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Blue & Gold and Black: Racial Integration of the U.S. Naval Academy by Robert J. Schneller Jr. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2008. (437 pages; cloth)
In 1949, Wesley A. Brown became the first African American to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy. In 1995, when Brown returned to Annapolis for his class's forty-fifth reunion, he saw Rueben Brigety, an African American midshipman and brigade commander, leading the homecoming parade. Brown was amazed by the sight of a black midshipman out in front of the brigade. After the event, he approached Brigety with tears streaming down his face, emotionally stirred by the profound changes evident at the Naval Academy since he was the lone black midshipman in his class (pp. 353-4). This anecdote indicates the great distance traveled by African Americans in the Naval Academy from the 1940s to the 1990s, a journey meticulously chronicled by naval historian Robert J. Schneller in this fascinating book.
Fifty-one African Americans were admitted to the Naval Academy classes of 1949 to 1968, 476 blacks entered the classes of 1969 to 1979, and 1,51 1...