While she is known mostly as the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King was one of the leading protestors of America’s involvement in Vietnam.
Her activism influenced her husband’s views on speaking out against the war.
The book Until the Last Gun is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America’s Soul details the untold story of how King’s protest and the patriotism of Black soldiers helped to end America’s involvement in Vietnam.
We're talking with the book's author, Matthew Delmont, on this hour of All Sides.
Guest:
- Matthew Delmont, Dartmouth University history professor/author, Until the Last Gun is Silent: A Story of Patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the Fight to Save America’s Soul
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. The image of a solemn Coretta Scott King sitting in a pew with her daughter Bernice resting on her lap at her husband's funeral might be the image that immediately comes to mind when her name is mentioned. What people may not know was prior to her marriage to the famed civil rights activist, Ms. King attended Antioch College here in Ohio. She studied music and not only used her voice as a singer. But as one of the leading opponents of the Vietnam War. Her story and influence as an activist is chronicled in the book, "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul, by Dartmouth professor, Matthew F. Delmont. And we're gonna talk about that book today. Welcome to All Sides, Matthew.
Matthew Delmont: I mean, thanks for having me.
Juravich: So before we talk about Coretta Scott King, I wanted you to start, I wanted to start our conversation with a conversation that you had with your father and how it played a part in writing this book. So can you tell me how your father basically helped you with the thought process of this book?
Delmont: So I went back to Minneapolis, my hometown, to talk to my father. He had prostate cancer, and so I knew it was gonna be one of the last conversations we had. And I was trying to make up for lost time, trying to get some memories from him, hear some stories I hadn't heard before. He knew that my next book was gonna be on the Vietnam War, and at that point, I knew I wanted to work on this topic, but I didn't know exactly my approach to it. So I was asking him about his memories of the Vietnam era.
He graduated from high school in 1965, and one story he told me is that he was actually recruited to run track at the Air Force Academy. And somebody came up in the physical and ended up falling through. But he said after that point, the military didn't come looking for him and he sure as heck didn't go looking for them. So that's why he explained he didn't actually serve in Vietnam. But then he was telling me stories about people he knew who served and then just stories about the era itself.
And he paused for a minute and said, you know, there's this young brother my same age who was from Detroit who were in the Medal of Honor, but they got him when they came home. He couldn't remember the soldier's name, but it was enough of a clue that when I got home, I was able to do the research and realize he was talking about a man named Dwight Skip Johnson. And so I give credit to my father for kind of leading me on the path that led me to learn about Skip Johnson's story and became one of the two focal point stories I use in the book, "Until Alaska in a Silent." So.
Juravich: Writing about Skip Johnson was spurred by your father and but then for your research were you already planning to write about Coretta Scott King I mean from the beginning or where did that part of the idea come from?
Delmont: So I knew I wanted to focus on both the military side of the story, talking about the thousands of black men and women who served in the military during World War II. But I also want to talk about the protests on the home front. And as I was doing research on the anti-war movement, I kept coming across Credit Scott King's name. I would say I knew her story. I'm a historian. I've taught about this topic in the classroom for decades now.
But I'd never realized how prominent of a role she played in the anti-Vietnam protests and in the peace movement. And so as I started to learn more about that part of the story, I realized, you know, she is the focal point of the antiwar movement. She's one of the most influential, most visible antiwar protesters of the era. And so I... As I got further into the archival documents, the oral history interviews, the newspaper archives, I realized there's enough there to make her really the leading story of the anti-war movement.
And so with the book, I try to weave together those two stories. Skip Johnson is the story of a working class young man who served the country with great heroism, but also with great tragedy, ultimately. And then Credit Scott King, moving her to the foreground, because too often she's pictured as being just the widow or the wife of Martin Luther King Jr.
Juravich: We'll talk about Skip Johnson a little bit later. I wanted to start with Coretta Scott King because as you said, most people just know her as the widow of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When you were telling people you were writing about her, is that how most people mentioned her? Like did most people agree with that and not know about her activism?
Delmont: By and large, yes. Thankfully, most people know the name at this point. They know Kretzkocking some part about her, but they largely know her through her husband's story. And in many ways, that makes sense, but it means that people don't pick up her story until. Dr. King's assassination. Then they realize that she comes to the foreground. She displays tremendous bravery and fortitude.
But when you look at her entire life, she's there all along. She's a leader. She's an activist. She is the one often on the podiums helping to rally people about the peace movement and helping to really build bridges between the peace movement and the civil rights movement. She isn't waiting for her husband to lead there. In many cases, she is actually leading him and pushing him to take a bolder, more public stance against the war.
Juravich: Yeah, maybe there's a reason Martin Luther King Jr. Picked her as a partner in life, right?
Delmont: I think that's exactly right. I mean, she was already a dedicated activist when they met. And it's one of the things that attracted them to each other, that they both recognized how inspired, how passionate, and how powerful they were. That's one reason they fell in love.
Juravich: So Coretta Scott King's story has an Ohio connection, and that I didn't know. So she was a student at Antioch College in Yellow Springs. Can you tell me a little bit more, what can you tell about her college experience here in Ohio?
Delmont: So Crescott King's family is originally from Alabama, but her older sister actually went to Antioch. She was one of the very first black students there. Crescock King followed in her footsteps and went to Aniak and in Yellow Springs. And by that point, Aniac only had a handful of black students. So it was really a pioneering moment to be a young black college student at Antioqu. Very quickly, once Credit Scott King is there, she develops two passions. One is music.
She's a tremendous singer and she views that as being hopefully her career pathway. So she studies music when she's at Antioch. But she also very quickly gravitates to the student activist at Antioche. This is in 1945, 46, and so at that point it's the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. They have a chapter at Antioc, a college chapter. She links up with that group. And then by her later college career, she connects with the Progressive political party.
And so in 1948, she goes to the National Convention of the Progress Party, has a chance to meet Paul Robeson, the famous actor, activist and singer, and he becomes a real influence for her. But one of the things she talks about in being in Ohio was this kind of mix of it was progressive in some ways, it was more advanced than Alabama was, but there was still segregation. And so one story she told is that she was studying to be a teacher and she got her teacher assignment at a school in Yellow Springs.
But they actually wouldn't let her teach at the all white school in the Yellow Springs, they were going to assign her to an all black school. And that really upset her because Antioch, the leaders of the school were trumpeting these liberal values, saying, you know, we believe in civil rights, we believe in integration. But when push came to shove, they weren't willing to challenge the segregation policies that existed in Ohio at the time. And so she wrote some really powerful editorials in the newspaper, powerful papers in her classes that really called people to account, asked Antioch to actually live up to these values that it claimed to hold, and then helped to shape the trajectory she took as an activist.
Juravich: That'll probably surprise people listening, because I mean, as far as Ohio goes, everyone knows Yellow Springs is a very activist community, very liberal community. So I think people would be surprised to hear that Coretta Scott King wasn't allowed to teach at a school in Yellow Springs of all places. Can't imagine that.
Delmont: And that's what upset her so much, is that I think this kind of trace throughout her life, understanding the values that people claim to hold and then the values of people actually put into practice. And that was the hypocrisy that she was trying to call attention to. And it upset her, but it also motivated her. Motivated her as a 20 year old, 21 year old and continue to motivate her and push her throughout her throughout life.
Juravich: So when she met Martin Luther King Jr. In the early 1950s, she was like a full-fledged activist, right? Because you mentioned that's one of the qualities that drew them together. But can you tell me about her herself without Martin Luther king Jr., like, you know, just before they got married?
Delmont: Yeah, so just at the very end of her college career at Antioch, I mentioned she goes to the Progressive Political Party in Philadelphia in 1948, and this is a huge moment. It's a chance for her to interact with young people from all across the country. They describe it, the newspaper that covers it, describes it as being almost a revival kind of atmosphere. So if you picture what it means to be a really committed student activist at the time, that was Credit Scott King. And she had a chance to hear from leading political figures the other day on the left side of the political spectrum.
So she hears from Paul Robeson, she hears from Shirley Graham Du Bois, and these really powerful and passionate speeches about what direction is America going to take in these years after World War II. Already at that point, people are raising real concerns about the size of America's military, where America is choosing to spend its resources, choose to spend them on military campaigns or supporting France and Indonesia, as opposed to sporting. Things that will benefit American citizens at home, housing, health care, food, and so these start to percolate for her.
She ends up moving to Boston in the early 1950s to pursue her singing career, and it's a big transition for her, she has almost no money when she goes there, she's rooming with in the house of someone who went to Antioch, but she's really scraping to get by. She talks about how she has enough money to buy graham crackers and an apple each and she can barely really make ends meet. But she's willing to take this adventure because she wants to be able to develop herself as a singer. She hopes to have a career as a professional singer, but she maintains this connection to the progressive movement.
So she's interested in civil rights. She's interested in the early stages of the peace movement. And all of this is going on for her when she meets Martha King in Boston in 1952. And initially, she doesn't see much there with him. She's much more mature at that point than he is. And it isn't until they go on a couple of dates. He's incredibly persistent and persuasive.
And as they start to talk about world issues, start to about politics, both in the United States and globally, that's when they start to fall in love. And that's what she starts to describe. I see someone here who's both a potential match for me, intellectually, but also someone who can help to challenge me in the years ahead. And he sees very similar attributes in her.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the book, "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul with the author of the book and Dartmouth history professor, Matthew F. Delmont. So when did, so just to bring it back to the book which is about Vietnam War. Um, when did the war in Vietnam become one of her leading causes? Um, was it just, did it develop over time or was it from the very beginning when the war started?
Delmont: It really developed over the course of 1950s. She is following the newspaper coverage of the United States' increasing involvement in Vietnam, initially providing military support and resources to the French and the warring into China, and then eventually sending advisors, and then by the early 1960s starting to send actual troops there. In the 1950s, early 60s, she's following the kind of critiques of the war that people like Paul Robeson and others are making and helping, she started to raise her own concerns about the potential for the United States to get into another military conflict.
One thing she understood is that the United states had gone from one war to the next. She saw World War II lead into Korea and she was worried that Korea was gonna lead directly into Vietnam. The late 1950s or the 1960s, she starts to join groups that are campaigning against the potential for nuclear war. So she joins a group called SANE that is one of the first groups to raise real concerns about the potential for for nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Those bring her in contact with kind of a global group of activists. So the first real step she takes to speak out against the Vietnam War is in 1962, she travels to Geneva with a group of 50 other women to protest the United Nations about nuclear disarmament. It's encouraging the United States and other leading nations to sign an anti-nuclear arms pact. But the connection to Vietnam there is that the worry is that if the United States gets involved in Vietnam, it's to lead. To a higher likelihood that the United States is eventually going to get into a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union.
Juravich: Well, tell me about the conflict, though, between speaking out against the war, but also trying to be an advocate for civil rights. Both of these things are happening at the same time. And a lot of people felt like they were like dueling. Could you be a dueling activist? Could you an activist for both or do you have to just like pick one and focus?
Delmont: A big pressure that's on Kresgek and obviously on her husband, Martin, is that at the same time they're trying to persuade President Johnson to sign key civil rights legislation and persuade other politicians in Washington, D.C., they're also seeing real concerns about the Vietnam War. But obviously it's President Johnson who's making both sets of decisions. They recognize that President Johnson is less likely to support the war on poverty, less likely to support civil rights initiatives if he sees these civil rights activists linking up with peace activists.
That's one thing that keeps Martin from speaking out about the war for so long. Chris Scott King tries to walk a really fine line. One of the first major speeches she gives against the wars in 1965 at Madison Square garden. She speaks in front of 20,000 people. She's one of the only women invited to speak at that point. And she really calls out President Johnson. It's incredibly bold for her to speak in the tone that she does at that time.
Because in 1965, most activists, civil rights activists, but also others, were afraid to challenge the president in that way. But she understands that the civil rights movement needs to be about something more than just legislation. It needs to about the ideas of peace and freedom, not just nationally, but globally. And she helps to make it possible for more people to take the kind of courageous steps to speak out about the war.
Juravich: And we'll get into this after the break whenever we talk about Dwight Skip Johnson, but was Coretta Scott King realizing that maybe disproportionately more black Americans were becoming soldiers and going to the front lines? Did she come to that realization over time too?
Delmont: Absolutely. That's one of the things that really motivates her in 1965-66, because that's one thing that starts to come through in the press, is that Black Americans had pushed for a long time to get the military to be racially integrated. And by Vietnam, it finally was. And there was reason to be pleased and... And relieved that finally the military was racially integrated, but the problem with Vietnam was that in those early years of the war, a disproportionate number of Black Americans were being drafted to serve, often in frontline roles, and so as the injury and casualty reports come back, you see more Black Americans being wounded or killed in combat.
That really catches Creda's attention and upsets her, because she understood that Black Americans have served in every war in the United States they've ever been a part of. But she was worried that in this case, Black Americans are being asked to fight and die for their country in a war that didn't have a clear end goal or clear benefit to America more broadly. And so it's one of the points she keeps making early in the war is that this is a bad war for America generally, but it's particularly bad war, for Black Americans.
Juravich: Is this the way that she tried to tie it for her husband and other civil rights leaders where like the war is also a civil rights issue?
Delmont: Exactly. And she kept coming back to the idea of the cost of the war. And so it's both about who is being asked to fight and who's dying in the war, but it's about where is this money going? These millions and millions of dollars that the United States is spending on. Tanks and planes and bullets and bombs to fight the war.
She keeps saying that money could be better spent with the war on poverty here in the United States, that we have hungry people, we have people without healthcare, we have who need schools, who need homes, the money should be spent here in United States. And so she kept coming back to study of the cost of war, both the human casualties, but also the tremendous economic costs and how Americans needed to confront their leaders with these resource decisions.
Juravich: Our guest this hour is Matthew F. Delmont, Dartmouth history professor and author of the book "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War and the fight to save America's soul. Coming up, we're going to learn about Medal of Honor recipient Dwight Skip Johnson and how his story reflected the black American experience in Vietnam and at home in the turbulent 1960s. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. It's often been said that history repeats itself. One area where this has been and continues to be true is the struggle for civil rights and the disconnect between black men serving in wars abroad while not having the same rights and freedoms at home. It has repeated itself. It happened during World War II. It happened in Korea and it happened even more so perhaps to African-Americans serving in record numbers in Vietnam.
While activists fought for a civil rights movement at home. In the book, "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul, our guest, Dartmouth history professor, Matthew F. Delmont, tells the story of Medal of Honor recipient, Dwight Skip Johnson, whose story is emblematic of young black men during those turbulent times in the 1960s. Thank you again for being here, Professor Delmont.
Delmont: Thanks for having me.
Juravich: So let's turn our attention from Coretta Scott King to the young man from Detroit. Can you introduce us to Dwight Skip Johnson? Who was he? And his name might not be a household name to many.
Delmont: So Dwight Skip Johnson was a young man from Detroit. He grew up in the Jefferies Housing Project. So he was a working class poor man. He was raised by his mom. And he graduated from high school in 1966. Some of his passions when he was in high school, he was the niggly club and the choir. So as a historian, I'm always trying to learn more about people who aren't famous necessarily, people whose histories aren't recorded in archives.
And so I was able to find his high school yearbook. And that was one of the things that helped me understand the kind of things he was invested in as a high school soon. Like many Americans at the time after he graduated from high school, he was drafted to serve in Vietnam, so he went and did his military training at Fort Knox in Kentucky. He was assigned to a tank unit, the 69th Armor. He deployed to Vietnam in 1967 and was there for about a year.
And the reason I focus on him in this book is that Near the end of his deployment, the tank unit he was involved with was caught in an ambush. And he performed heroically to fight his way out of that ambush, helped to save the lives of many men in his unit, and it was for that heroism that he received the Medal of Honor. When Dwight came back to Detroit, and we'll talk about this, I think, shortly, he had a really challenging reentry into civilian life.
And that was, again, emblematic of the experience of a lot of Vietnam veterans. And so for me, Dwight Skip Johnson's story is one that I think illuminates not just the Black American experience of Vietnam, but what it meant for so many working class men to serve in the war. And then to come back to a country that both didn't reward their service, but didn't provide much attention to the real needs. Healthier needs that they have, both mentally and physically.
Juravich: And to help you learn more about Skip, you met his widow, Katrina. Tell me what it was like meeting her. What was she like?
Delmont: Katrina is a fascinating, feisty woman. She's in her late 70s now, lives in suburban Detroit. And the chance to interview her was just amazing. One of the challenges of trying to tell a historical story like this about someone whose life is not well-recorded in archives is that. You need to find people who knew them well. And so Katrina was someone who knew Skip from the time he was a teenager.
One of the stories that she told was that when he was about 15 years old, he would come around her neighborhood, she was 14 at the time, ride his bike around and try to flirt with her because he thought she was really cute and he wanted a chance to go on a date with her. What Katrina said was at the times she didn't want anything to do with her boyfriend because she was busy playing baseball in the streets. They stayed in touch and eventually went on a couple of dates before he deployed to Vietnam. But it was when he was in Vietnam, they started to exchange letters.
And when she first got one of these letters from Skip, she turned to her mom and said, you know, what do I do? I don't really know what to write back. And her mom, whose husband, Katrina's father had served in Korea, said, you know write anything. When soldiers are away, they just want someone to be able to talk to. But it's in that exchange of letters that Katrina and Skip fell in love. And then when Skip came back to the United States... They met, they remat, got engaged and eventually got married and had a son named Christopher.
Juravich: You also spoke with men who served with Skip. So what was it like to hear their memories of him? Because they only knew him from basically like the battlefield.
Delmont: I was able to connect with about a dozen men who served in the 6th and 9th Armor with Skip, and those stories were really important to help get a better sense of what it meant to serve in these four-man tank crews in Vietnam. They were able to talk me through the intricacies of the kind of work they were asked to do in Vietnam, it was largely road clearance and trying to make sure that the convoys that would cross these supply roads in Vietnam were kept safe. But that meant that they had to run over the roads to clear all the mines that were there.
And so they would talk me through what it meant to do that and then how they would try to repair their tanks afterwards. Talk me through the what it meant to get introduced to combat. That the kind of training they received at Fort Knox could prepare them for some things, but the actual experience of being shot at for the first time. How harrowing that was. Then a couple of the men were actually there on the day of the ambush, and so they were able to talk with me about their experience of seeing what Skip did, and just how unique and extraordinary it was that he performed above and beyond the call of duty, and that it was a truly heroic act that he took to save the lives of men in their unit.
Juravich: Now, I said in the beginning that he was emblematic of young black men during that turbulent time in the 1960s, and not to say that he's, you know, that everyone's the same or he's just like everyone else, but how was he emblematic of what was happening to young black man at that time?
Delmont: I think Skip really illuminates the experience of young black men in that era because we think about the kind of opportunities that were in front of black men in the late 1960s. There were civil rights advances by 1966 when Skip has graduated from high school, but those advances haven't really caught up to the on the ground realities for young men who grew up in a working class or poor backgrounds in Detroit. So when Skip graduates from high school, the job market just really isn't there for working class men.
And so in many ways, he isn't necessarily happy to go to serve in Vietnam, but he's relieved to have something that is in front of him to have a career pathway. It provides the chance to travel, it provides a chance to get some training, he hopes, and provides resources and a monthly salary that he wasn't going to have had he stayed in Detroit. When he comes back from the war, a similar dynamic is at play. There's about a nine-month gap between when he gets back and when he actually learns about the Medal of Honor.
During that time, he's just trying to find a job. 1968 is a very tough time for Black people, particularly for young Black men in Detroit. The unemployment rates are much higher for young Black men than they were for men more broadly. And Skip aspires to be able to go to college. He wants to become a computer programmer, which was the hot career at the time in the 1960s. But that pathway for someone who grows up in the Jefferies housing projects just isn't a realistic or likely option.
And so when the army offers him the opportunity to become an army recruiter after he gets the Medal of Honor, he jumps at that opportunity as well because the military again provides one of the best opportunities for a working class black man at the time. And so Thanksgiving's story illuminates so much of what it meant to want to make the kind of advances that that generation hoped to see in the late 1960s, early 1970s. But so many of those opportunities were constrained for black men at the time.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the book "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul. We're taking with the author, who's also a Dartmouth history professor, Matthew F. Delmont. So I wanted to fast forward to Skip was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Lyndon Johnson. However, you say that receiving the Medal of Honor was a blessing and a curse for Skip. Can you tell me about that? Why was it a blessing and a curse at the same time?
Delmont: So it was a blessing for Skip, because it gave him a path forward. He appreciated all the accolades he received, putting ourselves back in that time period. So it meant a lot for a young black man from Detroit to receive the Medal of Honor in 1968, because it's after Martin Luther King's assassination, it's the Detroit riots of 1968, and the riots in other parts of the country. And so there's a lot of symbolic value placed on Skip Johnson receiving that Medal of honor.
He's one of only a few black men to receive that Medal honor during Vietnam. And so there are celebratory dinners in his honor. General Westmoreland comes and speaks on his behalf. The mayor of Detroit, the governor of Michigan, they're all there fetting him. And so he takes great pride in that. He feels like he's really accomplished something. The army also asked him to be a recruiter and that, if nothing else, provides him with a job. And so that is a blessing as well.
Becomes a curse because no one in the military takes any meaningful actions to address the psychological impact of what Skip experienced in Vietnam. So I mentioned he earned the Medal of Honor for surviving this ambush. It was an event that he had no real memory of. It wasn't until he's at the Medal Honor ceremony that they're actually reading the commendation, what he did, which included running from tank to tank, grabbing any available weapons you could. At one point he has to hit a Vietnamese soldier over the head with a rifle.
He thinks he's about to get killed on multiple occasions. Skip goes into shock, essentially, during that combat experience. He doesn't actually hear that story until he's received the Medal of Honor from President Johnson. He suffered, like many Vietnam veterans did, tremendous psychological wounds from that combat experience. But no one in the military pays any attention to that. They just keep putting them in front of different audiences to say, look how great it is that we have this black hero.
Let's try to get more young black men signed up in the army. Eventually that trauma takes a toll on Skip. And here's where Katrina, his widow, was such an amazing source to be able to talk to because she described how the loving, caring, kind man that she had fallen in love with and married after about a year from being home from Vietnam, that man just loved her more. That he started to have nightmares, that he had bleeding ulcers because he had so much stomach trouble and wasn't sleeping. And now he became more moody and violent. And that, it just wasn't him. It wasn't the person he was before he went to combat. But that's the, in many ways, it was the curse of the Medal of Honor because the Medal Honor exacerbated the psychological trauma that Skip had because he to keep reliving this story of heroism over and over and again in all of these recruiting visits that eventually starts to weigh on him.
Juravich: Yeah, and another thing that was interesting for me that I didn't even realize is that people thought that you won the Medal of Honor and they thought it came with some sort of monetary award. So they suddenly thought they thought Skip was rich or something like that because you have the Medal Of Honor, yay! But that's not the case, it's just, it's literally a medal.
Delmont: That was one of the real pressures that both Skip and Katrina felt. At this point, they're a young couple, Skip was 22, Katrina was 21, they have a one-year-old child, and anytime they go out to dinner, anytime they're in their neighborhood, and this is still a very working-class neighborhood, everyone thinks they're wealthy now. They expect Skip to pick up the tab for dinner or for drinks. They're looking for them for loans and trying to hit them up for money.
And Katrina described it as feeling like people were vultures, that everything wanted something from her and from Skip. And that took a toll as well, that he couldn't just be the kind of community member that he wanted to be, that everyone was trying to get something from him, but no one was actually taking care of him and his psychological and physical needs.
Juravich: I don't want to give away the entire skip story because we want people to read your book, obviously, but the the treatment for what we now know is PTSD, it wasn't readily available for skip I mean, basically, did were there any mental health services to Katrina say he could get any help or was was she basically just dealing with it with him the two of them.
Delmont: The mental health services were extremely limited. So one of the stories I tell in the book is how between World War II in Vietnam, the clinical diagnosis for what had previously been called shell shock and what comes to be called PTSD is actually removed from the DSM, from the manual that doctors use to be able to evaluate and treat different clinical diagnoses when patients present. And so part of the reason that Generation of Vietnam Veterans was treated so poorly is that there wasn't a medical diagnosis for the kind of combat-induced stress and trauma that so many generations of soldiers experience.
And so when SIPP starts to ask for help. The people who are there treating him don't have the clinical language to be able to help him, but also just don't exhibit the care that they need for the soldier or the veteran in front of them. I think the best example of this is when Skip finally reaches a breaking point, he recognizes that he needs serious help. He goes to a military hospital, but the very first day he's there, they have him change back into his military uniform with the Medal of Honor and have him go shake hands at a military event.
Well, he's. It has been checked into a medical hospital trying to seek the treatment for the mental issues he's having and so consistently the military doctors just didn't exhibit the kind of kind of care consideration that skip needed thankfully through skips story and the challenges he encountered. The psychologist who helped to do the pioneering work on what at the time was called post-Vietnam syndrome. It eventually comes to be called PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. They use Skip's story as one of the things to help get more colleagues, more veterans in the VA to take serious consideration for the trauma that first Vietnam veterans experience but then later generations of veterans experience as well. And so I think one of legacies of Skip's Story is that it helped the VA do a much better job today than they were doing during the... Vietnam era in treating the psychological wounds that veterans experience.
Juravich: Now, you're telling the story of Coretta Scott King throughout this book, and then you're telling the stories of Skip Johnson. But unless I'm mistaken, I mean, the two never actually met. You're kind of like weaving them together, right? Tell me more about that.
Delmont: Yeah, so I knew I wanted, in talking about the Vietnam era, to talk about the military side of the story and the antiwar side of story. And Chris Scott King's story and Skip Johnson's story revealed so much about those two different perspectives that I wanted to, by weaving the stories together, really encourage and force readers to think about what it meant to live through that era and what the legacies of that era were. That we can't talk only about the peace movement without also talking about the soldiers who served in the war.
We can't talk about the heroism of someone like Skip Johnson without talking about the people on the home front like Kresgeck King who tried to end the war and bring those soldiers home. They didn't, while they didn t meet in person, Crescott King was certainly aware of Skip's story. She followed it in the newspapers when he received the Medal of Honor and then when he has a challenging time and ultimately meets a tragic ending in Detroit, she's aware of that as well because that gets picked up in national newspapers. But by weaving the stories together, I want to be illuminating different parts of the anti-war struggle and different parts of military experience in Vietnam.
Juravich: Our guest is Matthew F. Delmont, a Dartmouth history professor and author of the book "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul. And coming up, we're going to delve into how the struggles for civil rights continue and the challenge of presenting our shared American history. That is when all sides continues on 89 7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides, I'm your host Amy Juravich. Coretta Scott King's story is usually told in the context of her husband's career, but a new book turns the focus onto her life as an independent activist, not just the wife of Martin Luther King Jr. Another story told in the same book is the story of Dwight Skip Johnson, Vietnam veteran and Medal of Honor recipient who struggled to find his way in his hometown of Detroit after returning from war with PTSD.
A condition that was not well known and not well treated at the time. The person who links Johnson and Scott King's stories together is Dartmouth history professor Matthew F. Delmont, and his book is titled "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul. Thanks again for being with us, Matthew. Thanks, Amy. So, because of the continued struggle for civil rights... Would readers be wrong to see this book as like a continuation of your previous book? Cause your previous book is called "Half American" and it's a story about World War II at home and abroad. So is it the same? Is it like history repeating itself from World War II to here?
Delmont: It is definitely a continuation of that story. I remain very interested in the ideas of military service and patriotism and dissent. And so one question I kept getting when I was presenting on the World War II story was, what changes to Vietnam? And one big change, I think this is to the military's credit, is that the military becomes racially integrated between World War Two and Vietnam.
President Tummingstine signed the executive order in 1948. And it doesn't happen overnight. But by the Vietnam War, the military is the most racially-integrated organization in American society. And that's a real accomplishment. The problem is it comes in the context of a war that is increasingly unpopular among the American public. And so the through line I trace is what it means to be asked to fight for your country and then what it mean to have equal rights in the country that there are advances in both fronts, but that the dynamics changed by the Vietnam War.
Juravich: Did African-Americans serving in Vietnam, like, how did they feel about the anti-war movement taking place at home? Did they feel conflicted? Did they connect civil rights and anti- war together while they were in Vietnam?
Delmont: They did, and obviously there was no single response among Black soldiers serving in Vietnam. But one thing that they described was that in some cases they did feel like the military had made progress. They felt like when they actually got to serve in these units that they had more opportunities that were available to them than their fathers or grandfathers had. They felt white soldiers, white officers treated them better, particularly before King's assassination, so before 68. They felt like the military actually was true to its word and provided a opportunity to advance based on merit, not just based on the color of one's skin.
At the same time, they still described rampant racism in many parts of the military. They described crosses being burned, Confederate flags flying, and things got significantly worse after King's assassination in 68. You started to see more race riots and protests, particularly back from the front lines between Black and White troops. As increasing civil rights and anti-war protests are taking place in the United States. That really captures the attention of Black Americans, Black American servicemen, because they're asking, what am I doing fighting here? This is not my war. The Vietnamese have never done anything to me, and I'm being asked to fight in this war abroad, while I can see my hometown. Los Angeles, Detroit, New York, exploding in riots in the summers while I'm away.
And so in Skip's case, one story he told was that tanks were driving through the streets of Detroit during the riot at the same time he's driving tanks in Vietnam. And they had to keep asking themselves, is this war worth fighting and at what cost and why am I not back home helping take care of my own community?
Juravich: Yeah. Part of the complicated history of African Americans and other groups serving in the military was it was seen as a means for people from disadvantaged communities to move up economically. But but then was that really the case? Like they had this paycheck for a certain period of time. But then you said that when Skip came home, he couldn't find a job. Right. So is that is that still the case today that do you feel like people from certain communities are pushed into the military because it's... It's it's one of the only choices
Delmont: Well, May I want to be careful and say that people definitely have choices and they make decisions I think are best suited for them and for their families. But when you look at the numbers, in terms of who volunteers to the military, it is disproportionately people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. After the military becomes an all-volunteer force in 1973, African Americans have always been overrepresented in the military. And in part, that goes back to the question you're asking, Black Americans have consistently seen better opportunities. With the military than they see in the private sector.
And a lot of that has to do with class, with educational background, but the military has been a viable career opportunity for generations of black Americans now. That has come with some upside and some positive aspects that you have a lot of black men when we've served in the military who speak very positively about their experiences and what it's entailed. But I think we'd wanna make sure that those are actually choices that people aren't being funneled into the military as their only options, that they have other options as well.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about the book, "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul. And we're talking with author and Dartmouth history professor Matthew F. Delmont. So we didn't talk about this when we were talking about Coretta Scott King, but the title of your book, "Until the Last Gun is Silent," tell us where that comes from.
Delmont: So after Martin Luther King is assassinated in April of 1968, just three weeks later, Crescott King leads a march in Central Park in New York, speaking before 80,000 people. And just to kind of picture what she went through in those three weeks, she has to take care of Martin Luther King's funeral arrangements. She's flying back and forth between Memphis, where King is killed, and Atlanta, where the funeral is going to be. And she's also at that point, the only parent, single parent of four children.
And so she's doing all of this sorrow, all of grief, all these logistics, while at the same time maintaining her commitments as a leader in the civil rights movement and as a leader of the antiwar movement. And so it really kind of comes to fruition with this protest rally in Central Park. She's dressed in all black, which is her signal of the grief that she's in, but she gives a tremendously powerful speech where she says she's reading from notes that have been left in Martin's pocket when he was assassinated. He had written a speech that outlined the 10 commandments about the Vietnam War.
But one thing she says that she vows to fight until the last guns are silent. And so that's where I drew the title of the book from is that it's a tremendously powerful speech but both the context in which she's speaking and the moral power that she brings to the anti-war movement. Now she really commits the rest of her life to fighting first to end the Vietnam war, but then... To really keep fighting for peace and justice and economic rights for Americans more broadly. Kresgek was such a powerful visionary leader in her own right that I really hope the book helps to shine a clearer and bolder light on her tremendous life and career as an activist.
Juravich: Let's talk about the third part of your book title, though. So a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul. Can you define the soul you're talking about? What is the soul we are saving?
Delmont: And I'm using the soul of America in the same way that Curtis Scott King used it and what she meant by it was having America take care of Americans. That was one of her main concerns about the Vietnam war was that the resources that were going to fight the Vietnam war would be better spent to take care of Americans needs in terms of health care in terms of housing in terms of jobs in terms of education. That was the those were the stakes of the war.
And so when I talk about the fight for the soul of America, it was a basic question of what kind of country are we going to be? I think that's one of the cases we see echoes between the Vietnam era and the present that Americans continue to reckon with these kind of key questions about which direction is our country gonna go in the future? And these were front of mind for credit, Scott King and others who protested the war in the Vietnam Era is that they were significantly concerned about the direction that the country was taking.
And both the thousands and thousands of casualties in the Vietnam War, but also the resources, the money that was being spent, the billions of dollars that were spent on a war that they saw as being misguided and not in the best interest of American citizens.
Juravich: So then tell me about the first part of that subtitle, a story of patriotism. Is it considered patriotic back then to be anti-war? Is it consider patriotic to you had to be patriotic? You had to support the Americans in the Vietnam War? I mean, there was a lot of conflict there.
Delmont: So this is, again, one of the three lines that connects my last book, "Half American," about Black Americans in World War II and Vietnam era, that I think we need to keep thinking about the interconnections between patriotism and dissent. And we're at a tricky spot in our nation's history today where it seems like you can only be patriotic and only say positive things about the country, or you can always dissent and say critical things about country. That's never been the reality for most Black Americans. Patriotism and dissent have always been intertwined.
And so when I use patriotism in the book, I'm using it in the sense of what it means to fight for America, what it means to ask America to be a better version of itself and have a vision of patriotism that actually welcomes dissent and is strengthened by dissent. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case through much of the Vietnam era. When Kratoska King speaks out against the war and when other anti-war activists spoke out, they were deemed un-American for doing so, for being for being willing to speak out against President Johnson, eventually President Nixon, that was deemed to be almost treasonous behavior.
Crescott King, like her husband, had the FBI trailing her, keeping track of these speeches that she's given, because they saw her as being a communist sympathizer just because she was speaking out against the Vietnam War. And so an argument I try to make in the book is that when we talk about patriotism, it can't just be the kind of flag-waving, simplistic vision of patriotism. But if we actually understand what it means to. To fight for a vision of America that actually takes care of all Americans, that's a bolder vision of American.
And so a connection between Creda and Skip is that they both fought for America. Skip fought in the traditional military sense, but Creda's fought for American in the sense of actually taking care of veterans like Skip. She wanted the country to make good on its promises, to live up to its founding ideals. I think that's a powerful vision of patriotism we can learn a lot from today.
Juravich: Well, and we're at a challenging point in American history right now. So as a historian, are you concerned about telling these stories at a time when the current administration is trying to basically not talk about some of the troubling parts of American history? They want to erase some of the trouble parts from certain museums and they want to talk about the good parts and kind of glaze over the controversy. I mean, as a story and someone who wrote this book about Vietnam, what What do you think about? How we're telling history right now in this moment.
Delmont: I'm deeply concerned by the efforts to restrict how we talk about history. For myself and for other professional historians, our commitment is to evidence and to the truth. So the things I write about in this book are true regardless of whether President Trump is in the White House or Biden or Obama or Bush or whoever is in White House in the future. This is our shared history. We as American citizens, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, can learn a huge amount by understanding these stories and can learn how we might be able to make better decisions in the years ahead that better suit our country, our neighborhoods and our communities.
History is a powerful set of stories. And these stories that we tell about the past matter. And we do ourselves a tremendous disservice as citizens if we refuse to engage with some stories because we find them upsetting or disappointing. As someone who has focused his entire life on studying American history, I can say there's tremendously inspirational and powerful stories in our country's history. And many of those show up in this book. They're also really challenging parts of our country history. And we have to be grown up enough, adult enough to be able to weave those two. Pieces together the inspirational and the challenging to reckon with the actual set of events that happen in our nation's history, all with an eye towards trying to make better decisions in the years ahead.
Juravich: Well, and you, with all your books and your research and just, you know, with the job that you hold and what you do, you've given presentations about your books and your knowledge at military colleges. How has your work been received? And tell me about how that's changed in recent times.
Delmont: Yeah, it's really interesting. So with "Half American," my last book on World War II, I had the opportunity to present that work at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and the U S Navy War College and Newport, Rhode Island. And these are mid-career military officers. They responded really positively to the work because they understood that this is a story about the path that the military has traveled.
They understood how inefficient and illogical it was for the military to be racially segregated, how it made the military a less effective fighting force during World War Two, but they also understood how the military has made tremendous leaps forward in trying to create a fighting force that actually embraces the talents and capacities of all Americans. And so they responded really positively to it. This is after the book came out, so this is 21 and 22. Unfortunately, we're in a different political era now.
And a couple of years ago, "Half American," the book on World War II, was one of the books that was banned by the US Navy Academy's library in Annapolis. And it's the same book, just different political times. And The thing I kept coming back to is, you know, this is a story about Black veterans who served our country during World War II. The idea that anyone, again, regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum, the idea that that anyone would not want to talk about the tremendous bravery, courage, and sacrifice of Black veterans is galling to me. It's upsetting.
And so I'd say for listeners and for readers, our commitments have to be to evidence and to telling an honest accounting of history. You can choose to vote how you choose to but you can't. Rearrange the facts or ignore history. History is what history is, and it's our obligation as citizens to engage honestly with that history and then hopefully use that history to learn something from it.
Juravich: So as a historian, what do you think of America's soul right now? You know, you're writing about the fight to save America's soul in the Vietnam time. But how will future historians look back on this moment in time, 2026?
Delmont: I think we're in a really challenging and scary moment in many ways. This isn't the only challenging and scary moment American history. I take some relief from that. That our country has made it through challenging moments in the past as well. I'd say one. Place I draw inspiration from is I have the opportunity to speak to audiences all across the country, across different demographics and everything else. And I think average Americans are good people, and I think average Americans are willing to work together in the best interest of the country more broadly.
I can't always say the same for all of our political leaders. And so my hope is that as we move forward in the years and the decade ahead, that building schools, organizations, neighborhoods, communities, and eventually states and nations that take care of Americans more broadly and that don't get caught in these kind of political divides that I think ultimately are not in the best interests of our average citizens.
Juravich: Well, our guest has been Matthew F. Delmont, Dartmouth history professor and author of the book "Until the Last Gun is Silent," a story of patriotism, the Vietnam War, and the fight to save America's soul. Thank you so much for joining us on all sides today.
Delmont: Thanks so much, Amy. I appreciate it.
Juravich: And this is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. If you missed any part of today's show, you can listen back at our website. That's wosu.org slash all sides. Subscribe to our podcast and every episode is available in our mobile app. Be sure to follow the show on Instagram. Our Instagram handle is at All Sides WOSU and of course we're also on Facebook. This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.