Courtesy Photo | Col. Barbara Owens is promoted to the rank of brigadier general by her mother, Barbara...... read more read more
Subscribe
FORT KNOX, Ky. - As we celebrate Black History Month this year, we all look back together as Americans at more than half a century of progress, which has fundamentally changed America for the better.
The historic civil rights movement of the mid-20th century pushed America forward into a period of significant change, which culminated with the adoption of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s.
For example, legislation was adopted making it a crime to interfere with or obstruct federal court orders, ensuring the law of the land applied to all Americans regardless of position or status.
Take something as simple and as important as educating our children and providing them the best opportunities for a full life. Children of Armed Forces personnel were in fact educated in Department of Defense schools because they were barred from attending local, public schools based on race. It took federal legislation to ensure they could exercise this right.
I think all of us would agree the right to vote is one of the most cherished rights of citizenship in the United States. It is the basis of our democratic form of government. In the 1950s and 1960s, too many Americans were denied that basic right. The Voting Rights Act was passed to prohibit by law discrimination on the basis of race.
Young people today might find it difficult to imagine parts of our history. Forms of behavior that were considered normal back then would be completely unacceptable now.
Today's generation might find it hard to believe such inequality was tolerated in a free and democratic society. Currently, this type of behavior would be immediately tagged for exactly what it was back then: Un-American.
Our challenge as Americans is to balance the exercise of human rights for all with the need for individual and collective responsibility. It is a question of balance, of both benefiting from the personal, social and material good and empowerment that spring from true freedom, while at the same time ensuring the possibilities of freedom and the blessings it can bring are available to all.
The positive role the U.S. Army and America's military in general have played in the social empowerment of African-Americans has been profound.
The Army has for the most part been ahead of American society at large in recognizing and valuing the positive contributions of African-Americans. As in so many areas of our national life, where African-Americans have contributed significant service and dedication to the betterment of our country, the Army has often led the way in actualizing America's ideals to a far greater extent than society at large. Today, we are a far a stronger institution for having done so.
Our Army has afforded several generations of African-Americans an opportunity to succeed in a system where, in the words of Martin Luther King Jr., a person is judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Fifty years later, the Army continues to live up to the ideas put forward by our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
May we carry that standard forward for the next 50 years as well.
| Date Taken: | 02.26.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 06.22.2015 10:31 |
| Story ID: | 167627 |
| Location: | FORT KNOX, KENTUCKY, US |
| Web Views: | 25 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Army's past led way toward equal rights, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
No keywords found.
