July 26, 2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the integration of the armed forces.The existence of integrated rather than segregated armed forces is an important factor in our military establishment today. The experiences in World War II and the postwar pressures generated by the civil rights movement compelled all the services—Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps—to reexamine their traditional practices of segregation. All of them reached the same conclusion: traditional attitudes toward minorities must give way to democratic concepts of civil rights.