REMEMBERING Alumnus Dan Goldberg’s new book restores first Black Naval officers to their place in history By Eric Coker
D
an Goldberg ’05 was searching the internet when he came across an obituary for Frank Sublett, one of the 13 Black men who integrated the U.S. Navy officers corps in 1944. “I thought: ‘That’s an interesting story. I’ve never heard of these guys,’” he says. “How did the U.S. Navy go from not allowing Black men to so much as be trained as electricians or quartermasters after Pearl Harbor to deciding to train them as officers two years later in the middle of a war? It seemed like a fascinating story with the backdrop of the men’s heroism and characters.” Goldberg said to himself: “There’s a book here. Someone should give it a full-length treatment.” Nine years later, that someone is Goldberg — an award-winning healthcare reporter for Politico. The Golden Thirteen: How Black Men Won the Right to Wear Navy Gold, released in May by Beacon Press, combines oral histories, interviews with family members and seven years of research by Goldberg to bring a largely forgotten story back to life. The men (Jesse Arbor, Phil Barnes, Sam Barnes, Dalton Baugh, George Cooper, Reginald Goodwin, James Hair, Charles Lear,
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Graham Martin, Dennis Nelson, John Reagan, Frank Sublett and William Sylvester White) not only endured racism after enlisting in the Navy, but were often disrespected when they became officers: Living quarters were subpar, scorn and epithets were common, white sailors refused to salute them and officers’ clubs emptied when they entered. The Golden 13 could not be simply adequate. They had to quietly show superior leadership, temperament and ability. In the end, the men had the best class average in Naval history, but were not allowed into battle. It would take the Navy more than 30 years to celebrate the pioneers. The journey to publication In early 2011, Goldberg decided to contact family members of the Golden 13. By this time, all of the members were deceased and tracking down loved ones was not easy. Goldberg first located Hair’s son, James Jr., through a wedding announcement and had coffee with him in the spring of 2011. “He agreed this was a good story and gave me the confidence to say ‘Let’s keep gathering string on this,’” Goldberg says. “Let’s keep researching and see how many wives and kids will talk to me. Let’s see how much I can find from archival research.” Over the next several years, Goldberg talked
