In commemoration of Black History Month, Fouad and Ajami Senior Fellow H. R. McMaster takes a look back at the extraordinary life and career of the first African American Army four-star general, the late Roscoe Robinson Jr., in an interview with his son, Lt. Col. Bruce Robinson (US Army, Ret.).*
The tribute to Robinson is a special in McMaster’s Battlegrounds video series, produced by the Hoover Institution. The series promotes the concept of “strategic empathy,” which considers the ideologies, emotions, and aspirations of friends and adversaries in policy decision making. This episode is unique because in addition to foreign policy it examines issues concerning America’s domestic front, particularly the historic treatment of Black Americans.
Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, Roscoe Robinson Jr. was one of five Blacks to graduate from the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, in 1951. A veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, his legendary career included assignments serving as commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, as commanding general of the US Army, Japan, and as the US military representative of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels.
In this interview with McMaster, Bruce Robinson explains how his father experienced discrimination throughout his career in the army. Despite a 1948 executive order by President Harry Truman that desegregated all US military units, many Black combat war veterans still were treated as second-class citizens in the service and at home. Bruce recalls that as a child, when he and his family traveled to the southern United States for vacation, his parents sought alternative routes and Black-friendly establishments to avoid potential racial hostility.
Bruce tells McMaster that Roscoe persevered, in part, because he confronted every challenge with a positive spirit. Roscoe and his fellow Black soldiers were also enthusiastic about integration in the military, because it meant that they were able to compete and prove that they were as mentally and physically capable as their White peers.
Despite his distinguished service during a combat tour on the Korean Peninsula, Roscoe didn’t get selected to join elite units like the 82nd Airborne Division (which he would later command) or the 101st Airborne Division. Instead, he was assigned to work as a military attaché in Liberia, likely because the army leadership believed it fitting that a Black soldier be deployed to an African country. Nevertheless, Roscoe saw the opportunity to gain experience in diplomacy, a skill that would become very useful in his years as a general.
Bruce says that other virtues that enabled Roscoe to succeed through adversity were his sense of fairness and his ability to demand excellence from everyone regardless of skin color or ethnic background. When Roscoe was the commander of the 82nd Airborne, no one ever publicly judged him by his skin color, because his performance as a leader spoke for itself.
“Soldiers of all backgrounds loved him,” Bruce recalls. “If anyone cared about his color, they kept it to themselves.”
Roscoe’s experience with racial discrimination taught him important lessons about seeking cohesion within the units he commanded and the partnerships he forged with America’s allies, Bruce maintains.
As commander of the 82nd, Roscoe empathized with women who had been discriminated against in the military based on the perception that they were less capable than men. Roscoe not only ensured that women were properly integrated and respected within his unit but also demanded that they meet the same high standards as any other soldier.
In the early 1980s, when Roscoe was the commanding general of the US Army, Japan, he applied a sense of strategic empathy toward the leaders of his host country. Roscoe understood the state of Japan’s rich history and proud culture after its humiliating defeat at the end of the Second World War. He treated his counterparts with respect as equals.
Among the surrender terms to the United States was that Japan could not have an active military. However, the island nation was permitted to maintain defense forces. Despite this arrangement, Roscoe sought to strengthen this security partnership with his counterparts by increasing joint exercises between American and Japanese forces. These exercises required more personnel and assets to be transferred from the United States, which Roscoe successfully procured from the Pentagon.
McMaster asks Bruce what Roscoe’s perspective might have been on the recent protests in America in the wake of the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. Bruce believes that his father would have tried to directly address the problem and be part of the solution.
“I am sure my dad would say that the movements are valid. If people feel a certain way, if they feel like they are being wronged, if they feel like the police are discriminating against them, then they have to validate their beliefs and feelings, and then work to find common ground to solve [those issues],” Bruce says. “You have to find a way to alter that perception such that people feel like they are being treated fairly.”
Bruce concludes the conversation by talking about how Roscoe’s approach to family life reflected the same set of values that characterized his illustrious career: a sense of empathy, fairness, and dedication to the people in his care regardless of their color. Bruce, who is White, was adopted by Roscoe and his wife.
“It wasn’t all that uncommon for a White couple to adopt an African American kid, but an African American couple adopting a White kid didn’t happen very often,” says Bruce, who also explains how his older sister was adopted in Liberia during his father’s assignment in that country. “I remember that [we would get] weird looks when we would be out in public. . . . But my folks just drove on with the mission and handled it. . . . [They told me and my sister that if someone acted poorly] it was just that individual person, it wasn’t because of what ethnic group they represented.”
*The original story incorrectly stated that Gen. Roscoe Robinson, Jr. was the first African American four-star general. While Robinson was the first African American four-star in the US Army, the first in the entire US military was Gen. Daniel James, Jr., United States Air Force.
