All 43 were taken into custody, coerced by beatings and clubbing into the stockade.
“…the whole world is watching.”
—lyric from Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In,” adopted as a chant by protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
The convention went underway without the jailed G.I.s, as the simmering cauldron of dissent was given a complexion of diversity, as a rainbow coalition of wayward youth assembled to protest the war. External and internal forces opposed to the war seized upon these events to underscore the breakdown in American politics, as evidenced by the following excerpt from the leftist publication Vietnam Veterans Against the War:
“Without military back-up the Chicago police took things into their own hands and produced their own disaster as the nation witnessed the broadcast of police riots outside the convention.”
What became known as the “Battle of Michigan Avenue” got underway. In spite of fears of ethnic strife, the participants on both sides in these proceedings appeared predominantly White, as protesters and media were subjected to brutality under cover of authority, as celebrity newsmen Dan Rather and Mike Wallace were injured by police.
The aftermath was marked by investigations with predictable results, as law enforcement blamed “outside agitators,” while the Department of Justice chose not to prosecute demonstrators while acknowledging there had been ample provocation.
Convention host Richard J. Daley, a master of malapropisms, gave perhaps the most memorable quote to sum up this historical event.
“The police are not here to create disorder, they’re here to preserve disorder.”
Postscript
“…the generals are troubled by the possibility that black soldiers will find that they owe higher fealty to the black community than to the U.S. Army.”
—TIME Magazine, Sept. 13, 1968.
As these events transpired, the Fort Hood 43 cooled their heels in the stockade, as the military legal system maneuvered to address the issue without escalating it further. Eventually the publicity generated by liberal attorneys and media succeeded in getting the defendants relatively light sentences, while bringing attention to increased discord within the military by Black and White servicemen.
Sgt. Robert Rucker survived his encounter with military justice and embarked upon a legal profession as a civilian. Continuing his service to the American Dream, he became a deputy district attorney, an Indiana Supreme Court Justice, and an inductee to the Military Veterans Hall of Fame.
Fort Hood, originally named after Civil War general John Bell Hood, is now known as Fort Cavazos after Hispanic General Richard E. Cavazos. This is meant to reverse the racist legacy of Black troops serving at bases associated with Confederates who’d promoted the cause of slavery.
This year’s political conventions will be held in Milwaukee for the Republicans, and once again Chicago for the Democrats. The politically charged atmosphere leading up to these events are likely to result in new historical legacies.