[SauronOfMordor]

One additional thing about being in war: when you come home you are no longer somebody who is that easy to push around.

Notice that the black civil rights era really began in the 50's and 60's, after Truman desegregated the military, and more blacks came home with combat experience in Korea and Vietnam. When you've had people shooting at you with machineguns and lobbing grenades at you, it's harder to be impressed by some yokel in a sheet

[Brucifer]

I've made the same point to my classes a number of times. After you spent your time in hard places the old rules don't mean too much anymore.

And there's another side too. When people got back to the World a lot of guys realized that they weren't willing to wear some white sheet just because that's the way it had always been. When you've seen that everybody bleeds red and that you're all in the shit together... well what somebody's granddaddy did to somebody else's grandpa in the past doesn't mean too much any more. A lot of people had the scales fall from their eyes.