Contested Valor: African American Marines in the Age of Power, Protest, and Tokenism
Cameron D. McCoy
University Press of Kansas
Contested Valor is a challenging examination of the use and status of black Marines in United States military service during the Cold War era.
Cameron McCoy describes the factors and pressures leading to the racial turbulence that surfaced in the Marine Corps from the end of World War II through Vietnam, and the measures taken by civilian and Marine officials to maintain and restore organizational integrity based on a foundation of white supremacy.
Contested Valor weaves the experiences of black Americans in the armed forces into the larger tapestry of the American racialist past and aptly captures the dilemmas, triumphs, and pitfalls that the first African American Marines encountered during the contentious eras of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.