On this edition of In Black America, producer/host John L. Hanson Jr. speaks with Dan C. Goldberg, a health care reporter with Politico and author of The Golden 13: How Black Men Won The Right To Wear Navy Gold.
Through oral histories and original interviews with surviving family members, Goldberg brings to life 13 forgotten heroes. He reveals the opposition these men faced: the racist pseudo-science, the regular condescension, the repeated epithets, the verbal abuse and even violence.
Goldberg talks about President Franklin D. Roosevelt, where the sailors came from, the Black press, President Harry Truman’s 1948 order integrating the armed forces, what happened when they were commissioned as officers and why their stories are so important.
