Building The Forever Fort: Race and Militarization in South Carolina, 1917-1980

Abstract

This dissertation explores the militarization of politics and society in the Jim Crow South. Given Americans’ long-held suspicion of standing armies, Southern whites’ insistence on enforcing Jim Crow, and northern African Americans’ reluctance to serve in the South, how did the U.S. Army base Fort Jackson become so indispensable to South Carolina’s political and economic identity? “Building the Forever Fort: Race and Militarization in South Carolina, 1917-1980” seeks to solve the puzzle of how Southern military boosters, three to four generations removed from federally backed Reconstruction, developed and maintained such feverish support for a U.S. Army base—even as the base became an agent of desegregation, a political bargaining chip, a target of the national antiwar movement, and a rare local vehicle of Black career advancement. I argue that concern about intractable Southern poverty inspired an array of national, international, and local actors to become invested in a military future—and the transformative changes that came with it. Reformers, political dynasties, military families, exiled Latin American trainees, Black farmers, and committed pacifists each sought to use the Army installation of Fort Jackson for different ends, but all sought leverage from South Carolina’s vice-like grip on the military base. Contrary to prevailing notions that militarism was achieved through government imposition, my findings from looking South demonstrate that appeals to Southern regional identity and aspirations for economic development activated and sustained popular investment in ongoing militarization.