Why we should never forget the shameful treatment of Black service members

This Veterans Day will mark 10 months since Jan. 6, 2021, when Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman faced off against dozens of insurrectionists who had breached the building, mere feet away from the Senate Chamber. He successfully goaded and led them away to a location where other officers were waiting, a moment that was caught on video and led to him being awarded a Congressional Gold Medal.

Goodman, who is Black, served in the U.S. Army in Iraq with the 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division in the “Triangle of Death” (a unit in which I served in Iraq with 11 years later); on Jan. 6, insurrectionists hurled racial epithets at him and his fellow Black officers.


Eugene Goodman’s stand against the insurrectionists is yet another instance of Black Americans who have served their nation overseas having to fight another war upon returning home: the one against racism and discrimination. Groups across the nation are currently targeting the teaching or even acknowledgment of any instances in American history that deal with racial discrimination; in doing so they are also attempting to remove the history of what happened to Black service members who have sacrificed at both home and abroad.


https://taskandpurpose.com/voices/black-service-members-veterans-day/