Sixty years ago, President Harry Truman signed a presidential executive order that began racially integrating America's Armed Forces. Shortly afterward North Korea invaded South Korea, the Korean War began and I enlisted in the U. S. Army as a Private. But instead of being sent to Korea to fight in the war, I was assigned to the 373rd Armored Infantry Battalion, an all Black Calvary unit whose mission was to patrol and defend West Germany's border with Russia and East Germany. Though the Army was integrated in Korea, the Army in Germany was very much segregated, a preparation for my next assignment.

A year later I was transferred to the Infantry Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia. When I arrived I was confronted by signs over the water fountains in the military bus station that read "Colored Only" and "White Only" and there were two lines of soldiers waiting to get drinks, one all white and the other all black. Scenes like these were the last vestiges, or perhaps more accurately, the last gasps of the southern white black slave plantation system. Fifteen years later they had disappeared physically, though not mentally.

But a strange thing happened to black families on their way to racial equality and political freedom. Before their political and social emancipation in the sixties, about one of five black children were born outside of wedlock. Today three of five black children are born outside of marriage. Before the sixties black families were strong and becoming stronger. Black men proudly headed these families, provided for and protected their wives and they together, along with the Black churches, taught their children decency, moral values, community responsibility and the importance of hard work, correct speech and the societal and business rewards of proper dress and personal presentation. Now Black families and communities are coming apart at the seams.

What went wrong? Many things went wrong but one of the most damning was the failure of black men -- especially national black leaders -- and the black communities, churches and families to fill the moral vacuum created by the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Try as they may, government legislation and programs could not replace Dr. King.  He was a giant of a national figure standing astride and lovingly connecting the Black and White communities of America like some great colossus. When he said in his I Have a Dream speech that, "Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood," it resonated and kept on resonating in the fiber and being of every American who heard him that day. Single-handedly he had advanced the cause of American racial harmony and forgiveness. Unfortunately, compared to his massive greatness the black leaders who tried to follow along in his shadow did not fully embrace and carry forward his message of love, brotherhood, self-reliance and hard work on to fulfillment.

It is good for us to pause in observance of the integration of our Armed Forces sixty years ago and to look at how far this great nation has come since then. When I enlisted in the Army as a Private in March of 1951, there wasn't a single Black general officer in the entire Army. When I was promoted to general in 1975 there were only a half dozen black generals. Now we see black generals or admirals in all of our services. We still have far to go but our military has come a long way indeed. Dr. King, I believe, would be pleased, and would encourage all the young men and women rising through the ranks today to dream big dreams and work to make them a reality.