Race, Politics, and Reconstruction

The first in-depth study of racial integration at West Point after the Civil War

Race, Politics, and Reconstruction tells the story of racial integration at the United States Military Academy after the Civil War and spotlights the social environment and cultural currents that led to its failure. The first attempt to racially integrate West Point proved not simply a lost opportunity but an opportunity squandered with shocking degrees of forethought and deliberation.

By investigating West Point’s experience with race from varied and nuanced perspectives, including those of the first Black cadets, the US Army officer corps, white cadets, the Academy’s faculty and staff, and the Black and white American publics, the contributors to this volume cast both the promise and the failure of integration at West Point as an illuminating microcosm of Reconstruction itself.